Chapter 34
Stairs curved gently as I climbed toward Fenric’s chambers, the soles of my boots quiet against polished stone.
The corridor up here was darker than the rest of the castle, narrow windows cutting thin slashes of moonlight across the stone walls.
Shadows pooled in every corner, humming, always humming.
I rounded the corner, and froze.
Because Fenric was there.
But he wasn’t alone.
His fingers were tangled in long blue hair that spilled like midnight water over shoulders I recognised.
Fenric looked like a man caught in a storm, and Lincatheron was the storm—towering over him, devouring him like salvation and punishment all at once.
There was nothing careful in it. Nothing kind.
It was violence dressed as a kiss. A collision of hunger and fury and need.
Lincatheron’s massive frame had Fenric crushed against the stone, one hand fisted in his hair hard enough that Fenric’s head was tilted back at an angle that had to hurt.
His other hand gripped Fenric’s hip with bruising force, fingers digging into flesh like he was trying to hold him in place through sheer will.
And Fenric—gods, Fenric was clinging. His fingers clawed at Lincatheron’s shoulders, his back, anywhere he could reach, pulling him closer even though there was no space left between them. He moaned into it, his cheeks flushed, brows drawn as though it hurt to be kissed like that, or to stop.
Lincatheron made a noise in response. Low and guttural and possessive, the kind of sound that shouldn’t come from someone as controlled as him. His mouth moved from Fenric’s lips to his jaw, his throat, biting down on the pale column of skin hard enough to leave marks.
“Fuck—” Fenric’s voice was wrecked, barely recognisable. “We can’t—”
“I know.” Lincatheron didn’t stop. His teeth found the junction of Fenric’s neck and shoulder. “I know Fen, I know.”
“Then stop.”
“You first.”
Fenric’s laugh was short and broken and edged with pain. “You know I can’t.”
And then Lincatheron was lifting him. Just—lifting him like Fenric weighed nothing, hands gripping his thighs as Fenric’s legs wrapped around his waist. Lincatheron slammed him back against the wall hard enough that I heard the impact, heard the breath punch out of Fenric’s lungs.
“We have to stop this,” Fenric gasped against Lincatheron’s mouth, even as his hands tangled deeper into dark hair. “If anyone finds out—”
“I don’t care.”
“Yes you do.” Fenric pulled back just enough to meet Lincatheron’s eyes, and even from here I could see the anguish written across his features. “You care about your position, your reputation, what Varyth would—”
“I care about you.” Lincatheron’s voice cracked on the word, and my heart twisted at the sound. “I can’t do this. Can’t keep acting like I don’t—”
“Don’t.” Fenric’s hands moved to frame Lincatheron’s face, forcing him to meet his gaze. “Don’t say it. It only makes it harder.”
“Harder than this?” Lincatheron’s laugh was bitter, hollow.
“Harder than watching you every gods-damned day and not being able to touch you except in the training yard? Harder than lying awake knowing you’re down the hall and I can’t—” He cut himself off with a sound of pure frustration, pressing his forehead against Fenric’s. “We can’t keep doing this.”
“I know.”
“We’re going to get caught.”
“I know.”
“Someone’s going to notice how I can’t fucking breathe when you’re in danger. How I throw myself over you like some kind of—”
“I noticed.” Fenric’s tone was almost gentle. “You think I don’t see it? The way you position yourself between me and every threat?”
“Then you know this is insane.”
“Completely fucking insane.” Fenric’s thumb traced across Lincatheron’s cheekbone, the gesture so tender it made my throat tight. “And I still can’t stay away from you.”
My brain was trying to process what I was witnessing, trying to reconcile this with every interaction I’d seen between them. Every look, every gesture, every moment that had felt weighted with something I couldn’t parse.
Oh.
Oh.
That look across the dinner table. A conversation happening in the space between them. Lincatheron’s arm thrown protectively across Fenric’s chest when they’d both been unconscious in that tunnel.
The way Fenric had screamed at him after the cave-in, rage masking terror. If you ever do that again, I will kill you myself.
Lincatheron’s desperate justification. If something happens to you—
Every single moment clicked into place like puzzle pieces I hadn’t known I was collecting.
Holy shit.
I should leave. Should back away slowly, pretend I’d never climbed these stairs, never rounded this corner. Give them this moment of stolen privacy in a castle where everyone had eyes everywhere.
But I couldn’t move.
Couldn’t look away.
