Serenya’s lips part slightly, a flush rising to her cheeks as she registers our position. But she doesn't move. Instead, she leans a little closer.
“You let me win.”
My voice drops, husky and low. “I love when you’re happy.”
Her expression falters, the challenge flickering into something softer and unspoken.
I reach up slowly, brushing a piece of hair from her face. “You’re terrifying when you fight, Renya.”
“Good,” she whispers, the edge of a smile curving her mouth. “Keeps you from getting too smug.”
Our lips almost meet, the moment suspended in time, before a voice echoes from across the training grounds.
“Princess!”
She groans and slides off of me in one graceful motion,standing quickly and trying to school her expression. I stay on the ground, hands folded behind my head.
The guard was too far to have seen anything.Hopefully.
“I win,” she says with a smirk as she extends a hand to help me up.
I take it, rising smoothly to my feet. “You always do.”
Chapter 9
?---- Serenya ? ----?
The sun has barely crested the horizon, spilling faint gold through the high windows of my chambers, when I give up on sleep entirely. The sheets twist around my legs as I shove them away and stand.
My shoulders are stiff, my body taut with a restless energy I cannot shake. Pulling my gray robe around me, I step onto the balcony. The morning air greets me in a cool rush, sweeping across my skin. I grip the stone railing and lean into the wind, letting the chill ground me here, in the present, when my mind keeps trying to slip elsewhere.
Far off, the courtyard lies in silence. Just yesterday, it had been full of noise and clamor, guards hurrying the contestants away to the healers after the catacombs trial. My gaze lingers on that place, and though I don’t want them to, my thoughts drift to Koen.
I didn’t mean to care. But when I saw him stumble out of the portal, battered and bloodied, at the very last second, relief had struck me sharp and fierce, a warmth I hadn’t invited—-oneI didn’t know what to do with.It had been so long since I felt something like that, and instead of comfort, it made me sick.
Despite the nausea, I couldn’t stop myself from going straight to the healer’s wing, my feet moving of their own accord. Once I was there, something even worse happened. My shadows betrayed me…again.
Without my command, without my consent, they slipped out and reached for him, trying to nestle against his wounds as I healed him. They have never done that for anyone but Kallan. Not once in all these years. Seeing them choose Koen hurt more than any blade ever could.
I don’t want to move on. I don’t want to open those pieces of myself again. I will marry because I must, because it is expected, but I will not let my shadows get attached. I will not let myself get attached.
And Koen…he may be the closest thing to ruining that resolve.
I hate it. I hate him.
Or…maybe I don’t.
That is the true problem, because I want to hate him. Ineedto.
My arms fold tight across my chest, nails biting into my sleeves. The wind pulls strands of hair loose around my face as I whisper into the quiet morning, “What is happening to me?”
Just like my shadows, my thoughts are traitors, and they turn again. This time, to Dimitri.
He had stood across from me just yesterday in the ruins, after years of silence. He was calm, collected, too perceptive for comfort. He had looked at me not with contempt, not withgloating or cruelty, but with something far worse—something quieter. Something like he used to.
It made my chest ache. He shouldn’t look at me like that. Not after what he did. He betrayed me. He stood beside his father while Kallan bled out on the battlefield.
“Something is stirring,”he had said.
