“Serast will try to control every moment.”
“Yes.”
“The chamber may kill me anyway.”
“I will not let it.”
She pulled back and looked at him.
“You cannot promise that.”
His jaw locked. “Then I promise I will burn the throne before I let you vanish quietly.”
Sabine kissed him.
Hard.
Desperate.
He answered with the same force, hands gripping her waist, pulling her closer.
The bond flared.
When they broke apart, Sabine’s breathing was unsteady.
“I am tired of the palace deciding what my body means,” she said.
Lucien went still.
He understood the danger of that sentence.
“Sabine.”
“I want you. Not because the bond demands it. Not because the rite makes intimacy into submission. Because I choose you while I am still fully myself.”
His hands trembled against her.
“This cannot be about proving anything to the rite.”
“It is not. It is about wanting you before they try to make wanting into disappearance.”
Lucien’s control fractured.
He kissed her again, slower this time, deeper, until her knees weakened and she pulled him toward the bed.
He stopped her.
“Tell me what you want.”
Sabine’s pulse hammered.
She had thought about this since the foundation chapel. Since the Trial of Flesh. Since every moment the palace had tried to turn her body into ceremonial property.
“I want all of you,” she said. “I want to give you everything. Not because I have to. Because I choose to.”
Understanding moved through him.
“Sabine, that is not something you choose because you are angry or afraid.”
