Desire.
It rose like a tide, burning through the fear and pooling between my thighs the longer we remained like this.
He spoke easily with the others now, voice smooth and calm, as if nothing had happened and nothing was happening. His handremained still on my thigh, a silent claim, keeping me clutched in his talons.
And then, just as suddenly, he released me.
I released the breath I didn’t know I was holding. Reality swam back into focus. Laughter, candlelight, the faint scent of apples and wine. Tears gathered at the corners of my eyes. Selena’s words, Kael’s touch, their stares, the Lutessian red… It was all too much.
I needed to leave. To flee. To forget this night had ever happened and face tomorrow as if nothing had.
Business as usual.
But before I could rise, Kael stood.
“Magisters.” His voice carried easily across the table. “I’ll excuse myself now. Enjoy the rest of the evening.”
He cast one last glance at me. A glare of warning. Or maybe something else. I couldn’t tell. Why was it always so hard to read him?
Should I follow? The thought appeared out of nowhere, and I banished it at once.
Definitely not.
Then it came. That heavy energy wrapping around me, walls closing in. It wasn’t the wine. It was the foreboding pulse of seerling powers, the one I could never quite silence. I focused all I had on the strudel before me even if I wasn’t hungry anymore, fork piercing through the crust just to stay grounded.
I couldn’t handle an echo now. Not here.
When I finished, so had everyone else. Jorren called for the servants to bring digestifs.
That was my cue.
I stood, my chair scraping the floor, but my foot didn’t catch in my robe this time. That would have been the killing blow.
“Leaving so soon?” Jorren asked, his pout exaggerated by too much wine.
I nodded. “Yes. I have to be up early tomorrow. Farmingbusiness.” I tried to shrug, to sound light, though my smile must have looked like a grimace.
“Try to sleep well,” Selena said. There was no smile this time, only her blue eyes turned amber in the candlelight.
She held the flame in her gaze, as though its warmth might touch some place she kept tightly shuttered. I had no notion of what stirred in her mind. If I had been a psion like her, perhaps I might have understood, perhaps I would not have twisted every word she spoke into something sharp.
I nodded, taking her parting words as a blessing, and turned to go. I thanked the servants for dinner, and the cold, final look she gave me, cold and distant, stung far more than it should have. I kept my chin high until I was clear of the room, only then letting the heat rise behind my eyes and doing my best to suppress it.
I left the great hall. The wine’s warmth had long faded. My steps echoed against the torch-lit walls, guards watching but saying nothing as I passed. Servants dipped their heads in quiet greeting. I made for the grand staircase, climbing one flight and preparing for the next to reach my quarters.
Then I saw him.
Kael emerged from the shadows of the council wing, stepping into the torchlight.
“You…” I breathed. The word barely escaped me.
He approached slowly. When his face lifted into the glow, his eyes were dark as night itself.
A dozen questions swelled in my throat, but none found their way out. We stood there, the world narrowed to the space between us.
Finally, he spoke. His voice rumbled through my bones like distant thunder. “Don’t worry too much about the others, especially not Selena.” His tone made it clear he had some notion of the chaos in my mind. “Somewhere deep down, she has a good heart. Beneath all that ice and those fake smiles.”
“Are you two close?”
