The towels slip to the floor as we step closer. His hand finds the small of my back, guiding me to him. When his lips meet mine, it is slow and tender, the kind that leaves the world in silence. The fire crackles; the air seems to hold its breath.
We move together toward the bed, every step unhurried. There is no need for haste—only the simple truth of being seen.
When we join, it is without urgency, the rhythm of breath and water finding its echo in flesh. His breath catches against my ear as I trace the lines of his face, and in that moment we are not king and stranger, not prophecy and flame—only two souls, returning.
We move as one.
We burn as one.
And when stillness finds us again, it does so in peace.
The fire has burned down to a soft glow, the air heavy with warmth and the faint scent of the bath that still clings to our skin. Vale’s arm drapes over my waist, his thumb tracing slow, absent circles against my hip as if memorizing the shape of me in the dark.
For a long while we say nothing. Words would feel too small. The quiet between us is not empty—it is full, alive, pulsing with the steady rhythm of his heartbeat against my cheek.
“You undo me,” he murmurs finally, voice hushed and roughened with fatigue. “Every time I think I’ve found my footing, you remind me the ground was never meant to stay still.”
I turn toward him, my hand finding the line of his jaw. His eyes catch the dying firelight, soft and unguarded. “Then perhaps we steady each other,” I whisper.
He smiles—faintly, almost reverently—and presses his lips to my forehead. “You make this place feel like it’s still worth saving,” he says so quietly I’m not sure if it is meant for me or the dark itself. “You make me feel like I’m worth saving too.”
The words wrap around me, sinking deep. Whatever walls he’s built to survive the centuries, they fall away in that moment. And in their place is only a man—tired, fierce, and achingly real.
His breath slows, his warmth a living weight beside me. I trace the line of his jaw one last time before resting my head against his chest. The steady rhythm beneath my ear lulls me toward sleep, and the last thing I feel before the world slips away is his hand tightening once more at my waist—as if his body refuses to let go, even when his mind already drifts to dreams.
I wake to sunlight pooling across the bed in pale gold ribbons. The fire has long since burned to ash, the last of its warmth claimed by dawn.
For a moment, half-dreaming, I reach for him—only to find cool linen where his body had been.
The scent of rain lingers on my hair, his scent within the sheets. The memory of his hand at my waist still hums beneath my skin. I curse the duty and decorum that keep him from staying at my side as the morning sun claims what I want for my own.
Still, the ache that rises in me isn’t doubt.
It is the ache of knowing what I want—and daring, for the first time, to believe I can have it.
I draw the blanket closer, eyes tracing the faint glimmer of daylight on the stone walls. The same walls that hold us safe as we allow ourselves to be truly seen by each other.
Whatever waits beyond these walls—court, prophecy, the whispers of fate—I will meet it.
Not as the frightened stranger who first arrived at Caerhollan’s gates, but as something new.
Something forged in warmth and fire and defiance.
I rise then, the chill of the floor steadying my steps. Outside, the valley gleams under a sky scrubbed clean by the night’s rain.
Come what may—I am ready.
Chapter Seventeen
Ace stands waiting outside the library doors, a devil’s grin already fixed in place—as if he’s been rehearsing it since dawn.
“You’re early,” I say, pleasantly surprised. I had expected a quiet hour among the shelves before his usual grand entrance.
“Indeed I am,” he declares, offering his arm with mock gallantry before I can protest. “There’s so much you haven’t seen yet, and I refuse to let you haunt the same corners before you’ve earned the right to be bored of them.”
My chest tightens. Vale has shown me a few small sanctuaries within the High Hold—places where I can breathe amid the noise of court—but this feels different. Unscripted. Unsupervised.
I hesitate, then slip my hand through the crook of his arm. With anyone else, I might refuse. But Ace is… Ace. Impossible to resist, even when I know better.
