“I can’t,” she whispered.
And that was all it took.
His lips brushed hers in promise. Testing, tasting, as if he were waiting for her to change her mind. But she didn’t flinch. Her lashes fluttered closed, her body leaned into his without thought.
The press of his mouth was worshiping.
She inhaled against him, her fingers twisting tighter in the front of his shirt. Her magic hummed in her veins alive. It bloomed beneath her skin. A silver fire, curling through her chest, and wrapping around the flicker of something dangerous she didn’t want to name.
His thumb stroked along her jaw, anchoring her there. Making her forget time, and oaths.
Kael.
She jolted back, breath shuddering, lips tingling.
“Maris … ” Alarik’s voice was tight, rough, worried.
She held up a hand. “No. We can’t, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have —”
“Don’t,” he said gently. “Don’t apologize for something you want.”
Her chest rose and fell. “It’s not that simple.”
His expression a war of restraint and longing. “No. It never is with you.”
Silence crackled between them. Below deck, the crew’s voices stirred faintly, a reminder that the world hadn’t stopped, even if it had felt like it had.
“I need air,” she said, already stepping back.
He let her go.
But this time… she saw it in his face. The devastation. The hope. The battle he hadn’t won, but hadn’t lost either.
She was trying not to drown in something she no longer had the strength to deny.
-Alarik-
She walked away with regret in her tear rimmed eyes.
Alarik stood still, the deck tilting beneath his feet, though the ship hardly moved at all. His hand fell to his side, fingers curling to hold onto the heat of her skin just a moment longer.
She hadn’t slapped him. Hadn’t screamed. Hadn’t cursed the gods.
No, she had kissed him back. She had trembled in his arms, sighed against his mouth like it was the first breath she’d taken in days. But the second her thoughts caught up to her body, she fled. Not far, but far enough.
He whirled toward the railing, staring out at the open sea as though it held answers. But the ocean offered no counsel. Only wind and foam.
He should’ve known better. He should’ve kept his distance. Should’ve stayed quiet after the dream, let it lie buried..
But he was hers. Even if she never said it. Even if she never looked at him that way again. Even if she still wore Kael’s name in the hollow of her heart.
His jaw clenched. Kael. The king who’d claimed her as a pawn in a long, bloody game. The one who’d dared to bond her and leave her in a palace full of lies and teeth. Alarik could taste the fury curling in his gut but it wasn’t just at Kael anymore.
It was at himself.
Because hadn’t he done the same?
Assumed she was delicate, breakable. A vessel for prophecy. A thread to unravel Kael’s kingdom. It had taken seeing her rise in the Hollow, silver-eyed and starlit, to realize the depth of his mistake.
