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Lucan smirks. “The good gossip starts after midnight.” He finishes the rest of his drink before pointing the glass at me. “He’s got you wrapped, man.”
“Get the fuck out, dude.”
Rafe reappears, towel around his neck, and snorts. “Wow. Kicking us out for your boyfriend now?”
“Exactly.” I jerk my chin toward the door. “Damaris is probably waiting for his husband already anyway.”
“I hate you,” Lucan deadpans.
“No, you don’t.”
He flips me off before heading for the door, broad shoulders filling half the room while Rafe laughs under his breath and follows after him.
Damaris appears just long enough to shove a plate into Lucan's chest. “Eat before you start another fight.”
“You're getting bossy.”
“And yet you keep me around.”
The door slides shut behind them a minute later, finally leaving the wing quiet for once.
I pick up the glass Lucan abandoned beside the couch and stare out toward the city lights beyond the windows.
The Legacy event keeps circling around in my head.
Rowan saying somebody was there watching him. Dad admitting afterward that somebody got into the event who wasn’t supposed to be there in the first place.
We’ve always had enemies. That’s not new.
The problem is the possibility that whoever’s circling Rowan now might overlap with ours somehow.
And if that’s true, then this whole situation is a lot worse than I originally thought.
My multi-slate lights up again before I can think too hard about it.
mouse: Halvern finally released me. What are you actually doing right now, or is that classified too?
My mouth curves at the screen.
Fuck. I don’t even want out anymore.
Most of the time, Rowan looks like he’s watching everything around him at once, always thinking ahead even when he’s trying to relax. But sometimes, late at night when it’s only the two of us, he’ll look at me with this quiet exhaustion underneath all that self-control, and it does something to me every single time.
Even now, I can picture him sitting in my room while Damaris cooks in the kitchen, pretending not to watch me while I take apart the old Noctis mechanism spread across the table.
The glow from the terminal catches in his hair whenever he looks up—gold-lit, beautiful, and getting harder to give back.
Rowan always acts like I’m the chaotic one between us, but half the time he watches me like I’m the most fascinating thing he’s ever seen. I catch him doing it when I’m talking, fighting with Lucan, or explaining something he insists is statistically impossible, and Light, I love it more than I probably should.
I love the way he rolls his eyes at me while still listening anyway, and the way he goes soft whenever I pull him into my lap even though he’d never admit it.
And Light, the things I think about doing to him once he finally gets back tonight. Peeling him out of that stiff performance shirt one button at a time. Finding out what sound he makes when I take my time instead of rushing him. He spends all day being watched by an entire academy, holding himself together so carefully that nobody sees the cracks. I want to be the one place he never has to. I want him loud and undone and mine, spread across my sheets with that maddening self-control finally gone.
It should scare me, how much I want to keep him. How fast temporary turned into something I refuse to hand back. A month ago Rowan Ashford was a name on my father’s list. Now he’s the last thought I have before I sleep and the first one when I wake, and some cold part of me already knows I’d burn a great deal down before I let anyone take him from me.
I carry Lucan’s abandoned glass out onto the terrace because my head’s too full to sit still anymore, and lean against the railing and look out across Caervast while the city glows beneath it in layers of gold and white.
My eyes find Rowan crossing the inner courtyard below with his case strapped over one shoulder while students move around him in clusters beneath the late evening lights. The light catches in his hair every time he passes beneath one of the arches, turning the strands almost gold. And all I can think about is how badly I want to call down to him just to watch him glance up at me with that annoyed expression he gets whenever he catches me staring again.
