For a moment, the fight fell away.
Not gone.
Never gone.
But lowered enough for Sabine to feel the living man beside her instead of the wounded kingdom around them.
Lucien touched her face with the carefulness he used when something mattered too much to grip.
Sabine leaned into his hand.
“You crowned me on one knee,” she said.
“I met you where you were.”
“That was the only part of the ceremony I liked.”
His mouth almost curved.
“Only that?”
She looked at him, at the tired eyes, the blood still visible beneath the clean bandage at his wrist, the man who had wanted to save her and had learned, at the worst possible moment, how to stand beside her instead.
“No,” she said. “Not only that.”
She kissed him first.
Quietly.
No hunger for witnesses. No desperation. No rebellion needing to prove itself against a locked door.
Just her hand at his jaw, his breath catching, the bond warming between them as his mouth answered hers.
The kiss was brief because the balcony was not private and the kingdom below them was already splintering.
But it held.
It said what neither of them had time to decorate.
Alive.
Chosen.
Together.
When she pulled back, Lucien rested his forehead against hers.
“Whatever comes next,” he said, “I stand with you.”
Sabine closed her fingers around his.
“Then keep up.”
He laughed once under his breath.
Small.
Disbelieving.
