He looks undone. He bends down and kisses me, unbothered by what is on my face. "Nothing that happens," he says against my mouth, "will ever make me love you less."
He pulls me into him, settling me between his legs, his hand spreading warm and certain over my belly.
I close my eyes.
For the first time in six months, sleep comes easily.
CHAPTER 36
Not Today, Not Tomorrow
The next day, the world tries to take me back. It does not succeed. A knock sounds at the door, distant against the heat that has not left us, against the rhythm he refuses to break.
“Your Majesty,” a voice calls, careful, measured. “You are required in the throne room.”
Colsar does not slow. He does not so much as turn his head. My breath comes harder than it should, but my voice does not waver.
“Tell the queen regent I will not be in attendance today.”
Behind me, Colsar’s mouth finds my nipple and begins circling with his tongue. I bite back a moan as the rest follows without effort.
“Or tomorrow.”
His hand closes more firmly, drawing me into him with a quiet insistence that leaves no room for anything else.
“Or the day after that.”
The silence beyond the door stretches thin, strained by what has just been said.
I close my eyes for the briefest moment before adding, composed despite everything unraveling beneath it,
“Have all meals brought to my rooms. For both myself and my husband.”
Another pause, smaller this time.
“As you wish, Majesty.”
Footsteps retreat.
And just like that, the rest of the world falls away.
He slows only once the sound beyond the door has disappeared entirely, though the change is subtle, felt more in the way his hold tightens than in any true reduction of movement, as if the world outside has been acknowledged only long enough to be dismissed.
He draws me back against him, his mouth at my throat, his breath still uneven yet contained, pulled inward and held there with effort, as though he refuses to give even that small piece of himself away. “Your aunt will be displeased,” he murmurs, the words carrying a quiet thread of amusement that makes it clear the consequence holds no weight for him.
A breath leaves me, softer than a laugh, shaped more by recognition than humor. I turn my head just enough to meet hiseyes and say, “I need you in a way that only you understand. Everyone else has no place in it.”
Something in him stills beneath the surface he usually keeps intact. He presses his face into my neck and remains there for a moment, holding the contact as if it anchors him, as if the reality of me beneath his hands is the only thing keeping whatever has been building inside him from slipping loose.
When he lifts his head again, what meets me is open in a way that feels far more dangerous, the kind of exposure that comes without defense. “Am I still your everything, Asha?” he asks, his voice lower now, stripped down to something that does not belong to the version of him anyone else sees.
My chest tightens at the understanding of what it costs him to ask it. I hold his eyes and answer without hesitation, letting him see all of it. “You are more than everything. Whatever I held back before is gone, and there is nothing left of it now.”
His attention deepens, his focus narrowing as though he is pulling the truth from me and testing it against everything he has endured.
“All that remains is you,” I add, my voice firm and certain in a way that leaves no room for doubt.
He studies me in silence for a long moment before saying, more quietly, “I dreamed of this,” and his hand comes to my face, his thumb moving along my jaw with a kind of possession that does not pretend to be anything else. “Every day for six months. Of having you like this.”
