The temple was carved into the bones of the mountain.

Kael and I stood before it, breathless and bloody, the taste of ash still in our mouths from the last skirmish with the Council’s scouts. But this place… this was different.

The air pulsed. Thick with memory. Thicker still with something I hadn’t felt since the moment my mother died.

Bloodheat.

But not mine. Not Kael’s.

An older one. Wilder. More primal than anything that had ever throbbed in my chest.

Kael stepped forward, ...