Nadia
We pulled up at the door of The Hollow Stag as the last of the sun bled out behind us.
Behind me, Enzo changed, I felt it in the minute shift of his body against mine—the straightening of his spine, the careful settling of his shoulders, the warmth of the last two hours disappearing beneath something colder and older.
Prince Lorenzo Veyne. Eldest son of the king. Military commander of Tharros.
The man who would walk into a public inn in his own province with all the controlled gravity those titles required.
I sat up, too.
My own version of the same thing.
We were two travelers again. Polite. Distant. Almost convincing.
The innkeeper met us at the door—a witch with iron-gray hair and a sharp, watchful face that softened into open shock the moment her eyes adjusted to who was sitting behind me on the horse.
“My prince.” Her hand fluttered briefly toward her chest before she remembered herself and dropped it. “Thank the saints. We hadn’t expected—please, my prince, please, come in.”
She didn’t ask where his other horse was. Didn’t ask why he wore clothes that had clearly survived a storm, a fall, and possibly an entire war. She just turned and called for a stable lad.
Enzo dismounted first.
Smooth, controlled, every inch the prince arriving at an inn where people knew his name and would remember every detail of how he entered. Then he turned back to me and lifted his hands.
For one stupid second, I considered refusing.
Then Sugar shifted beneath me, and my spine reminded me it hadn’t forgiven anyone for the last week, least of all me.
I put my hands on his shoulders.
His palms closed around my waist.
The lift was quick. Efficient. Public enough to be proper, brief enough to be meaningless.
Except his thumbs brushed the bottom rib of my coat when he set me on my feet, and my body remembered the road. His mouth. The mud. The way his hand had felt in my hair before he’d remembered he was supposed to be made of restraint and terrible decisions.
I stepped back before either of us could make that worse.
The wide-eyed stable lad took Sugar’s reins, trying very hard not to look as though he’d just been handed a sacred relic with teeth.
Enzo murmured something to him, low and quick: “Cool her, walk her, oats, not too much grain, she’s earned it,” and the boy nodded so hard I thought his neck might snap.
Sugar suffered the worship with her ears half-back, accepting the devotion of small humans as no less than her due.
The witch was already ushering us inside.
“We’ve two rooms open this evening, my prince. The corner suite with the larger bed and the better view, or the back room—smaller, quieter. Either’s yours, of course.”
“One will do,” Enzo said.
The words landed with all the subtlety of a thrown dagger.
His voice, unfortunately, was smooth and warm in the way it went for villagers who needed reassurance more than command.
“Whichever you’d prefer to give us, Mistress—”
“Hael, my prince. Hael Marwen.”
“Mistress Marwen,” he said with a small nod. “Whichever is more convenient. We won’t be choosy.”
We.
Not “I.” Not “The lady and I.” Not “Two rooms, thank you.”
We.
I followed Hael up the stairs with my face doing absolutely nothing useful, because apparently my face and I were no longer on speaking terms.
One will do.
He’d taken the second room off the table before I’d even understood it had been offered. Casually. Smoothly. Like the decision required no discussion at all.
Which meant, of course, that he’d thought about it.
Probably thoroughly. Probably in contingencies.
Probably with that infuriating map-brained precision that had already accounted for public perception, safety, my tendency to bleed magic in alleys, and the unfortunate fact that neither of us could currently be trusted to behave like normal people when left alone with a door between us.
Hael led us to the corner suite.
It was warm. That was my first problem.
Wide, too, with a stone hearth opposite the door, a fire already laid and lit, a washbasin on a small dresser, and a table with two chairs near the window.
The bed stood against the far wall, large enough that two careful people might pretend they didn’t have to touch and small enough that the lie would last approximately three breaths.
In the back corner, an opaque screen carved with leaping stags divided off what I assumed was the washing area, its pale panels catching the firelight and softening it into something entirely too intimate.
Naturally.
Because the gods were assholes, and apparently tonight they’d chosen interior design as their weapon of choice.
Hael bustled toward the screen, presumably unaware that she was leading us straight into a moral crisis.
“Bath’s behind there,” she said, gesturing to the carved panels.
“Rune for hot water’s on the rim. Touch it once and it’ll fill.
Again to stop it. It drains itself, so no hauling buckets unless you enjoy suffering.
” Her mouth twitched like she suspected we might.
“Tray of food’s coming up. If you need anything else, ring. ”
“Thank you, Mistress Marwen,” Enzo said.
“Hael, my prince,” she corrected gently, already backing toward the door. “You’ve slept under my roof often enough.”
Something softened in his expression. Barely. “Hael, then.”
She looked pleased by that in a way I absolutely didn’t know what to do with, dipped her head, and closed the door behind her.
Silence settled over the room, heavy enough that no one seemed eager to be the first to disturb it.
I crossed to the bed and sat on the edge before my legs could put the matter to a vote. They’d been asking me how I felt about the day for the better part of an hour, and the answer remained: poorly. Catastrophically. With several formal complaints pending.
Enzo moved to the chair by the window and set down what little gear he had left—his coat, his blades, the small pouch of coin he’d kept on his person.
Everything else was gone. His horse. His seals.
His blood rations. All that careful planning, and not one damn thing for the road opening beneath him.
Then he stood at the window with his back to me.
