"Finally!" she hisses, grabbing my arm. "I have been trying to reach you for hours, but I could not risk appearing in there with Diplomat Desperate and Shadow Boy. Too many witnesses."
She jerks her head toward the observatory, her voice dropping to a scandalized hiss. "That absolute, unmitigated, gold-plated cunt. I have seen less desperate courtship displays from peacocks in heat. And you're a mated Omega! Your throat literally has his bite on it! The audacity of that Beta?—"
"Are you trying to get yourself killed?" I hiss, pulling her further down the corridor. "If Isla had seen you?—"
"That is exactly why I waited until you were alone," Ivy interrupts, her wings fluttering nervously. "That Beta woman would not recognize real magic if it danced naked in front of her with cymbals, but I cannot risk the courtly fallout if she spots me. She is too busy trying to climb your Alpha like a tree anyway."
"That's not the point! Malakai knows about you now. If others discover your presence here, it could complicate everything."
"Complicate everything for whom, exactly?" Ivy counters, crossing her arms. "Last I checked, I'm the one risking fae limbs bringing you potions and intelligence while you're busy getting your back blown out by tall, dark, and dangerous. Speaking of which—" she eyes my throat, "that's a fresh mating mark. He finally bit you. Drank from you too, from the look of it."
My face flames, my hand instinctively covering the marks. "That is not—I did not?—"
"And you went into heat, didn't you?" Ivy's expression shifts to knowing satisfaction. "I told you that would happen. Told you exactly what claiming a mate would trigger."
My silence is answer enough.
"Well, at least he took care of you properly." She pauses, studying me with unusual seriousness. "He did, didn't he?"
"Yes," I admit quietly, my cheeks still burning. "He did."
Something in Ivy's expression softens briefly before her usual smirk returns. "Good."
"Now, where is my altered potion you promised?"
"I'm having a little trouble with it," Ivy says, and I don't believe a word of it.
"She pats my arm with mock sympathy, and I know she's trying to distract me. "I didn't think you wanted the potion to be fair. Not after all the talk around the palace. The walls have ears in this place. And mouths. And they're all talking about how the Shadow Lord finally completed his mating bond so thoroughly he brought down literal stonework." She fans herself theatrically. "The cries were apparently magnificent. Very enthusiastic begging for the bite, from what I heard. Got to say, I am almost impressed. Did not think you had it in you. Or rather, had him in?—"
"If you finish that sentence, I will personally pluck every feather from your wings," I threaten, though there's no real heat in it.
"Kinky," she replies with a waggle of her eyebrows. "Did you learn that from Shadow Boy? He seems the type for recreational feather-plucking. Or wait—was that what cracked the wall? Some elaborate bondage scenario involving?—"
"Ivy!"
She cackles, the sound like silver bells. "Your face! Worth it for that alone." Her expression shifts to something more serious. "But seriously, Sera, what is going on with you two? Because one moment he is playing the possessive Alpha, deliberately trying to make you jealous, and the next he is practically pushing you out the door so he can be alone with Diplomat Desperate. That's not normal behavior with a freshly mated Omega."
I slump against the wall, suddenly exhausted. "I do not know. I cannot figure him out." I glance back toward the observatory. "Through the bond, I could sense him withdrawing. As if something shut down inside him."
"Interesting," Ivy muses. "Did anything specific trigger it?"
I think back, trying to pinpoint the exact moment. "It was after I admitted the observatory was beautiful. He said something about having the same reaction when he first saw it, and then... something changed. Pain flooded through our mating bond. Old grief."
"Huh," Ivy says, her silver-blonde hair shifting to a thoughtful blue. "Sounds like you may have hit a nerve without realizing it. Certain places can trigger painful memories for someone who has lived as long as he has, especially somewhere as old as that observatory. Particularly memories involving other Omegas."
"What do you mean?"
"Just that when you have been alive for centuries, some locations become loaded with ghosts," she explains, her voice uncharacteristically serious. "And given how he was touching those star charts, I would bet there is a specific memory tied to that place. Probably involving his first mate—the one whose name he screamed while inside you."
"You think it reminded him of something? Or someone?" A name flashes through my mind—Julia. The name Malakai whispered during our encounter in his study, the name that made him recoil as if struck.
I'm about to ask more when I notice Ivy's expression. Despite her flippant words, something in her eyes seems off—a tightness around the edges, a wariness I've rarely seen in her.
"What is wrong?" I ask. "You are not your usual annoying self."
"Me? I'm perfectly fine," she replies, but her wings flutter nervously. "Just concerned about my favorite Omega messing up her assassination mission by developing inconvenient feelings for the target. And completing a mating bond. That's pretty much game over for assassination plans."
"I do not have feelings for him," I insist automatically, even as something inside me purrs at the memory of his bite.
