"A Light Lord," I breathed when he let me surface for air.
"I don't care about the title." His hands framed my face, his eyes burning into mine. "I care that your father just made it possible for me to have you without war. Without hiding. Without anyone being able to claim our union isn't sanctioned."
"And what exactly are you planning to do with this sanction?"
His smile was dark, promising. "Marry you. Fuck you in every room of the palace as your husband instead of your secret. Put my children in you and watch them grow." His thumb traced my lower lip. "Make you so completely mine that the entire realm knows exactly who you belong to."
Heat flooded through me. "That sounds acceptable."
"Acceptable." He laughed against my mouth. "I'll remind you of that word tonight when you're begging me to stop and I don't."
"Promises, promises."
His grip tightened on my waist, shadows curling around us both. "Let's go back to our chambers. I need to be inside you again."
"We just?—"
"Now, Ada."
The command in his voice brooked no argument. I didn't try to make one.
We passed Sarp in the corridor, and he took one look at our faces before stepping aside with a dramatic bow.
"And so the celebrations continue," he called after us. "Don't forget to hydrate! And perhaps invest in some soundproofing! Lord Cevdet's heart truly cannot take much more!"
Hakan's only response was a rude gesture thrown over his shoulder.
The door to our chambers had barely closed before he had me pressed against it, his mouth hot on my throat, his hands already working at my gown.
"I'm going to fuck you until you can't walk," he growled against my skin. "Until you can't think of anything but me. Until my name is the only word you remember."
I pulled him closer, surrendering to the flames.
Tomorrow there would be politics and schemes and nobles who wanted us to fail. Tomorrow we would face the council and fight for our future.
But tonight—tonight there was only this. Only us. Only the fierce, consuming love that burned between us like a star going supernova.
For the first time in weeks, everything felt like it might actually be okay.
CHAPTER 25
DARK AGREEMENT
Hakan
For the first time in two hundred years, I understood what it meant to breathe.
The thought drifted through my mind as I stood at the kitchen counter, a knife in my hand, a half-sliced cucumber bleeding green onto the wooden board. Through the doorway, I could see Ada sprawled across my bed—our bed now—her body a study in contradiction against the dark silk sheets. She lay on her stomach, one arm tucked beneath the pillow, her face turned toward the window where the perpetual twilight of the realm painted everything in shades of amber and gray.
She was asleep. Deeply, peacefully asleep.
The kind of sleep that came from being fucked thoroughly, from being held afterward, from trusting the person beside you enough to let your guard down completely.
She trusted me.
The knife stilled in my hand. I set it down carefully, wiping my fingers on a cloth, but my eyes never left her form. The silk sheet had slipped during her slumber—probably from the way she'd shifted, reaching for warmth that was no longer beside her—and now it pooled at the small of her back, a river of black fabric that left her spine exposed.
The curve of it. The delicate ridge of each vertebra visible beneath golden skin. The dimples at the base, just above where the sheet gathered.
