“No, Titus will.”
I run my hand down my face. I’m losing my mind; each day I’m near her, the attraction grows.
“Come on,” she snaps.
“He needs a break.” Tristen steps forward. He thinks she’s torturing me. She isn’t.
She’s protecting me, even at the cost of hurting me. It’s noble, a sign of an affectionate leader.
“He needs to learn control. The only way is to confront the issue head-on.”
Deny my need to claim her.
Deny, reject, ignore.
Three days later.
Sometimes, hurting yourself strengthens you. It’s like lifting weights. You justify the ache in your muscles when you see results.
Training with Selene has yielded results. Just not the kind my heart wants.
We learned that time-weaving feeds off my emotions. This week, Selene has plotted a new task for me: teaching the magicI'mthe boss.
My fire magic is like a puppy. It’s eager to play, but if I scold it, it listens. Time is like water. You think you can bottle it up, build a dam around it, but it can always find a crevice to drip free from. I have to figure out how to soothe it, convince it to listen to me, not control it.
“Well done,” Selene announces. She settles onto the grass with such grace you’d think the soil was a silken pillow.
Her usual post-training routine is to sit still until the sun sets.She doesn’t want to return to the castle. She skips lunch, spending all her time outside. She’s been eating dinner by herself, avoiding Galen, whom I saw with two different women this week alone.
Her eyes mirror a flower aware of its fleeting season.
“Thank you,” I mutter.
Do it. Sit down. Talk.
Selene and I speak only about Everett’s magic; we’ve yet to discuss runes. Selene still struggles to accept that her brother died for a long-forgotten magic.
Tris and I give her space. We stand guard on the edge of the field, but I can’t allow that to happen today. I need things to move faster. We need to find the Vitalis, understand the runes… and I need to know if she is my mate.
I lower myself to sit beside her. Her eyes silently question me. Our chemistry is an immense shadow that looms over us. It darkens each day; now it thunders.
“I should have asked your permission to sit,” I murmur.
“We are beyond asking, Titus.”
I love the way she says my name. It sounds stronger than I feel.
Maybe I am. Everett picked me, after all.
“I enjoy sparring,” she begins. The tenderness in her voice shocks me. Its rarity increases its value in my eyes. “Being outside the castle walls. It’s only then that titles do not matter. The tip of a blade does not change its shape when it pierces a king or a soldier. We’re all the same to the weapon, just flesh and bone.”
She longs to be equal to her people, nothing special, just a peasant who wants to see the sunrise. “If you allowed the people to hear you speak like this, they would love you,” I say.
“I don’t want their affection.” She rips a blade of grass from the soil and tears it into tiny bits.
“Do you act so cold to protect King Galen?”
“What?” She reels back. The sunlight glints off her black hair, making it look like expensive oil.
