A beat. Then another. The ward hums. The bond pushes against it like a heartbeat under a bruise. She slides her other hand into my hair—soft, careful, owner and mercy at once—and it almost breaks me.
“Don’t shout at me again,” she says, voice small and savage. “Don’t grab me like I’m something you have to win.”
“I won’t.” I mean it so hard my ribs hurt.
“Then stand.”
I rise slowly, keeping her hand. We’re breathing the same air, the kind that fills old churches and battlefields right before the prayer or the charge. Up close, the chain’s light gilds her skin; my mark answers under my shirt like it wants to brand my bones with her name.
“I’m scared,” she admits.
“I’m terrified,” I confess.
“Of him?”
“Of losing you to a choice that isn’t yours.”
A knock like a swallowed thunderclap. A guard’s voice, muffled:
“Highness.”
She doesn’t look away.
“Say it again.”
“What?”
“That you’ll stay, even when it’s ugly.”
“I’ll stay,” I say. “Especially then.”
Her gaze drifts to my mouth. Returns to my eyes.
“And you’ll kneel when pride gets loud?”
I huff a breath.
“I’ll kneel because you are the only crown I’ll ever recognize.”
Something loosens in her shoulders—some knot the palace tied and forgot. She lifts our joined hands and presses them to the place her mark glows beneath the chain. The magic sparks; the bond surges; for a heartbeat the ward’s hum sounds like a cage realizing the door is open.
“Then hear me,” she whispers, and her words tremble with everything she hasn’t been allowed to say. “I am not rejecting you. I am trying to survive you. Survivewithyou. If my father makes me a lesson, be the part of the lesson I choose.”
“I will.”
The door opens a handspan. A slice of cold light. The world barges in. She doesn’t let go.
“Walk beside me,” she says. “Not a step ahead. Not a step behind.”
“Yes,” I say, because there’s no other word left in me.
As we reached the threshold, I angle close enough that only she can hear:
“Call me monster in every tongue you own—just don’t call yourself alone.”
Her breath catches. The chain tightens reflexively; her grip on me tightens harder. We cross the line together. I hold her hand like a relic and wonder—savage, humbled, finally honest—if this is what it feels like to need: not to devour, but to guard; not to own, but tostay. I think it is. And I think it’s the first thing I’ve ever wanted that didn’t ask me to burn to have it.
Secrets of the Fae King