Because Lincatheron was kissing Fenric again, slower this time but no less intense. Like he was trying to memorise the taste of him. Like this might be the last time.
“Tomorrow,” Fenric murmured against his mouth. “Tomorrow, we stop. We go back to being professional. To pretending this isn’t—”
“Destroying us both?”
“Yeah. That.”
“Tomorrow.” But his hands tightened on Fenric’s thighs. “Just give me another minute. One more minute where I don’t have to pretend.”
Fenric made a sound, broken and beautiful and utterly wrecked. Then he was kissing Lincatheron like he was dying, like Lincatheron was air and he’d been drowning, like tomorrow didn’t exist and they had all the time in the world instead of stolen minutes in a dark corridor.
My heart was hammering so hard I was surprised they couldn’t hear it. My pulse roared in my ears, blood rushing with something that felt dangerously close to recognition.
Because I knew that desperation. Knew what it felt like to love someone you couldn’t have, couldn’t claim, couldn’t keep. Knew the particular torture of stolen moments.
Lincatheron pulled back just enough to speak. “We should—”
“Don’t.” Fenric’s voice was wrecked, desperate.
“Someone will see—fuck—Fen—”
Teeth sank into the line of Lincatheron’s throat, not gentle, not even a little. And whatever protest had been forming behind Lincatheron’s clenched teeth shattered into a moan that made my knees wobble.
I needed to flee. I needed to vanish through the stone, disappear, die, something.
I tried to back away, to pretend I’d never seen the way Lincatheron’s hands shook as they traced Fenric’s face.
My boot scuffed against the stone.
The sound was small.
It might as well have been a war horn.
The pair broke apart like they’d been burned.
Lincatheron released Fenric so abruptly that Fenric stumbled, catching himself against the stone wall with a gracelessness that would have been almost funny if my heart wasn’t trying to claw its way out of my chest.
For a moment, no one spoke.
No one even breathed.
The silence was absolute. Suffocating. The sort of silence that existed in the space between a blade leaving its sheath and finding flesh.
Fenric’s face was white as moonlight against shadow, his steel-blue eyes wide with primal panic. His mouth opened, words trying to form and dying before they could take shape.
“I—” he started, then stopped, running trembling fingers through his hair. “This isn’t—”
His eyes closed briefly, and when they opened again, there was something broken there. Something that made my chest tighten.
“Shit.”
Lincatheron had gone predator-still, but there was nothing cold about the way his teal gaze fixed on me.
Fire burned there, feral and protective, like he was calculating exactly how much violence it would take to keep his secrets buried.
His massive frame blocked Fenric partially from view, an unconscious shield that spoke of instincts deeper than thought.
I tried to fumble for words—anything—that might salvage this moment. Make it less devastating. Less intimate. Less like I’d just witnessed their souls stripped bare in the worst possible way. But my brain had stumbled somewhere between holy shit and oh gods what do I do with this information.
“I didn’t—” I cut off, because what the hell was I supposed to say? Sorry I caught you devouring each other against the wall like the world was ending? Don’t mind me, just pretend I’m not here while you work through your sexual tension?
Fenric’s hands were shaking. This polished, unflappable warrior who could charm his way through anything—and I’d reduced him to this just by existing in the wrong place at the wrong time.
He took a step toward me, and instinct made me take a step back.
His expression did something complicated—hurt and understanding and resignation all at once.
“Isara,” Fenric said finally, hoarse with desperation. “Can you just—” He gestured vaguely toward his chambers. “Come inside for a minute? We can... talk.”
Lincatheron’s jaw tightened, wariness flickering across his features. His protective stance shifted, became more pronounced.
But I looked at Fenric. Really looked at him. Saw the mask he wore cracking at the edges. Saw the way he held himself like he was bracing for rejection. For judgment.
And somehow, without fully understanding why, I found myself nodding.
“Alright,” I said quietly. “Let’s talk.”
We slipped inside, and the chamber door clicked shut behind us with a sound that felt far too final.
Fenric started pacing immediately, running his hands through his already wrecked hair like he could somehow smooth away what had just happened. “I—gods, Isara, I can explain. This isn’t—okay, it is what it looked like, but—”
“Fenric,” I said gently, but he kept going.
“And gods, what you must think of us, conducting ourselves like novices in the hallway, but have you seen him? Have you looked at him? Really looked?” His voice fractured on the words. “Because he’s everything fierce and protective and beautiful and I’m so gone for him it’s not even funny—”
“Fenric.”