She looks like everything I didn’t know I wanted.
The thought catches me off guard. I’ve had centuries to learn control, to master the art of keeping my reactions hidden. But she undoes that mastery without trying. One glance and I’m cataloging the way light plays across her cheekbones. The graceful line of her neck. The strength in her hands, calloused from years of combat training.
I want to touch her. Want to pull her against me and forget about maps and strategies and the war waiting outside these walls. The wanting is a physical ache, constant and growing, demanding attention I can’t afford to give.
“The others will be here soon.” She crosses to stand beside me, close enough that I feel the heat radiating from her skin. “Selene said Drayke wants to start the detailed planning tonight.”
“I know.” I gesture at the maps, forcing my attention back to strategy. “I’ve been trying to find an approach that doesn’t end with most of us dead.”
“Any luck?”
“Define luck.”
She moves closer, studying the maps with the trained eye of someone raised on politics and warfare. Her shoulder brushes mine, and my entire body tightens at the contact. Such a smallthing—shoulder against shoulder, fabric between skin—and yet it sends heat racing through me in a way that has nothing to do with her Fire-Bringer abilities.
When did she become this essential? When did the witch princess I was supposed to hate become the first thing I think about when I wake and the last thing I imagine before sleep? I find myself watching for her in corridors. Listening for her voice in crowded rooms. Orienting toward her presence the way a compass orients toward north.
I don’t have answers. I’m not sure I want them. Answers would require examining these feelings, categorizing them, and I have a suspicion that what I’d find would terrify me.
“The eastern approach is too exposed,” she says, tracing a route with her finger. “And the western pass is exactly where Ulrik would expect an attack.”
“Agreed.” I tap the map where the stronghold is marked—a black smudge that seems to drink in light even on paper. “The stronghold itself is built into the mountain. Not carved from it—merged with it. Dragon magic so old it’s become part of the stone.”
“So we can’t dig through.”
“No. We go through the front, or we don’t go at all.”
She’s quiet for a moment, studying the terrain markers. I watch her profile—the determined set of her jaw, the slight furrow between her brows as she thinks. Beautiful isn’t adequate. Magnificent comes closer but still falls short.
She’s become something I don’t have words for. Something that exists outside the careful categories I’ve built to make sense of the world.
“The wards,” she says finally. “Tell me about them.”
“Eight centuries of accumulated protections. Warning wards, pain wards, death wards. Wards that consume magical energy. Wards that turn an attacker’s power against them.” I hear theflatness in my own voice. “Ulrik’s masterwork. He designed them to withstand siege by any force imaginable.”
“Any force imaginable.” Her lips curve into something that isn’t quite a smile. “He didn’t imagine me.”
The confidence in her voice should reassure me. Instead, it makes something tighten in my chest. Because she’s right—she’s the variable Ulrik never planned for, the weapon that might tip the scales in our favor. But she’s also the woman I spent last night holding while she slept. The woman whose warmth has cracked walls I spent decades building. The woman whose absence, even for hours, leaves me restless in ways I can’t explain.
If she falls tomorrow, I’m not sure what will be left of me.
“The Crown.” I keep my voice neutral. Analytical. As if we’re discussing troop movements instead of her life. “You’re certain you can control it?”
“I’ll prove it.” She turns to face me, and her amber eyes hold steady on mine. “But, yes. This is what I was born to do, Auren. Generations of careful breeding, of preserving both the witch magic and the Fire-Bringer flame, specifically so that someone could wield the Crown when it was needed.” Her chin lifts. “I’m that someone.”
“The Crown increases power so much. If you lose control?—”
“I won’t.”
“You can’t know that.”
“No.” She reaches up and cups my face in her warm hands. The heat of her palms against my cold skin sends sensation racing through me—not just physical warmth, but something deeper. Something that settles in my chest and refuses to leave. “But I know that hiding behind these walls while Ulrik kills everyone I might have saved isn’t an option. I know that this Relic has been waiting for someone to use it properly forgenerations. And I know—” her voice softens “—that I trust you to catch me if I fall.”
The words hit somewhere deep. Trust. She trusts me. This woman who has every reason to keep her guard up, who lost her family and her kingdom and her sister—she trusts me to catch her.
I cover her hands with mine, pressing them harder against my face. Her touch is an anchor and storm at once—grounding me even as it threatens to sweep away every barrier I’ve ever built.
“You make it very difficult to maintain strategic objectivity.”
