Her mouth parted leaning into his ear. “Is that a threat or a promise, highness?”
Kael leaned in, pressed his lips to the wet hollow of her throat, tasting salt and skin and the magic that clung to her like wine to silk.
“Both,” he growled.
They lingered in the water, far too lost in each other to care about time.
Maris lay curled in their bed, tangled in sheets the color of blood. Her chest rose and fell with a slow, peaceful rhythm. The moonlight cut through the carved windows in pale slashes, spilling across her sleeping form like silver flame. Kael sat by the hearth, a dark robe hanging loose around him, his damp hair tied back. A glass of bloodwine sat untouched on the table beside him.
His thoughts pulling him under— he was consumed not by desire, but the slow, silent drift of her becoming something he couldn't hold. He saw it, those shadows that flickered behind her eyes when she thought he wasn’t watching.
She moved like herself, spoke like herself, but something in the air around her had gone still. It wasn't detachment, but a subtle transformation.
As if some piece of her had turned inward, quietly curling into itself. The lorekeeper had noticed too.
“She asks questions with the hunger of a soul being called,” the old man had said that morning, folding his fingers over his blindfold.
“But I fear the voice calling her is not yours.”
Kael had gritted his teeth. “You think something is influencing her?”
“I think,” Aldwyn had replied, “she is only beginning to understand how much she does not know yet. She's curious.”
That was worse. He dreaded the idea that she was being pulled, twisted — by something beyond them both. And it burned. He needed her safe. Needed her tethered to this kingdom, this room, this bed, to him.
Mine.
The word still pulsed through him like a second heartbeat.
He glanced to where she laid, the way her silken hair spread across the pillow, her hand curled into a loose fist near her cheek.
She drifted through the soft haze of a dream.
He wondered if her dreams reached for him … or for something beyond him.
Kael stood, crossing to her quietly. The moonlight made her look too delicate, too mortal.
As if the gods might snatch her from him at any moment. He brushed a strand of hair from her brow, whisper-light, careful not to wake her.
“Whatever forces call you,” he murmured, barely breathing the words, “I’ll cut them from the world before I let you be taken from me.”
But even as he said it, something cold tugged at the back of his mind. Like a breath of wind from the other side of the Veil.
Something had already touched her.
And if he didn’t act soon…
He could lose her.
The council chamber reeked of magic and quiet judgment.
Black marble floors reflected the flickering torchlight. The vast table shimmered faintly beneath the cold morning sun bleeding through stained glass.
Kael sat at its head, cloaked in a high collared tunic of rich matte velvet. His gaze cut like honed steel, hands clasped in a stillness that dared those around him to move.
To his right, Valea sat rigid, her jaw clenched so tight the muscles twitched. On her other side was Lord Draeven tall, gray-streaked, and haunted. His eyes were not on Kael but fixed on the empty seat that often had been occupied by their daughter during drill planning.
The silence stretched unbearably before it broke.
