He knelt beside her now, his hands moving deftly over a strip of linen bandage.
“I didn’t know,” she whispered.
He looked up. “Didn’t know what?”
“That you ever —left the castle —spent time somewhere else.”
Kael’s mouth curved at the corner but not into a smile.
“I come here when I’ve bled too much in silence. When the ghosts in the throne room start to speak louder than my advisors.”
She blinked. His tone was too honest, too real. Like the mask had slipped.
“I didn’t think you had ghosts,” she murmured.
Kael met her eyes, and for once, there was no cruel amusement there. Just something hollow and sharp — almost human.
“I was born with them.”
Maris shifted on the bed, pulling the blanket tighter around her front. “I’ve always been alone,” she said quietly, surprising even herself.
He tilted his head.
“I had my family once. Then the plague came. I was nineteen. I buried my father. Then my brothers. Then my mother. One by one.”
Kael’s hand stilled.
“I kept breathing out of spite. I kept stitching clothes, sweeping floors, waiting for someone to see me. No one ever did. Not until —” She broke off. Flushed. “Not until you.”
The silence that followed wasn’t empty. It was full of all the things neither of them had ever spoken aloud.
Kael slowly stood and stepped close again, his bare chest rising and falling with a restless energy. He reached for the bandage on the side table but as he leaned down, their faces were only inches apart.
His shoulder brushed her knee.
Maris inhaled sharply.
They both froze.
Her breath caught in her throat, but she didn’t move. Neither did he.
His gaze lifted from her lips to her eyes in a long aching pause.
“Say no,” he said roughly. “And I’ll step back.”
She didn’t. Didn’t move. Didn’t speak.
So he kissed her.
-Kael-
Her lips were softer than he imagined. Warmer. Tasting of blood and wine and fire-forged will. He had meant to graze her mouth nothing more. Just a taste. Just enough to settle the madness inside him. But when her fingers curled into the fabric of his pants and she arched, just a breath, into him. He deepened it. His hand slid to her waist, pulling her flush to his chest, and she opened for him like something breaking, something blooming. The linen bandage tumbled from his hand.
She gasped when his tongue slid against hers not in fear — but in some wild —surprised want. Her fingers threaded into the dark strands of his hair. He pulled her into his lap without thinking, knees sinking into the rug. The blanket slipped down her shoulders.
Kael groaned softly into her mouth as her hands skimmed his bare back, nails trailing the runes along his spine. The contact burned him in ways nothing ever had.
She was too hot in his arms. Too soft. His. Not his. A war he was losing by the second.
