Wrong blood.
He hadn’t meant to use his ability.
She had been drenched in it, her own and his guard’s. There was too much blood for anyone but him to tell which belonged to whom. When a drop landed on his lips during the chaos, he could smell at once that it wasn’t Dravaryn, even without tasting. But resisting had been impossible.
A single drop, and he gave in.
He had tasted it not to steal power, not to plunder her mind, but to know her bloodline. How else had she crossed the wards?
He’d felt it the instant the wards shuddered. The air had thickened, and magic twisted against itself. Something hadcrossed the threshold, and yet he hadn’t said it aloud, not to Maeren or the Guard, not even to Bryn. He’d never heard of anyone being able to sense the barrier, but Jakobav could hear its hum, feel the way its power pressed in.
Once, as a boy, he had dared to mention it to his father, and the king’s reply had been a flat warning.Keep that to yourself, son.
So when she breached the wards, it had resonated through him like a struck chord. Arguably more concerning was that only someone with blood older than Dravaryn could’ve passed the wards in such a manner, and yet she looked no older than her late twenties.
Even fevered, pale, and slick with sweat, she was striking, her long dark hair spilling across the pillow in stark contrast to skin that carried both fragility and defiance. And those blue eyes, bright and too large for her face, haunted him, the kind of eyes that had already told him to go to hell more times than he could count.
To anyone else, she might’ve looked like a half-dead girl who had stumbled too far into the wrong kingdom, but to him, she looked like danger wrapped in something deceptively delicate. And if her sharp tongue didn’t kill him first, those fucking icy blue eyes just might.
Unconscious now, barely stitched back together, her presence still felt loud.
Jakobav stood motionless at first, then stepped closer, each movement deliberate, the way one might approach a creature too wild to touch. Gods, she smelled of petals and smoke, like fragile sweetness laced with cold ash, a contradiction that lodged itself under his skin.
His fingers twitched before he gave in, brushing a stray lock of hair from her temple. It was damp with sweat, tangled from the fight. He shouldn’t have touched her, yet his hand lingered,thumb grazing the edge of her jaw. He told himself it was to check for fever.
He told himself many things.
Her pulse beat faintly at her throat. He found himself counting each rise, each flutter of breath.
He exhaled, slow, and reached again, combing his fingers through her hair until it fanned neatly against the linen. It looked wrong, disorderly, to leave it matted with blood.
He told himself to leave it.
It was beneath him, indulgent. But the sight gnawed at him, the crimson threaded through strands that had been stained in his hall. For reasons he refused to name, he couldn’t look at it any longer.
He crossed to the hearth, poured water from the pitcher into a shallow basin, and dipped the corner of a cloth until it dripped between his fingers. Sitting beside her again, he gathered her hair carefully and began to clean it. The cloth slid through the strands, lifting away blood and ash, each pass slower than it needed to be. The scent of her deepened as the water darkened. He should have stopped, but he didn’t. He smoothed her hair back against the pillow when he was done, as if discipline might help make sense of what he’d done.
When he drew his hand away, her eyes fluttered. He froze. For a heartbeat, he was certain she’d seen him.
Fuck.He’d crossed a line.
His body went perfectly still, breath locked in his chest. But she only turned her face deeper into the pillow, lips parting around a whisper he couldn’t quite catch.
His fingers curled loosely at his side.
Why did he feel so drawn to her? Who was she, truly?
Whatever she was, she’d tasted like fire magic, which was impossible.
No one from Orchid had stepped foot in this castle, unchallenged and uninvited, in hundreds of years. The protections made sure of that. And if she were truly Orchid-born, she couldn’t be royal or military because she bore no mark of rank, no tattooed crest of noble birth. And even if someone had slipped through, they wouldn’t have made it this far, not alive at least.
He reached for the table where his armor lay, running a thumb over the scratches still crusted with her blood. It was dry now, flaking red against blackened steel. The sight turned his stomach more than it should have.
She was alive. Blood still moved beneath her skin, proof enough.
He hadn’t planned to taste it, only to stop the bleeding and keep the intrusion quiet before the wrong people noticed. Yet she had been fading fast, even after holding her own in a fight that should’ve killed her. No one crossed blades with Savina and lived to tell the tale. She had been half-conscious when he intervened, crumpled at the feet of his guards, drawing far too much attention.
He moved toward the window, the cold night spilling in through the stone lattice. He looked out toward the courtyard, remembering the sight of her drenched in the color red.
