Chapter 16 Mira #2
He pulled me into an easy rhythm, nothing as polished as Lucian’s court-trained technique but twice as fun. His grin was infectious, his hand warm against the small of my back.
“Having fun?”
“Yes, actually.” I nodded, then lowered my voice. “Although I do feel daggers in my back.”
I turned my head. Cateline stood across the dance floor, a drink in her hand and murder in her eyes. She watched Percy’s arm around my waist with an expression that could curdle milk.
Percy followed my gaze. “Ah.”
“She’s staring.”
“She does that.”
I leaned into him. Placed my head against his chest, feeling his heartbeat through his shirt. Then, very deliberately, I slid my hand up his arm, tracing the line of his bicep through the fabric, and let my palm rest there while I stared directly at Cateline.
Her face flushed crimson and her grip tightened on her glass until the plastic cracked, spilling punch over her fingers. She wiped her hand on her dress, shot me a look that could melt steel, and stomped away defeated for the nth time.
I grinned against Percy’s chest.
“You’re evil,” he murmured into my hair.
“I know.”
His laughter vibrated through his ribs and into mine. He spun me out again, one hand keeping hold, and when the momentum brought me back, it wasn’t toward him.
Solomon caught me.
His hand found my waist, steadying me, and the transition from Percy’s warmth to Solomon’s was instant and complete. Different temperature, same safety.
My heart fluttered.
The moment Solomon took my hand, the noise stopped.
It wasn’t the crowd or the music but the noise inside my head.
The constant, low-grade hypervigilance that had lived in my skull since Hudson. The scanning of exits, the tracking of strangers, the bracing for a hand that grabbed too hard. Solomon’s silence swallowed all of it.
We swayed. His hand was enormous on my lower back, warm and steady, and I let myself lean into the solid wall of his chest without checking whether anyone was watching.
“You’re a good dancer, big guy.”
The tips of his ears went pink. “You sound surprised.”
“A little. You move through most rooms trying to be invisible. This is...” I tilted my head, studying him. “Different.”
“You asked me to dance.”
He was talking more than his usual three-word answers. The observation made me greedy for more.
“Can I ask you about it?” My fingers drifted up from his shoulder toward his jaw and hovered near the scar. “You don’t have to answer.”
His body tensed. A fractional shift, barely perceptible, but I’d learned to read him in the spaces between words.
“You can ask.”
My fingertip traced the air beside the scar, not quite touching. The line ran from his temple until his jaw, jagged and pale against his brown skin. I’d wondered about it since the first night.
“Why didn’t it heal?”
Solomon’s jaw worked. His gaze drifted over my head, into the middle distance, and for a moment I thought he’d retreat into silence. Then his eyes came back to mine and he spoke with careful precision.
“A witch,” he said. “Centuries ago. She crossed the Veil into Veyndral. No one had breached our borders in generations, and she did it alone. Curious, we think. Drawn by the kingdom she’d heard stories about and wanted to see for herself.”
“What happened?”
“Lucian had just taken the throne. I was newly appointed as his second.” His thumb traced an absent circle on my back. “She was discovered near the palace grounds. She lashed out with a cursed blade. I stepped between her and Lucian.”
The image formed in my mind. A younger Solomon, new to the role. Throwing himself in front of his king.
“The blade caught my face. Temple to jaw.” His voice was flat, clinical. “Cursed steel doesn’t heal. Whatever magic she’d woven into the metal, it scarred permanently. Left a mark that our regeneration couldn’t touch.”
My chest ached. “What happened to her?”
“Lucian beheaded her and sent the head to her coven as a lesson. But the damage was done.” He paused.
“The council used the breach to justify sealing the borders tighter, reinforcing the Veil. If one outsider could get through, others could follow. After that, Veyndral closed itself off even further.”
“And you got a scar you couldn’t erase.”
“I got a reminder.” His eyes dropped to mine. “My first duty as his second, and I almost failed. The blade was meant for Lucian’s throat. If I’d been a half-second slower...”
He didn’t finish, didn’t need to.
“So you swore you’d never fail again,” I said quietly.
The surprise on his face was brief and raw.
As if he hadn’t expected me to understand the weight beneath the story.
As if the five centuries of relentless vigilance, the sleepless nights standing guard, the reputation as the most dangerous enforcer in Veyndral, all of it traced back to a single scar and the half-second that haunted him.
“Yes,” he said.
I touched it. My fingertip landed on the raised skin at his temple and traced the full length of the scar, slow, down across his cheekbone, along his jaw. He went perfectly still beneath my hand. His breath stopped and his fingers curled against my back, pressing into the fabric of the dress.
