Her lips parted slowly, sultry, dripping venom.
“My husband never satisfied me,” she said, voice a low purr laced with poison. “But when you came to me, I finally understood what it meant to burn.”
My grip on her wrists tightened, thumbs pressing into the fluttering pulse beneath her skin. She arched into it—into me—as though she craved the restraint, needed it, thrived beneath the pressure.
“Then say it,” I snarled, low and guttural, a sound I hardly recognized as my own. “Say you won’t take another. That you belong to me.”
She slipped free, like a serpent shedding its skin—fluid, sinuous, her escape so effortless it made my blood thrum. She turned her back to me, hips swaying with dangerous confidence, glancing over her shoulder with eyes gleaming and a soft, lethal smirk that could topple kingdoms.
“Of course, my love,” she purred. “I would never.”
Sweetness, laced with sin.
But I watched her—the curve of her spine, the subtle shift of her shoulders, the dangerous ease with which she played me like a lyre string. She was smoke in a closed fist—impossible to hold, impossible to forget.
She lingered on my skin.
In my blood.
She was my brother’s widow.
My brother’s woman.
But with every stolen kiss, every clawed midnight, every breathless promise in the dark—she became mine.
And the more I claimed her…
The more she owned me.
Heart. Flesh. Soul.
And that terrified me more than any sword, any battlefield, any enemy I would ever face.
Helena moved to the window, her steps slow, deliberate. She reached for an ankle-length shift, pale linen clinging to her as she slipped it over her nakedness. It draped her curves in translucent whispers—thin enough to tempt, thick enough to deny. In the morning light, she looked less like a woman dressing and more like a goddess re-donning her armor.
I bent to fasten my sandals, the leather stiff, biting into my ankles like punishment. My steps felt unsure, and I hated that. Hated how she must have laughed behind those knowing eyes—eyes that held daggers even as they begged me to stay.
Outside, a gull cried—high and hollow, its voice carrying across the sea. The sound sank into me, echoing the emptiness carved by years of being overlooked, dismissed, forgotten. Its cry was my own.
I gathered my cloak, the wool worn smooth as if by years of hope, and swung it across my shoulders. But before I could fasten the clasp, Helena crossed the chamber in silence. Her hand pressed against my chest, halting me mid-motion. Her eyes locked with mine, gold and venom, sharp enough to cut. Then, with a sudden tug, she pulled the cloak aside and drew me down into her.
Her mouth crashed against mine.
Not gentle. Not farewell.
It was possession—ruthless, searing. A kiss that branded me, that seared through flesh and bone. Her lips tasted of wine, of salt, and of ashes—the aftertaste of every fire that ever burned too bright, too fast, and left me nothing but ruin. Her nails dug into the back of my neck, anchoring me, marking me, cursing me all at once.
When she broke away, her breath lingered like smoke against my lips.
“Come back to me,” she whispered—not a plea, but a command. “Or I will come find you.”
Her words clung to me like chains, her kiss still burning in my blood as I turned at last toward the door.
And I knew, as dawn swallowed me whole—the war ahead would not be my only battlefield.
* * *
The door shut behind me, cutting off the incense and the taste of Helena’s kiss that still scorched my mouth—fire and ruin lingering like a curse I could not spit out.
