Page 108

I stare at him for a long moment. The fire throwing light across his face, and the question that has been building since the blood bank finally pushes its way past my teeth.

“The curse,” I say. “That’s why he wants me, isn’t it? What he and Zander spoke about, how the other kingdoms are falling apart and war over the mainland is coming.”

Eagan’s jaw tightens, barely perceptible, but I’ve spent a lifetime reading the slight movements of people who hold power over me, and I catch it. His gaze shifts from the fire to the floor, then back to me, and the hesitation in that movement tells me everything before he speaks.

“I’m not sure how much I’m permitted to say,” he admits, and the honesty of it is almost refreshing. Most people in power would simply lie or redirect. Eagan at least has the decency to tell me he’s withholding rather than pretending there’s nothing to withhold.

“Of course you’re not,” I mutter, dragging a hand through my still-damp hair. The frustration building inside me has nowhere to go. “He tells me nothing, Eagan. Nothing. I know I’m bonded to him, though I still don’t fully understand what that means or why. I know the islands are sinking and rotting and the kingdoms are inching toward a war that no one will survive. He wants me for something related to all of that, I’m sure. My magic maybe, or to use as a weapon against the other kingdoms.” I pull my knees up to my chest, wrapping my arms around them. “But he won’t explain any of it. He just expects me to trust him while he drags me across oceans and decides my life for me.”

The words come out sharper than I intend. It isn’t just anger at Kylian; it’s the accumulated weight of every choice that has been made for me since the day my mother was executed. Every cage, every master, every hand on my arm steering me somewhere I didn’t choose.

Eagan leans back in the chair, studying me with that careful look that makes me feel like I’m being assessed rather than simply observed. Then he speaks, and his voice is quieter than before.

“Has it occurred to you,” he says slowly, “that perhaps he isn’t withholding information because he doesn’t trust you? Perhaps he wants something from you that permission alone can’t give.”

I frown. “What does that mean?”

“It means that the bond between you isn’t something he can force. Not fully. Though he has the power to command your presence and force certain reactions, the full bond demands free will. He wants you to do more than just accept it, Alessia. He wants you to want it. To want him. Before the bond takes full hold and you can no longer distinguish between what the bond makes you feel and what is genuinely yours.”

The idea that Kylian might hold back out of some twisted form of respect for my autonomy is so at odds with everything he has done that I can’t reconcile it.

“You are not a tool of war for him,” Eagan adds, so quietly it’s almost lost beneath the crackle of the fire. “Whatever you believe about his intentions, that was never what this was. You are human, for the most part. Mortal. You don’t understand bonds. They aren’t like human marriages. You can’t file for divorce, and you certainly can’t escape it once you’ve bonded. It is more than loving someone, it’s tying your soul to theirs.”

I scoff, and the bitterness spills over before I can contain it. “If he wanted me to want him, he shouldn’t have kidnapped me. He certainly shouldn’t have offered my sister to the Demon King like she was a bargaining chip to be traded.” My voice cracks on the last words, and I hate it. I hate the way my pain keeps leaking through the cracks in my anger. “If that’s his idea of making me want him, he’s even more delusional than I thought.”

Eagan opens his mouth to respond, but the door swings open before he can speak.

Kylian steps inside, his frame filling the doorway. His expression is unreadable in the way that means he’s heard enough to form an opinion and none of it has improved his mood.

“Still complaining about that?” he says, his tone somewhere between exhaustion and irritation. Maybe it still wounds him, and he’s just too proud to show it.

My teeth clench. I want to snap back at him, to throw every grievance I’ve been swallowing in his face, but his eyes stop me. Not because he looks threatening, but because he looks tired. Genuinely, deeply tired, the kind of exhaustion that goes beyond the physical and settles into the bones of a person who has been carrying too much for too long.

He turns to Eagan, and the shift from man to king is instant, like watching a door close. “Zander’s men,” Kylian says. “I want them ready to leave at sunrise. The moment there is enough light to see the gangplank, I want them on it and off my land. I don’t want a single one of his men left on this island by midmorning.”

Eagan rises from the chair, straightening. “Yes, my king. I’ll make the arrangements now.”

“Make sure they understand this isn’t a request. If they delay, they’ll find out how quickly my hospitality expires.”

Eagan nods once, then glances at me. It’s a brief look, but there’s something in it that feels like both a warning and an apology. Then he slips through the door, and the sound of his footsteps fades quickly down the stone corridor, leaving me alone in the room with the king who just heard me call him delusional.

Kylian moves to the far side of the room with that unhurried predatory grace, and his fingers find the buttons of his shirt, undoing them one by one. The casual intimacy of the gesture makes my skin prickle, as though we’ve been sharing a bedroom for years instead of days, as though undressing in front of me is as natural to him as breathing once was.

I watch his fingers work the buttons, the movement strangely hypnotic in the firelight. Each one reveals another strip of skin, the hard lines of his chest, the shadow of muscle beneath, and I hate that my eyes follow the motion without my permission. Hate that even now, even with Arlo’s broken face branded onto the inside of my eyelids, some treacherous part of me still reacts to the sight of him.

He stops halfway to the washroom door and walks back to the bed. The mattress dips under his weight as he sits beside me, close enough that I can feel the heat of his body. His hand lifts, fingers hovering near my jaw with a hesitation that seems wrong on him.

Then he leans in, and I know what he’s going to do before his mouth reaches mine, and I turn my face.

The motion is small. Just a shift of my chin so that his lips meet the air beside my cheek instead of finding mine, but the effect is immediate and catastrophic. My body stiffens, every muscle locking into place, and the guilt that floods me isn’t the guilt of rejecting a king. It is the guilt of knowing that every time I’ve let this man touch me, every time I’ve responded to his hands and his mouth and the impossible pull between us, I have been betraying someone who sat in a cell and took a whipping so I wouldn’t have to. Someone who told me he loved me without expecting anything in return. Someone who is somewhere beneath my feet in this castle, believing that I chose a monster over him.

Kylian goes still. The growl that leaves him is terrifying, vibrating through the mattress and into my bones. Then he pulls back and disappears into the washroom without a word.

The steady rush of water filling a basin or tub filters through the thin walls. I lie back against the pillows and stare at the ceiling, at the dark wooden beams that cross it as I try to make sense of what I am feeling.

Before tonight, I could almost accept this. On the ship, I had convinced myself that the pull I feel toward Kylian was something I could navigate. That the way my body responded to his was a consequence of this bond he speaks of rather than something I would choose. I could rationalize it, tuck it away behind the necessities of survival and tell myself that whatever happened between us was not mine to feel guilty about. I never asked for this.

But Arlo is here now. Alive.