Low. Dark. Satisfied.
"Fuck, that's good," he breathed. He was looking at me with an expression that was equal parts rage and reverence, and his chest was heaving, and his pupils had devoured the greenentirely, and I realized with a jolt that went straight through me that burning him had turned him on. "The princess bites. I was starting to think you'd let them breed it out of you."
We stood there. Breathing. The corridor was empty. The silence roared. His arm was still braced beside my head, and his mouth was close enough that I could taste his breath—warm, faintly sweet, laced with something that made my head swim.
He leaned closer. His lips grazed my temple—not a kiss, not quite, just the press of his mouth against my skin, lingering, devastating. I felt the shape of his smile against my hair.
"You are the only person in this court worth a damn, Ada," he murmured into my hairline. "So stop acting like you aren't."
Then he pushed off the wall.
The cold rushed in where his body had been. I almost gasped at the loss of it—the heat, the pressure, the impossible gravity of him. He was two steps away, then three, then four, and each step felt like something being torn.
He paused without turning around. I could see the rigid line of his shoulders, the way his hands had curled into fists at his sides. The deliberate rhythm of his breathing.
"Stay away from me, princess." His voice was rough. Quiet. "I'm not the kind of mistake you can undo."
He walked away. He did not look back.
I stayed where he left me, pressed against cold stone with bloodied palms and a hammering heart and the ghost of his mouth still burning against my temple. His scent clung to my skin. The welt on his jaw would scar—light magic always scarred when thrown in anger.
I had not controlled it.
I had not wanted to.
In the distance, muffled by stone and corridor, I could still hear screaming. Faint now. Fading. The girl from Selim's class, being cleansed in the purification wing. Being madethorough.
I uncurled my fingers and stared at the crescent wounds in my palms—eight small moons of broken skin, rising red with blood that was pure, unblemished,divine.
I closed my hands and walked in the opposite direction from the one Hakan had taken.
The screaming stopped before I reached the end of the corridor.
I did not know if that meant the cleansing was finished.
Or if the girl was.
CHAPTER 4
THE RIVAL
Hakan
The welt on my jaw hadn't healed.
Three days and I could still feel it — a raised line of scar tissue where her light had struck, tracing from my chin to the hollow beneath my ear. Light magic always scarred when thrown in anger. I'd learned that in theory lectures. Now I wore the proof of it on my face like a brand.
I pressed my thumb against the mark and hissed through my teeth. Good. Pain was useful. Pain had edges, limits, a shape I could hold in my hands and examine. Everything else in my life right now had none of those qualities.
The training hall was empty before dawn, which was the only reason I was here. The Academy's eastern wing held three such halls — one for the noble-born students with their gilded equipment and padded floors, one for group instruction, and this one, tucked behind the servants' kitchens where the plumbing groaned and the light-magic lanterns flickered because nobody could be bothered maintaining them forscholarship students. I preferred it. No gilding. No pretense. Just wood and stone and the smell of sweat and resin, honest in a way nothing else in this court ever was.
Three practice dummies already destroyed — beaten into splinters with nothing but my fists and the particular breed of fury that came from not sleeping for seventy-two hours. My knuckles were torn and bleeding, my shoulders screaming from an hour of relentless striking, and still the restless thing coiled beneath my ribs wouldn't settle.
I hit the fourth dummy. Wood cracked. I hit it again. The post snapped sideways and the whole thing crashed to the floor, scattering canvas and sawdust across the boards.
Better.
Through the high windows, I could see the Academy's spires catching the first gray light — all that white marble and crystal, glowing faintly even before dawn as though the building itself couldn't bear to be anything less than radiant. Beyond the spires, the Palace of Light dominated the skyline, its golden domes throwing halos against the clouds. Somewhere in that palace, in chambers that smelled of jasmine and divine magic, she was probably sleeping. Or not sleeping. Probably sitting at her window, staring at the city she loved and couldn't save, with crescent wounds in her palms from her own fingernails.
