The next time they saw each other, Val-Theris found her near the plaza overlooking the city, her shawl pulled tightly around her shoulders against the rising wind.
“You missed the evening session,” he said quietly.
“I know,” Jesenia said softly, her gaze fixed on the lights scattered across the lower district. When he did not move on, she added: “I told you I would not be there.”
“Jesenia.”
Her name carried weight, his voice soft but unrelenting, and she finally turned to face him, forcing her expression into something steady despite the heat pooling behind her ribs.
“You know as well as I do that it’s better if I don’t attend the council sessions anymore.”
Val-Theris stilled. His wings shifted faintly behind him, pale feathers catching the fractured moonlight. “So you will just let them win?”
“They don’twantme there, Val-Theris,” Jesenia murmured. “And I…I don’t want to make things harder for you than I already have.”
His jaw tightened, his silence heavier than any accusation. His eyes held hers, searching, as though there was something in her refusal to yield that unsettled him more than any battlecould. Her breath caught, just faintly, and she turned away before the sound could betray her. “You have a kingdom to lead, Val-Theris. A kingdom that is not my home.”
He stepped closer then, but stopped himself when he remembered they were in public, under the scrutinizing gaze of their people.
“You will not leave,” he said softly, but there was steel beneath the quiet. “I will not have you hiding in the dark while they tighten the noose around us both.”
Jesenia shook her head, pulling the shawl tighter around herself, the words breaking from her lips like glass under strain:
“This isn’t about us.”
“It is,” Val-Theris said, his voice rougher now, though still quiet.
“That’s what they want,” she said softly. “For you to choose me. To let them call it obsession. To let them turn your people against you. And when they do, it won’t just be me who pays for it, but all that remains of Lunareth’s people.”
“I don’t care what they call it.”
Her breath caught; her hands stilled in the folds of her shawl.
“You should,” she whispered. “I can’t stay at your side,” Jesenia breathed, though her voice faltered, betraying the ache beneath her words. “I can’t make my people pay the price for what I—” She broke off sharply, catching herself, forcing the thought to fracture before it could leave her tongue.
“For what you what?” he asked. “For what youwhat, Jesenia?”
Her lips parted, but no answer came. Val-Theris’s hand lifted, slow and uncertain, stopping just shy of touching her cheek—so close that the faint warmth of his skin brushed against hers like ghosted heat. Neither of them moved. Neither of them breathed.
It was the closest they’d ever been to breaking.
Then, he lowered his hand, forcing his composure back into place as though it burned him to hold it.
His voice, when it came, was quiet. “You resign then.”
“I do,” Jesenia whispered, her chest tightening with the ache of it.
The tension hung between them like the moment before lightning breaks the sky.
Then Jesenia stepped past him without another word, her shawl trailing faintly in the sunlight as the low wind caught against the sweep of his wings.
He didn’t follow.
But she felt his gaze on her back until she vanished into the quarter.
FIFTEEN
The bells rangacross Seraveth at midday, summoning the city to the central plaza.
