He first saw her at the High Lords meeting.

Noticed her before she even spoke. She sat beside her sisters, silent and still in a chair of stone, but there was nothing docile about her. Not when Tamlin—disgraced and snarling—dared to insult Feyre.

Her jaw had clenched, but she’d stayed quiet. Until her fingers curled into the arm of her stone chair and cracked it—split it—just by holding back her fury.

And gods, she was beautiful.

Not in the way the court liked to dress their women up in lace and glittering smiles. No—she was something else entirely. Wild. Raw. Untamed. Like the earth before a quake. Like stone before it shattered. Power flickering beneath her skin like an unhealed wound.

And he knew, right then, that he would love her.

He didn’t know her name.

Didn’t need to.

That force—that fierce, silent quake—burned into his memory.

But it was on the battlefield that she ruined him.

She wore leathers like an Illyrian like she had no right to be so sinful in war clothes, and he was going mad. Chaos swirled around them—smoke, screams, death—but all he could see was the way those pants hugged her thighs, the way her movements were clumsy and furious and real.

And all he could think about was how he’d like to rip those clothes off with his teeth and worship her body on the battlefield. On the cold ground. Make her scream in a way no enemy ever had. And he knew—somehow—she’d love every second of it.

She didn’t flinch under his stares. She saw him watching. Grinned sometimes, but mostly she just sent him those glares. Those looks. The kind that said she'd bury him six feet under and smirk as the dirt covered his face.

So much for the quiet, lethal youngest Archeron sister.

She was different.

And she could bite.

And fuck if he wouldn’t let her.

She wasn’t much with a blade. Not yet. When it came down to it, she preferred the earth. Let it split open for her like it obeyed her pain. And Eris—fire incarnate—was drawn to her like a moth to a flame. Or maybe a flame to the soil that could smother it.

He stayed close. Never more than ten feet away in case her ass needed saving, not that she’d thank him for it.

And then came that moment.

Their father—the Archeron girls' father—stood vulnerable before the King of Hybern. And Eris saw her trembling, saw her trying to hold herself together with nothing but shattered breath and fury.

The king snapped the man’s neck.

And while all three sisters screamed—hers was different.

Hers shook the earth.

A canyon split beneath her knees as she fell to the dirt. Screams and power and grief tore through the land, taking a swath of Hybern soldiers with it.

But she didn’t move.

Didn’t fight.

Not when one of Hybern’s beasts raised a blade and lunged for her.

Eris moved without thinking.

One moment she was down—the next, she was in his arms. Dirt on her skin. Blood on his sword. His arm wrapped around her waist like he’d done it a thousand times.

He spun with her body still pressed to his, deflecting the next blow with a flick of his sword, steel meeting steel, fire meeting flesh.

“Get a grip!” he snarled, his mouth near her ear, his voice like an inferno. “Use all that anger. All that pain. Make it count.”

And as her power sparked again, wild and shaking, he thought—

Gods damn him, he was already hers.

And if she bit?

He’d thank her for the scar.