“Yes.”
One word, low as vow.
“If his child lives in you, it will never go without a father. Not while I endure.”
Silence softened.
He exhaled, slow, as though loosing a blade he had carried in his ribs.
“Which reminds me—”
He rose to his feet.
“If you are with his child, you’ll have to let me feed you.”
A faint, coaxing smile.
“We must keep my human son strong.”
Tears jeweled her lashes, yet her mouth curved.
“Yourraven-hairedhuman son?”
“The Storne line doesn’t bend,” he declared, amused. “And Eillish good looks followed me from the Midnight Isle.”
He set figs and honeyed bread before her. She bit, salt and sweet mingling with relief.
“Eat. Then rest.” He touched her shoulder. “We’ll rise early to watch him hold the line.”
He sat near, serpent spine faint beneath silk. She watched him—dark gold hair, sun-kissed skin, danger wrapped in beauty.
“Do you love me, Xavien?”
The words escaped before she could call them back.
Not betrayal—survival.
His gaze steadied, lingering on her face as if memorizing it, weighing her with eyes that stripped past every defense.
“You are the woman who could stir a king to abdication. And I know you belong to him. I won’t dare claim otherwise.”
His fingers tugged at his cuffs, grasping at composure he could not quite hold.
“But you are a queen, Amerei. With a word, you could end it. You could make me yours.”
His eyes went to the garden, to the dark where ghosts walked.
“That is the cruelty of this fate: knowing it would take only your choice… but to choose me means the death of him, or the death of what you are together.”
His words sank into the quiet like stones in deep water. She could feel them settling, heavy, reshaping the current inside her. A thousand images clawed at her—Viktor’s scars, his vows, hishands braced at her waist. And yet here, safety breathed in the dark, his pulse steady as the sea.
Xavien stilled in the hush he had made, shoulders taut, waiting.
Her voice shattered the silence.
“I don’t want to be alone tonight.”
His breath faltered.
