I am.
I drag my teeth lightly along the edge of her shoulder and feel lightning run my spine when she arches into it. I pin her wrists a little tighter; her mark flares under my mouth in answer. The bond surges—there—and the room tilts. I feel the deep pull of her need like a tide and let it decide the tempo: slow roll, deeper, slower still, a grind that makes language pointless and prayer obvious.
She’s luminous beneath me, hair a dark spill over white linen, lips parted, cheeks flushed with heat that has my name in it. “Look at me,” she says, and when I do, she smiles like she’s been given a secret.
“Mine.”
“Yes,” I murmur. “Say it again.”
“Mine,” she repeats, tugging against my hold. “All of you.”
“You already have me.” I kiss her palm, then press it to my chest so she can feel what she does to me. “Even the parts that thought they weren’t allowed to belong.”
The bond swells—pressure, promise, the bright edge before the fall. I don’t rush it. I keep her there—circling, rising, a slow, deliberate worship that makes her eyes go glassy and her voice go low.
“Please,” she says again, broken in the best way, “Taeyang—”
I let go of her wrists to cradle her face with both hands, thumbs brushing tears she didn’t know she’d let fall.
“Breathe,” I tell us, and when we do, it happens the way the tide happens to the shore: inevitable, salt-sweet, vast.
Her back bows; my name falls out of her like a blessing; our marks blaze—violet-gold, violet-gold—until the whole room is full of it. The wave takes her, takes me, takes the space between us and erases it; for a long, breathless heartbeat there is no separation at all, onlyus—one pulse, one heat, one bright, collapsing star.
When the world settles, we’re trembling and laughing into each other’s mouths, dazed and undone. I gather her in,arranging her carefully against my chest, the line of her leg over mine, her hand splayed on my heart like a seal.
“Say something arrogant,” she murmurs, half-asleep, smiling.
“I just made the fae queen forget every language she knows,” I whisper into her hair. “That arrogant enough?”
She huffs a laugh that I tuck away for winter.
“More.”
“I will carry your crown when it’s heavy,” I say, serious now. “I will take your arrows out with my teeth. I will be gentle when the world isn’t. And if fire comes, I’ll stand in the door and make it learn your name isn’t kindling.”
She tips her chin, eyes soft.
“I love you.”
I close my eyes against it, then open them because this is what I asked the world for when I didn’t know how.
“I love you more,” I say, and it’s not a contest. It’s a promise about the lengths I’ll go.
Our marks dim to a warm ember-glow. The candles gutter low. Outside, the palace remembers to breathe.
“Again?” she asks, wicked-sweet, after a small eternity.
I grin like a man who has finally learned his purpose.
“Your Majesty,” I murmur, rolling her gently beneath me, “the bond insists.”
And then I do what vows are for—what fire is for, when you keep it in the right hands.
I’m Still Yours
Yuna
Dawn finds us tangled in linen and moonmint, the palace breathing quiet for the first time in a lifetime.