“It’s beautiful,” I said. “I know you don’t think so. But it is.”
His ears went red again, deeper this time. The blush spread down his neck and he looked away, and the sight of Solomon, the most controlled man I’d ever met, blushing because I’d called his scar beautiful, made my chest crack open.
“Thank you,” I said. “For the dress. For remembering.”
“You deserve to be seen, Mira.” His voice was low. Barely audible above the music. “That’s all.”
He held me closer, more certain. His arm wrapped around my waist, pulling me against his chest, and I could feel his heartbeat against mine. Faster than he’d ever let his face betray.
The fairy lights caught his face. His pale eyes turned silver-gold in the glow, and the scar I’d just traced looked almost elegant.
It wasn’t just a wound anymore but a testament. To loyalty, to duty, to the man who’d thrown himself between a cursed blade and his king without hesitation and would do it again every single time.
My heart pounded so hard I knew he could hear it.
His thumb pressed against the small of my back, tracing circles through the fabric of the dress, and each rotation sent electricity down my spine and pooling low in my stomach.
My thighs pressed together on instinct, and his hand tightened against my back as if he’d sensed the response and was holding himself together because of it.
I gave in.
I rose on my toes. My hand slid to the back of his neck, fingers threading into the short hair at his nape. His breath caught, and for one second his entire body went rigid, every muscle locked.
Then I kissed him.
His lips were warm, firm. And for two heartbeats, he didn’t move or breathe. The same frozen shock from the journal moment, from every time I touched him and his body short-circuited.
Then his hand gripped my waist and pulled me flush against him, and the restraint he’d been building for weeks collapsed in a single breath.
Solomon kissed me back with all of his patience breaking at once.
His mouth moved against mine, desperate and reverent at the same time, his hand splayed across my lower back pressing me into him until his body heat bled through the dress and sank into my skin. His other hand came up and cupped the side of my face, tilting my head, deepening the angle.
I opened for him and he groaned, the sound vibrating against my lips as his tongue found mine. My fingers tightened in his hair and I pulled. His hips jerked forward against me, involuntary, sending a bolt of heat through my core that nearly buckled my knees.
The music played, people danced. The fairy lights blurred into streaks of gold.
I didn’t care about any of it.
When we pulled apart, both of us were breathing hard. His forehead pressed against mine, his hand still cradling my jaw, and his eyes were molten silver, blown wide, wrecked.
“You don’t have to hold back anymore.” My voice came out rough. I traced his scar with my fingertip one more time, following the line from temple to jaw. “I’m not scared of you.”
His eyes closed and his forehead stayed against mine. For a moment, Solomon, the King’s Blade, the man who’d carried a scar for centuries as punishment, held perfectly still and let himself be touched by the woman he’d been waiting his whole life to find.
The night wound down slowly after that.
The band switched to quieter songs. The crowd thinned as families headed home and the younger people migrated toward the bar at the edge of the square.
Lucian kept a perimeter, positioned at the edge of every room I entered. Percy charmed the bartender into giving us free dessert. Solomon stayed close, his hand finding the small of my back every few minutes.
I didn’t want it to end.
But some things needed finishing.
“Bathroom,” I announced, pushing back from the table. “Be right back.”
Three sets of eyes locked onto me.
“It’s the women’s restroom.” I held up a hand. “You can’t follow me there.”
Lucian’s jaw tightened. “We’ll wait outside.”
“You’ll wait here. It’s twenty feet away and there are a hundred people between here and there. I’ll survive a two-minute pee without a royal escort.”
A short staring contest that Lucian lost.
“Two minutes,” Lucian said.
“Three. I want to check my hair.”
“Two and a half.”
“You’re insufferable.” I turned and walked toward the back of the square where the temporary restrooms had been set up.
The crowd thinned as I moved away from the dance floor. The music faded, replaced by the chirp of crickets and the distant hum of conversation.
The restrooms sat at the end of a gravel path, tucked behind a row of vendor stalls that had already closed for the night. The fairy lights didn’t reach this far.
My dagger was strapped to my thigh beneath the dress.
I glanced over my shoulder.
Shadows. Empty stalls. The path behind me was clear.
My hand found the door handle. I pulled.
A hand closed over mine.
I didn’t have time to scream.
He was behind me.
Pressed against my back, one hand over my mouth. The other gripping my wrist hard enough to grind the bones together.
His breath was hot against my ear, and his cologne… the cologne I’d spent two years trying to forget, the one that still made my stomach turn in my sleep, flooded my senses.
“Hello, Mira.” Hudson’s voice curled against my skin. “Did you miss me?”