I’d woken in his arms. Had breathed in sync with him. Had feltsafe.
The betrayal of it was a gaping wound that wouldn’t stop bleeding.
My feet carried me without conscious thought. Down corridors I was starting to know too well, through courtyards dark with pre-dawn shadow, past sleeping gardens and shuttered windows. I needed air. Needed space. Needed anything other than the walls of this castle closing in around me while I spiralled into a guilt-fuelled panic that had no good ending.
The main courtyard opened up before me, vast and empty in the grey light. Above, the sky was just starting to lighten at the edges, pale fingers of dawn creeping across the horizon.
I stopped in the centre of it, my chest heaving like I’d run a mile instead of just walked. My hands were shaking. My whole body was shaking.
It felt right, some traitorous part of my brain whispered.In the moment, with his hands on your skin and his mouth against your throat, it felt right.
“Shut up,” I said out loud, to no one, to the dawn, to the ghost of my husband who definitely didn’t deserve this. “Shut the fuck up.”
But it didn’t. Because ithadfelt right. That was the problem. That was the thing tearing me apart from the inside out. It had felt natural and inevitable and like I’d been moving toward him since the moment I’d stumbled into this realm covered in blood and my children’s terror.
And that made it so much worse.
I was a widow. Navaire had been dead a year and I was already letting someone else touch me? Already finding comfort in arms that weren’t his? What kind of person did that make me?
The kind who’s still alive, that voice said again.The kind who’s been running and fighting and surviving for so long that you forgot what it felt like to be held.
I was standing in the middle of a courtyard in a fae castle at dawn, about to have a breakdown because I’d made the catastrophic mistake of being human for five minutes.
I needed Kaelen.
The thought rose up unbidden, but once it was there I couldn’t shake it. I needed my dragon. Needed the solid weight of him, the dry humour, the way he could make me feel less like I was drowning and more like I was just treading water.
I reached for the bond between us, that thread of connection that tied us together across distance and realm.“Kaelen?”
“Wildfire.”His response was immediate, warm with concern.“You’re awake early. And spiralling, if I’m reading this correctly.”
“I need you.”The words came out more desperate than I’d intended, raw and honest in a way that made my throat tight.“Please. I can’t—I need?—”
“I’m on my way.”
Relief hit me so hard I nearly collapsed. I sank down onto the stone, my knees giving out, my hands pressed to my face as I tried to breathe through the mess of panic and guilt and want churning through my chest.
Navaire would have known what to do. Navaire would have wrapped his arms around me and let me fall apart, would have stroked my hair and told me it was okay to be afraid, to be uncertain, to be human in a world that demanded nothing but strength.
But Navaire was ash and memory, and I was here, and there was no way back to before.
The guilt twisted deeper.
Above, I heard the rush of wings cutting through dawn air. Large, powerful, familiar. Kaelen descended in a controlled spiral, his emerald scales catching the first rays of sunlight as he landed with surprising delicacy for something his size.
“There you are,”he said, his voice wrapping around me like a blanket.“Now. Tell me which disaster we’re dealing with first, the political one or the personal one?”
32
Iclimbed onto Kaelen’s back, my fingers finding the handles of the saddle. The moment I settled against his neck, he launched skyward, powerful wings beating against the dawn air with enough force to steal my breath.
“Better?”His voice was dry warmth in my mind as we climbed higher, the castle shrinking below us.
“Not even remotely.”
“Mm. Thought so.”A pause, and I could feel his amusement rippling through the bond.“So. The High Lord.”
I groaned, pressing my forehead against his scales. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
