“What are you saying?” she asked.
He hesitated. That alone was answer enough. Jesenia searched his face, as if looking for command there, or expectation. She found neither. She reached out before she quite realized she was going to, her fingers brushing his wrist where his sleeve ended. The contact was light, almost tentative, but she felt the way his breath changed at once.
“I don’t know what tomorrow will bring. I don’t know what our people may ask of us. And I can’t say what this city will do once it realizes how I truly feel for you. But I do know this.” He used his thumb and forefinger to lift her chin and leaned in, so that his breath ghosted over her lips. “I will no longer pretend that what I feel is something smaller than it is for the sake of others. You deserve all of me.”
Slowly, he moved his fingers from her chin to her cheek, then traced his thumb along her lower lip.
“May I?” he asked.
The question undid her more than any boldness could have. Jesenia nodded once, breath unsteady, and leaned into his touch. The space between them dissolved.
His mouth found hers—tentative at first, then deeper, desperate, as though the years he’d spent restrained had finally broken all at once. Her hands rose to his shoulders, her fingers tracing the ridges of his wings, marveling at the warmth beneath the feathers.
But it was when Jesenia’s hand threaded into his hair that he lost himself in her.
The kiss deepened. His restraint shattered at the heat rising beneath their skin, hands wandering in desperation. His mouth traced the line of her jaw, her throat, while she gasped his name against his ear, her fingers clutching the fabric of his tunic as though to anchor herself.
“Tell me to stop,” he whispered raggedly against her skin. “And I will.”
She shook her head, her voice breaking as she pulled him closer. “Don’t you dare.”
And with that, the angel and the saint surrendered at last.
They sank together onto the marble, the cold stone forgotten beneath the press of bodies and breath. Above them, the stars burned like watching eyes, but for once, the heavens were kind to them where the people were not.
Time fractured into softness they had never dared share before. The sound of sighs, the brush of skin against skin, the whispered prayer of her name on his lips.
His hands studied her carefully, tracing the lines of her body with all the care and devotion as if she were born a goddess herself. He moved as if she were something holy—touched as if she was made of all the beauty this world had to give.
When it was over, they lay entwined in silence, the night wrapping them in its vast, forgiving arms. His wing curvedprotectively around her, sheltering her from the wind and preserving the warmth their bodies had created together.
“What do you see when you look at the stars?” she asked drowsily.
“This,” he murmured. “All of my dreams, even the ones I didn’t know I had, were gifted to me under these very stars. What more beauty could I ask of them?” He looked down at her, tracing the line of her jaw with his thumb. “And what do you see when you look at these same stars?”
“A future where we don’t have to hide.”
He pressed a kiss to her temple. “Then this place will be our secret.”
Jesenia’s eyes drifted shut, her breathing slowing. Val-Theris watched her a long while, the weight of prophecy far from his mind.
“A future where I give you your dreams as you have given me mine,” he murmured into her hair as he held her. “That is what I see when I look at the stars now.”
TWENTY
Rohannes interceptedthe courier before he made it past the first tier of palace steps. The man wore the official crest of Seraveth on his arm, his travel cloak stiff with road dust and dried mud and his hair plastered to his brow with sweat. One sleeve had been torn clean at the shoulder, as if someone had grabbed him and missed. His hands shook as he fumbled for the sealed parchment.
Rohannes did not make him climb any higher.
He took the letter with a practiced calm that did not match the sudden anxiety in his chest, broke the seal with his thumb, and read the first two lines.
He read it again, slower. As if a different pace might change the meaning. It didn’t.
Rohannes looked up.
The palace courtyard was quiet in the early hour—only the faint clink of armor from guards shifting at their posts, the soft rush of the palace fountains, the first thin wash of sunlight turning marble pale gold.
He folded the parchment once, neatly, and gestured for the courier to sit on the lowest step.
