“Let me show you the way out.” I take her hand. Unlike Roark and Kieren, I’m not wearing a shifting cloak.
“You’re naked.” She turns away.
“Have been the whole time. You were in too much shock to notice.”
“I suppose you’re right...” She stammers a bit.
“Come here, Duchess.” Roark takes her other hand. “Are you good to walk, or do you want me to carry you?”
“I can walk.” She looks up at him, and I want to punch him in the neck. We don’t share candidates, but then we don’t kiss candidates before the ceremony, and we sure ashell don’t try to eat them. All the rules are going out to sea with our final candidate.
Raine stumbles over a root. I lunge forward for her and miss. But Roark sweeps her off her feet and cradles her in his arms.
“Where are you taking me?” Her voice is muffled by Roark’s cloak.
“To your suite.”
“I’m going to be okay,” she says softly, and I’m not sure if it’s a statement or a question.
“You’re going to be okay,” Roark replies.
We head in the side door and up the turret stairs, the back way to the suites.
I hold open her door for Roark. “Do you want to take a bath, Raine?” I’m close to her, Roark and I closing her in, and it feels like the most natural thing I’ve ever done.
“Yes.”
I flick the water on and find some of the bath salts I know Leopold will have stocked.
“Do you need help, Duchess?” Roark growls.
Fuck, I want her to say yes, but that’s a boundary we can’t cross, not together. Not yet, not until after the ceremony. Not even then, not the two of us together with her.
“No,” she says quietly, like she wants to say yes but doesn’t dare.
Roark lowers her to her feet.
“I lost my phone outside. I should go back out and find it. I don’t want the groundskeepers to run it over.”
“We’ll find it,” I say. I give her a kiss on the top of her head. I’ve never wanted to be anything but a dragon shifter, but at this moment, I wish I was a witch so I could take away the memories of the last few hours.
“Thank you.”
Roark grabs her around her shoulders, and I think he’s going to kiss her, but he just pulls her into a hug. A fucking big hug. And when he pulls back, he smiles. “You’re going to be okay.” He says it like a demand more than a reassurance. But that’s a lot from Roark. I’m not sure he even let me hug him when his parents died. Then he walks away like he always does when he’s done talking. Which is most of the time.
“My room is on the other side of the hall. Across the hall is Kieren’s, but mine is to the right of that one and Roark’s is?—”
“To the left,” Raine says softly.
“Yes.” Does it bother me that she already knows where his room is? Yes. I point at the bath that’s halfway filled already, and she nods.
I pull the door shut behind me, then grab some clothes from my room and head out to the lawn. I take a torch from the mudroom by the back door––I most likely won’t need it.
Roark’s out here already, looking for her phone. “I thought you’d be off talking to Kieren,” he says when I reach his side.
“Don’t feel like being charged with assaulting a monarch tonight.”
“Ya, I don’t either.” He shines his light around the beds.
