"Did we just—" He's dazed, disbelieving. "On the floor of the throne room. In the ritual circle. While the castle is literally burning."
"Your father's body is in the courtyard."
"Probably."
"We're terrible people."
"We're alive people." I touch his jaw with claws I'm learning to control. "Everything else is negotiable."
He laughs—broken and wet, too close to a sob. But real.
The knot throbs inside me. We're locked together for at least twenty minutes. My body is still transforming—scales spreading across my shoulders, my eyes fully gold now, my teeth too sharp.
I should be terrified.
Instead I feel powerful. Complete.
"I love you." He says it against my lips. "I know we still have things to work through. The lies. The trust I broke. But I love you, Kess."
"I love you too." The words come easier than I expected. "I hate that I do, sometimes. But I do."
"Is that forgiveness?"
I consider it. The heat has faded enough to think.
"It's the start." I pull him down for a softer kiss. "You killed your father for me. Told me the truth instead of hiding it. That matters."
"I'd kill anyone for you."
"Slightly concerning."
He laughs again. Softer.
The knot pulses. His hips shift and we both hiss—too sensitive, pleasure edged with overstimulation.
"We should deal with the castle," I say eventually.
"Probably."
"The fires. The bodies."
"Yes."
Neither of us moves.
"Five more minutes."
We take twenty.
38
Rhystan
Kess is still asleep.
I've been watching her for the better part of an hour now, propped on one elbow in a guest chamber bed that smells like smoke and sex and something wild I'm still learning to recognize. The royal suite is probably ash by now—we stumbled here sometime after the knot released, though I barely remember the walk. Just her weight in my arms, her face pressed to my neck, both of us too wrecked to do anything but collapse onto the first soft surface we found.
The morning light catches the scales spreading across her shoulders, her arms, the curve of her spine. Black shot through with gold, the same colors as my dragon form. They're beautiful. She's beautiful. Changed and fierce and still so perfectly herself that my chest aches with it.
