Her heart sank at the one word before she could stop it. He chuckled, pinching the nipple hard as though punishing her for the thought, making her gasp.

"I might not be going with you, but I spent six years being your shadow. I will not miss you because I will be watching you."

The thought put her mind at ease. She knew from the books she had been reading that it was probably not the normal response to what he said, but Dr. Manson always reminded her, other people's normal could never be hers, that she was completely valid in feeling however she felt. And all she felt hearing him say that he'd not be letting her out of his sight was a relief. Because if he was watching her, nothing could get to her again. And all she felt was cherished, protected, adored by his entire attention, his own affection, for her.

He would be there, even if no one could see. Even if she couldn't see, he would be there, and everything would be okay. "Promise?"

He just kissed her in reply. He was as addicted to their kisses as she was. There was something about them that just felt…right.So right.

She pulled back and stared at him, giving him another one of her fears. "I… I have always been Lyla. I don't know Luna. I don't feel like her. But what if I can't be either of them? What if they want me to be Luna and I can't be? Or what if I want to be her and lose Lyla? Who will I even be if that happens?"

His thumb brushed over her cheek. "You will always be mine,flamma. My flamma.Names don't matter. They're clothes you can choose to wear one day and discard the next. You could be Lilith or Lily or Lina, Luna or Lyla, or completely nameless. It doesn't matter. What matters is who you are in your skin andbones. And all I see—" he held her hand, bringing it up to his lips "—is a woman who owns the world in her small, soft, sexy little hands and doesn't even know it." Another kiss to her fingers.

"You asked me why you?" The intense look in his eyes, combined with his words, was undoing her. "Because you're my flame, a little source of light and warmth in a void full of darkness and death, small but capable of becoming an inferno with the right fuel. And though I was always full of dark and death, for you, I have embraced it, become it, so you can keep flickering without fear. I am the void all monsters fear soyounever have to be scared of anything. Not with me."

Words locked in her throat in a ball of fire that made her eyes burn. He called her his flame but the truth was that he was hers, warming her in places she had always been cold, sustaining her in places she had been shivering, illuminating her life in places that had never seen the light.

"I love you," she told him for the millionth time, meaning it more and more each time.

"I know," he replied for the millionth time, everything in his gaze saying what his lips never did as always.

"I think you might love me too, Dainn," she whispered in the space between their mouths.

His eyes darkened. "If there was ever any love in this world of mine," he began, then stopped, his words tattooed in her bones.

"It would be me," she completed, still marveling, wondering, at how this was her life. The things he said to her, the most beautiful words in that cool, direct way of his, made everything inside her melt like the wax on a candle. When she had been a little girl, alone in the dark, she had dreamed of someone saving her from the demons that fed off of her. As she'd grown up, the dreams had died. And then, she'd bumped into a man on a stormy night, and everything had changed.

Some days, she still couldn't believe it was all real and not a dream, that she was lucky enough to have found herself, to have had the chance to heal, to be so deeply loved by a man who had and would continue to burn the world for her.

But she wasn't going to complain.

No, she was going to spend the last night with her man and love him with all her heart, etching it into their memories until they could be together again.