“Why do we keep meeting in the middle of the night like this, Mage Isca?” I was playing a very dangerous game.
“Maybe you’re cursed with me,” she quipped. Yet her true answer was a heated look that was temptingly close to another challenge.
I would die a happy man if I could have her underneath my skin instead of the curse I shared it with. In truth, I would’ve liked to see more of her during the day, but I still didn’t feel in control enough to indulge myself with her company.
I glanced down. A single pert nipple showed through the thin material of her nightgown, still exposed to the cold air by her partially fallen robe. I trailed my knuckles down the length of that tempting braid to brush the bud.
Her answering gasp was quiet—but real. It made me wish I could feel her beneath me, hear her make that same sound again and again. But that was far too dangerous a thought.
Isca swayed fractionally closer, lured by the same pull I was caught up in. So close that her unbound breasts brushed against my chest.
Perfect. Too perfect for a monster like me.
Her eyes fluttered shut. Her rosebud lips parted. I’d imagined her just this way a hundred times before, open and wanting me. And now it was real.
And then she inhaled deeply.
Isca’s eyes snapped open.
She didn’t recoil in fear but in sudden clarity. Disgust flared as she stepped back, one hand rising to cover her nose and mouth.
“No,” she said, spell broken. “You’re right. We can’t keep meeting in the middle of the nightlike this.”
Halfway to the door, she paused, looking over her shoulder with her nose wrinkled in distaste. Isca’s voice, though softer, held an edge of harshness. “You’ve touched, but you haven’t even kissed me yet, Prince Emrys. Last time I checked, that was the wrong order to proceed. Also…you stink terribly.”
Of all the things she could have said, that was the one thing that almost made me laugh. Almost.
Maybe it was more of her mercy disguised as mockery—a way to cut through the tension without reopening old wounds. I didn’t deserve her forgiveness, let alone her humor, but she’d offered me both in a single, brutal line.
“Thank you for the tinctures,” I whispered, stuck somewhere between hoping she would and wouldn’t hear me.
With her clean scent retreating, I stood there dumbly, fingers still tingling with the memory of her skin. The door clicked shut behind her like the slamming of a cell I’d made for myself. But tomorrow…tomorrow might hold a promise that hadn’t been there before this midnight run-in.
Chapter 35
Isca
Now that Emrys was back, the castle buzzed with stories about his time away. I might’ve dismissed the vicious rumors if I hadn’t watched him cleave a man in two mere feet from me.
With the timing of his retreating into himself and his disappearance, I couldn’t help worrying that our unfortunate encounter in the library had further pushed him into it. The guards had seen me rush out of the room, yet the gossip never once mentioned me, which was a small mercy—or maybe Emrys had threatened them to stay silent.
That chance meeting still haunted me day and night—the heat of his body, the way his breath shuddered when I touched him. A reverence in his eyes that made my heart jump. I’d been as desperate as he was, reaching for warmth, for something human beneath the monster’s advances.
That was why I’d saidyeswhen he’d asked to touch me in his room, still stinking of blood, sweat, and something worse—yet still somehow gentler than I’d ever seen him.
I’d wanted to feel his lips, his hands on me again. It was incredibly freeing to just…indulge myself, with no constraints, only thinking about my desires for once.
But desire wasn’t the same thing as trust, and whatever had passed between us both nights had left me with more questions than answers. And yet, I knew that if he wanted to touch me again, all it would take was being close enough for me to draw a yes from my lips.
With both princes back in the Tir, duty came crashing back—reports to and expectations from the Assembly I no longer intended to obey. The optimism I’d felt after Emrys’s gentler side surfaced was already waning.
Nisien lingered in my thoughts too, maddening in his own way. I’d begun to suspect that all his performances with me hadn’t been for his court—they’d been for Emrys. Nisien loved his brother too much to do it out of malice, so he must’ve been pushing him for some reason.
Whatever was happening between them, the brothers’ on-again-off-again coldness had deepened since Emrys’s return. Hope that I could help them kept me searching for solutions that refused to come. The only clue I found was that the runes Nisien had spoken of at our first dinner were a writing system employed by the Fae and their human allies, last used commonly more than a thousand years before. At least that was a start—I’d keep digging there.
I’d also received letters from home. Tegil’s words smelled of hearth smoke and herbs; my mother’s neat script carried the rhythm of ordinary life. And at the bottom, my father’s line:We’re proud of you, Isca.
That single sentence undid me every time.