The man had kissed me in the mud and then climbed onto a horse behind me for two hours, and now he’d apparently decided the dark beyond the glass was the safest thing in the room.
Fine.
A knock saved me from whatever unfortunate direction my mind was taking, and a girl came in carrying a tray piled with bread, roasted meat, cheese, fruit, and a pot of something steaming.
Her eyes went wide at the sight of Enzo by the window.
She bobbed a quick curtsy, nearly lost a pear off the tray, recovered it with impressive reflexes, and fled before anyone could ask her name.
The door closed again.
We were alone with a meal neither of us had touched, one bed, a half-transparent bath screen, and a night stretching ahead of us like a road neither of us was stupid enough to trust.
“Bath first,” I said.
Enzo didn’t turn from the window. “Yes.”
“You first.”
“No.”
“Enzo.”
That got the smallest shift of his shoulders. “You shadow-walked twice in two days,” he said. “You’re going first. We can argue about the rest once you’re warm.”
“We could argue now.”
“We could,” he agreed. “But you’d lose.”
I stared at his back.
His very broad, very irritating back.
“Arrogant bastard.”
“Correct.”
I didn’t argue, partly because he was impossible and partly because I was one stiff breeze away from becoming part of the floor.
So I picked up a roll from the tray and ate it standing there because if I sat again, getting back up would require divine intervention or a pulley system.
Enzo kept his attention on the window. The dark beyond it.
The village street below. Anything, apparently, except me eating bread like a starving animal six feet behind him.
When I finished, I crossed to my pack on the chair and unbuckled the weapons rig I’d been pretending didn’t weigh as much as it did. Leather, steel, shadow-damp straps—all of it came off piece by piece and landed in a neat pile beside the bed.
The dagger stayed on top.
Clean. Sharp. Mine.
I set it within easy reach and didn’t think too hard about why.
Enzo noticed. Of course he noticed. But he said nothing.
I went to the screen before he could decide silence was the wrong choice.
The firelight made the carved stags glow as I stepped behind them, and the copper tub waited on the other side like a trap with plumbing.
A very pretty trap, but still.
The tub was deep. The rune at the rim warmed under my fingers when I touched it, and clean water spilled in with a soft sigh of magic that had the nerve to be useful without being dramatic about it.
Steam curled up in pale ribbons, and I stood there for a moment, staring at it like I didn’t know what came next.
I did.
Unfortunately, knowing what came next didn’t make my body any more interested in cooperating. When I finally climbed into the heat, a small moan slipped out of me before I could stop it.
I froze.
On the other side of the screen, nothing moved. Which meant absolutely nothing, because Enzo was a vampire and probably heard my eyelashes if they blinked too loudly.
Fantastic.
I sank lower into the bath, drew my knees up, and wrapped my arms around my shins. The water closed over the sore, hollowed-out parts of me, hot enough to make my thoughts loosen their grip.
Which was a problem.
Quiet was dangerous. Quiet gave the things I’d been avoiding room to stretch. The kiss. The road. Sugar saving both our lives through what I could only assume was spite and divine intervention. Enzo’s hand on my face.
Call me Enzo. I find I don’t mind it so much coming from you.
The hours on Sugar with him behind me, all heat and restraint and impossible control, his arm slipping around my waist for balance and staying there one breath longer than balance required.
The way he’d said “rations.”
The dagger waiting on the chair on the other side of the screen.
I knew what I would do. I’d known on the road. I’d known with his chest at my back and his breath at my neck and his hunger sitting between us like a third rider neither of us was willing to name.
He wouldn’t let me. Obviously. Enzo Veyne would rather starve himself into the ground with perfect posture than ask for blood from a woman he’d threatened less than a day ago.
Which meant I would have to make the decision for both of us.
Equally obviously.
I scrubbed the road off my skin, climbed out before the bath could turn me into something sentimental and useless, and toweled myself dry. His shirt went over my head because apparently that was what I was sleeping in tonight, and pretending otherwise felt like a waste of everyone’s limited energy.
The sleeves swallowed my hands. The hem hit my knees. The neckline immediately slipped off one shoulder like it had developed opinions.
When I walked out with my filthy clothes in tow, Enzo was sitting in the chair by the window with his eyes closed and his head tipped back, seemingly assembled from exhaustion, restraint, and bad decisions.
He didn’t open his eyes.
“Your turn,” I said softly.
“Mm.”
He stood slowly, and for once, he looked tired—still dangerous, still insufferably composed, but worn thin enough at the edges that I noticed.
Even worse, I fucking cared.
Had he slept at all last night? The night before?
He crossed the room and paused at the screen before looking back at me without any of the usual armor.
The prince’s mask was gone, along with the commander’s calculation, leaving only the man beneath both—carrying more than he would ever admit and still looking at me like I was the problem he least knew how to solve.
Then he stepped behind the screen, and the carved panels swung softly closed.
I shouldn’t have listened but damn if I did it, anyway.
The wet weight of his coat hit the bench first. Then the softer drag of his shirt. The dull clink of belt and sheath. The quiet shift of fabric. The faint scrape of bare feet against stone.
Then the rune answered beneath his touch.
Water filled the tub, soft and steady.
A moment later came his long, slow breath, the sound of a body braced too long against cold, hunger, and control finally remembering how to let go.
I closed my eyes.
This was going to be a spectacularly bad idea.