Before he could stop himself, before the rational part of his brain could intervene, he reached out with his ability. Delicately, like sliding his fingers across the surface of still water, barely disturbing it. He sent warmth toward Gregor, a gentle, questioning touch of his magic against the edges of Gregor’s consciousness. He wasn’t trying to read his thoughts. He just wanted to feel what was underneath. Just a glimpse behind the wall.
For half a heartbeat, he felt something. A rush of emotion so powerful it nearly knocked the breath out of him—heat and anguish and something fierce and aching that he couldn’t name?—
“Don’t.”
One word, spoken as quietly as a blade sliding from its sheath. Gregor hadn’t moved, hadn’t raised his voice, hadn’t shifted his posture, but the air between them had turned to ice. Those steel-gray eyes were locked on Fergal with an intensity that made the hair on the back of his neck stand up.
Fergal pulled his magic back like yanking his hand from a flame. His heart was hammering. He wasn’t afraid of Gregor, had never been afraid of Gregor, but the flicker he’d felt in thatfraction of a second before the wall slammed down had been so fierce, so vast. And so carefully contained that Fergal realized he’d only scratched the surface. “I’m?—”
“We’re done for today.” Gregor closed the Codex with a soft, deliberate thud. His movements were too controlled. He was angry, but Fergal would’ve never realized that if he hadn’t been studying him for years now.
“Gregor—”
“Same time tomorrow. And, Your Highness?” Gregor paused at the door, his back to Fergal. The broad expanse of it seemed to carry a weight that had nothing to do with muscle. “Don’t ever do that again.”
Gregor left, closing the door behind him with a click that sounded like a lock turning.
Fergal sat in the empty library, the echo of those parting words ringing in his ears like a bell struck once and left to resonate. His hands were trembling, his heart still racing.
What had happened? He replayed the moment when he’d touched Gregor’s mind with a nudge of his magic, gentle as a whisper. Then the brief, blinding rush of what he’d found. And then Gregor had pulled up that wall—massive, ancient, built from years of discipline and reinforced by something darker. Something that tasted like guilt and grief and felt like a locked door at the end of a long, dark corridor.
Fergal had expected to find attraction, proof of what he suspected Gregor felt for him. But this? This was something else entirely. Something that went far deeper than desire and was wrapped in so many layers of pain and secrecy that Fergal couldn’t even begin to untangle it. What was Gregor hiding?
The question wasn’t new. Fergal had been wondering for years, though he’d never voiced it aloud. Like, who the hell would he even tell? His father was too busy being king—and a jackass, but that was neither here nor there—and his mom andPeter were dead. No, sad as it was, Gregor was the closest thing Fergal had to a friend, and he could hardly talk to the man himself about the questions he had.
So he’d asked himself, silently, privately. What was Gregor hiding? Was it something that had happened when he’d been with the Murphys? Gregor’s calm exterior was too perfect. No one was that controlled naturally. Everyone always raved about Gregor’s discipline, but it was that same rigid regimen that made the man clamp down so hard on whatever was happening inside him.
And now Fergal had proof. He’d touched the edge of whatever was locked inside that fortress of a man, and it had been overwhelming. Anguish. Heat. And that fierce, aching emotion he couldn’t name but had made his own chest constrict in response, as if his heart recognized it even when his mind couldn’t.
Gregor had felt his nudge immediately. That in itself was remarkable. Fergal’s father hadn’t noticed. Brennan hadn’t noticed. The guards, the servants, the advisors—none of them had felt even a whisper of his ability when he’d tested it. But Gregor had caught it in half a heartbeat, like a man who’d been waiting for exactly that kind of intrusion. Like a man who knew what it felt like because he’d encountered it before.
He must’ve learned that at the Murphys, who took their magical training more seriously than any other clan. Gregor would’ve learned to recognize and resist that kind of magic during the decades he’d spent with them.
But recognizing it and reacting the way he had were two very different things. Gregor could’ve just blocked Fergal’s attempt and been done with it. Instead, he’d not only pulled up those high and mighty walls, but he’d been angry. Furious.
Which meant there was something to find.
Fergal stood in the center of the library, the lamplight casting long shadows across the floor. He wasn’t going to stop. If anything, today had reinforced his feeling that the real Gregor, the one behind the professional mask, the military posture, the “Your Highness,
and the careful distance was worth finding. Was worth fighting for.
And Fergal had never once in his life backed down from a fight.
CHAPTER FOUR
Gregor stood in the center of his quarters with his hands braced against the back of a chair, breathing as if he’d just run a mile in full armor.
Over three centuries of discipline, of iron-willed control, of keeping every wayward thought and dangerous impulse locked in the vault where it belonged, and a young prince with a messy bun and a smart mouth had nearly cracked the whole thing open in under a second. Pathetic.
He paced the length of his room—twelve steps one way, twelve the other. It was a small space, decorated sparsely. A single bed with military corners, a wooden desk with a reading lamp, a wardrobe containing four identical dark shirts and three pairs of pants, a weapons rack on the wall holding his ceremonial sword and two daggers. No decorations. No photographs. No personal touches beyond the books on his nightstand.
A soldier’s room. His home was the library, where he spent time with Fergal, and his workshop, where he found peace of mind. This was merely where he slept.
He stopped pacing and pressed the heels of his hands against his eyes. He could still feel the ghost of Fergal’s magic brushingagainst his mind. The Murphy influencers had been aggressive and invasive, all blunt force and domination. Fergal’s touch had been…warm. Curious. Like fingertips trailing across the surface of his skin, searching for an opening with a gentleness that made it infinitely more dangerous than any attack.
His dragon had stirred. That was the part that terrified Gregor most. Not defensively, not the way it should have when another dragon’s magic probed his consciousness. It had responded by leaning toward the warmth. Like it had recognized something in Fergal’s magical signature and reached for it like a man reaching for a fire in the dead of winter.
Gregor didn’t know what that meant, and he didn’t want to find out.
