A broad smile cut across my face, canines catching the light as I extended a hand. “The one and only.”
I could play nice. I could also play extremely fucking dirty. But some instinct told me it would be wiser, safer, to start with courtesy. If I chose wickedness too soon, I wouldn’t just earn Aelora’s wrath, I’d earn the kingdom’s.
She didn’t take my hand.Of courseshe didn’t.
Instead, she slunk around me, hooking her arm through one of Ronan’s as though he were hers to drag. “Come, my prince.” Her eyes flicked back to me like the lash of a whip. “We have much to discuss...” They lingered for half a heartbeat, dismissive. “In private.”
So, she had chosen violence. Noted.
He turned his body away from her hold, the arm she clung to slipping easily from her grasp. “I’ll join you all shortly,” he said, brooking no argument.
Aelora stilled, fury flashing hot across her face. Her arms shimmered, an opalescent light moving, shifting, under her skin.
Forcing her chin higher, she straightened, smoothing her expression back into something poised, something deceptively soft. She nodded once and turned on her heel, hips swaying in graceful retreat. The click of her heels echoed long after she disappeared into the shadows of the hall.
I looked at Ronan. “Was this a summons or a mating call?”
Her jasmine scent clung to him, sweet and insidious. It wrapped around his shirt, crawled across my tongue, and I finally understood why he had misted me the other night. The instinct toclaimhad spiked the moment she entered.
“Aelora is persistent.” He grabbed my hand, bringing it to his lips. “But she is aware I have denied her marriage proposal.”
Marriage? Of course. They looked as though they had been bred for one another. Two creatures made from that beauty alone were enough to conquer the world with nothing but their damn union. The thought lodged in my chest and twisted.
“If I were you, I’d yell it louder next time.”
His answering smile was almost cruel as he wrapped an arm around my shoulders, pulling me flush against him. My body crashed into the hard wall of his chest, where every muscle there was honed for war, but I felt only gentleness.
He placed a kiss on the top of my head, another across my forehead, my temple. Each press unhurried, each touch as if he were marking territory invisible to anyone but us. His fingers tipped my chin up, forcing my stare into his before his mouth demanded mine.
He broke away too soon, though, not before dragging the corner of his mouth across my jaw. His hand found my wrist, turning it over, pressing reverence into the top of my hand once more with his lips before threading his fingers through mine.
Was this reassurance? Or making sure every dragon here could smell me, him on me, from across the palace.
Without another word, he led me away from the suffocating reek of jasmine and through the doors opposite of the one Aelora had taken.
One side of the corridor burned steady with dragon-flame, torches stacked thick along the wall. Their lights didn’t flicker so much as inhale,a molten pulse spilling warmth over obsidian stone.
The other side was nothing but air—an open balcony carved straight from the cliff’s ribcage, where the sea came to gnash against the rock. Spray leapthigh enough to kiss the railing, leaving the scent of salt and brine on my tongue.
That was the only sound here. Not the palace planning, not the endless shuffle of guards like in Lumais. Just the waves.
I let myself drift to the edge, staring down into the mouth of the cove. It was dizzying, that view. The kind of drop that mocked mortality, that chanted how small I truly was.
Ronan had grown up with this as his horizon. How many nights had he stood right here, staring out into the living dark, tasting the storm? A sea this wild should have been chaos, but from here, it almost looked arranged, tempting. As if it longed for you to fling yourself into its unknown just to see if you’d rise again.
I gripped the railing tighter until my knuckles cramped. The air raked through my braid, the wind strong enough to sting the corners of my eyes. I thought of him, choosing to leave all this behind, abandoning Sahfyre’s throne.
What wound had been deep enough to drive him from this view? Did it haunt him still, even as he brought me back here?
For one dangerous second, I envied the water, its freedom, its refusal to be held in one shape. And for another, I feared that is exactly why Ronan had left.
The chambers Ronan had deemed fit for me were not merely rooms, but a whole damn floor of them.
Elva’s quarters had always felt delicate with its light pouring through stained glass, its perfumed air, all her comforts carefully arranged as if she might shatter without them. It had always felt like we were suffocating in a gilded birdcage.
Here, the walls were dark, all veined faintly with gold, floors polished to a sheen that reflected the firelight in fractured streaks. I could get lost here. Perhaps that was the point.
“Rest as long as you need,” Ronan had said, his lips brushing mine in a kiss that clung. He’d added that someone would fetch me when dinner was ready, though the look in his eyes had implied he would rather no one else dare enter at all.
