Lady Marlayna of House Taramethos.
My heart shatters.
Her hands roam freely on his jaw, his neck, sliding over the breadth of his shoulders and down the hard ripples of his chest. But it isn’t her touch that breaks me.
It’s the way she looks at him.
As if he is something rare. Something dazzling. Something that belongs to her.
I don’t realize I’ve stopped moving until Pax tugs at my arm. I stare at Luceran, willing, begging, for his expression to twist with disgust, for him to push her away.
He doesn’t.
One of his hands rests at the small of her bare back while the other entwines with her fingers, holding them to his chest as though they fit there perfectly. There is no space between them. None at all. Their bodies are so close I can’t tell where he ends and she begins, and the way he looks at her… tears sting behind my eyes. I turn away as a breathless shiver tears through me.
“What are you doing?” Pax snaps, grabbing my elbow. “You can’t just stand there staring at them. Come on.”
He drags me toward the doors as the room grows hotter, louder, but before he pulls me from the room, I glance back one last time.
Just once.
Luceran’s gaze lifts.
It finds me in the chaos.
And in that heartbeat, his face goes paler than I’ve ever seen him, the smile vanishing as if it were never there at all. Maybe because I have caught him, maybe because he is ashamed. I don’t get to ask. Pax hauls me out of the ballroom and closes the doors behind us.
“See?” he growls, towing me along as my body follows numbly behind him. “They’re all the same.”
We move quickly through the halls, past the tall windows that overlook the rose garden and the frozen lake beyond it. Then Pax stops so suddenly I collide with his back.
“What did you say?” he snaps, the anger in his voice slipping into something closer to panic. “What did you call me?”
I frown, my heart still hammering. “I…I didn’t say anything.”
“Did you call me Pattenwald?” he demands. “Only my father ever called me that. To everyone else, I’m Pax. Even to you, Neve.”
“But I didn’t,” I insist, swallowing hard. “I said nothing. I swear.”
His hand goes to his hair, fingers digging in as he tugs at the roots, his expression flickering between confusion and fury. Slowly, carefully, I reach out and place my hand on his shoulder.
He flinches hard.
But I don’t pull away.
“I’m sorry,” I say quietly. “For everything that’s happened to you. I’m grateful for your friendship, Pax, and you’re right.”
They hurt as I say them.
“Fae cannot be trusted.”
Something in him eases. His shoulders slump, the tension bleeding out of his frame just enough that he lets me hold him, only for a moment.
Then he straightens again, drawing in a steadying breath before releasing it. “This place,” he says, forcing a weak laugh. “It’ll be the end of us.”
I shake my head firmly. “I won’t let that happen. We’ll survive it. Together.”
He smiles then, though it’s strained, buried beneath guilt and regret and too many old wounds. “Together,” he echoes.
