Her nails scored my chest through linen; the sting steadied me. “Then make me,” she breathed, voice wrecked and sure. She tilted her chin, offering and daring at once. “But say it right.”
I pulled back just enough to see her—hair mussed, lips kissed swollen, eyes ember-bright and unafraid.
“Say what you want,” I demanded, low, possessive, a plea disguised as order.
Her pupils blew wide.
“I wantyou,” she said, every syllable a choice. “I’m yours. I’ve always been.”
The bond detonated.
Light raced between our marks, gold veined with silver, threading skin to skin like scripture written in heat. The room answered—wardlights chiming, petals yawning open, the air turning electric and sweet. Her mark blazed at the slope of her collarbone, my name bright in fae script; mine burned to meet it, old scars lit from within.
“Look at me,” I said, and when she did the last bar inside my ribs fell. I went to my knees, not in surrender to a crown, but to the only truth that ever brought me to ground. I pressed my mouth to the silk at her hip, to the place where fabric met warm skin, to the inside of her wrist where her pulse sprinted under my tongue. Her hands shook in my hair; my name left her mouth like a prayer she’d sharpened for years.
“You ran from me, little fae,” I murmured against the path my lips had made. Her back arched; the bond tugged, commanding and kind. “But you forgot one thing.”
Her breath fractured.
“What?”
“I always catch what’s mine.”
I rose in one motion, palms spanning the delicate architecture of her ribs, and lifted her, feeling the trust in the way her bodylearned the shape of my hands again. Each step toward the bed set a fuse under my skin. Moonlight slid across her shoulder; heat slid through my veins. I laid her down like a vow, not a prize, and bent over her, braced on my forearms so I could feel every tremor, hear every sound.
“Tell me to stop,” I said, because want without consent is just hunger with a knife.
She fisted my shirt and dragged me down.
“Don’t you dare.”
I kissed her like breath, like ruin, like absolution I didn’t deserve and would spend the rest of my life earning. The marks seared hotter, twin stars pulsing in time, the bond tightening until it felt less like chain and more like spine.
Around us, the room narrowed to heartbeat and heat and the soft, scandalous music of silk learning our names. I mapped the line of her throat with my mouth, the slope of her shoulder with my teeth, relearning the places that made her voice catch and turn soft with power. She answered in kind—hands bold, mouth brighter, claiming me back; every scrape of her nails saidmineas clearly as my growl ever could.
The bond took the reins and I let it. Threads of light cinched, tugged, commanded our rhythm, guiding without gentling, holy as wrath. For a long, breaking moment, we were a single, burning thing—no past, no court, no king. Just the two of us and the vow our bodies knew how to speak even when our mouths failed.
When we finally stilled, foreheads pressed, breaths ragged, I held her face and said the only truth sharp enough to cut the rest loose. “I will burn kingdoms,” I swore, voice raw. “I will slay kings. I will stand in every door your father tries to closeand tear it from its hinges. I will never leave you to carry my silence again.”
Her palm came up, covering mine, ember eyes searching and finding.
“Then stay,” she whispered, wrecking me with two soft syllables. “Stay and be the man who doesn’t make me small to feel safer.”
“Done,” I said, because I am finished promising anything I won’t learn how to keep.
Outside, the palace kept its pressure. Inside, the bond settled from blaze to banked heat, a hearth we’d feed or lose, but never again ignore. I gathered her closer, possessive and gentle, and felt the echo of our marks thrum—a drumline under skin, a command older than kings.
Mine.
Hers.
Ours.
Love between us has never been soft. It is war. And I have chosen my side.
The Guilt Between Us
Jisoo
