Chapter 8 #2
His hand caught my wrist before I could reach for his laces.
"Not here." The words came out strained, like he was fighting himself, and his shadows stilled.
"Not yet. When you finally get your hands on me, I want to be somewhere I can properly appreciate it.
" He opened his eyes, and the heat in them made my breath catch.
"Somewhere I can show you exactly what I'm going to do to you after. Somewhere I can spread you out on silk sheets and worship every inch of you before I make you mine completely.”
My core clenched at the promise in his voice.
At the certainty. Not if — when. He had somewhere in mind.
I could hear it — the way he said "somewhere" like he'd already chosen it, already planned it, already imagined me there.
And the fact that he'd been thinking about this, building toward it, holding himself back until it was right — that undid me more than any touch could have.
"You're a tease."
"I'm selective." He kissed me again—softer this time, almost tender, a stark contrast to the filthy things he'd been saying moments before. "There's a difference."
Both versions of him were real. The demanding, possessive man who said crude things in my ear while his fingers made me fall apart.
And this one—the one who kissed me like I was something precious, who waited because I'd asked him to, who looked at me sometimes with such naked vulnerability that it made my chest ache.
I'd hated him once. Part of me still hadn't forgiven him for what he'd done.
But gods help me, I loved him too. I loved him so fiercely it terrified me. I loved him in a way that felt bigger than either of us, like something ancient and inevitable had taken root in my chest and refused to be denied.
We stayed tangled together on the piano bench for a while longer, my head on his shoulder, his fingers tracing idle patterns on my thigh. The afternoon light slanted through the grimy windows, catching dust motes in golden columns. In moments like this, the rest of the world felt very far away.
"Sarp cornered me yesterday," I said eventually.
Hakan's hand stilled. "Did he?"
"In the library. He wanted to know why I keep blushing every time you walk into a room." I lifted my head to look at him. "He asked if you were any good."
A surprised laugh escaped him. "What did you tell him?"
"That I had no idea what he was talking about."
"Liar."
"Complete liar," I agreed. "He didn't believe me for a second. He said, and I quote, 'Please tell Hakan that if he's going to debauch the princess, the least he can do is give me details so I can live vicariously.'"
Hakan snorted. "Sounds like Sarp."
"He also said that if you break my heart, he's going to tell everyone about the time you cried during a poetry recital."
"I was still only a child. And that poem was devastating."
"I'm sure it was." I traced my finger along his jaw. "He's not upset? About us?"
"Sarp?" Hakan shook his head. "He knew before I did, probably. Spent months telling me to stop being a coward and just make a fucking move, but I was doing everything I could so you would hate me." A shadow passed over his face. "He's a better friend than I deserve."
I heard the weight behind those words. The guilt. Because Sarp wasn't just Hakan's friend—he'd wanted me too, once. Had stepped aside gracefully when he saw the way Hakan looked at me. Had turned his own disappointment into jokes and support because that's who Sarp was.
"He cares about you," I said. "That's why he wants you to be happy."
"He's an idiot."
"He's loyal. There's a difference."
"Even my father says so," Hakan murmured, almost to himself.
"When he visited last week, he told me I was the luckiest bastard alive and that if I ever hurt you, he'd personally ensure my body was never found.
" He said it with a half-smile, the way people smile when they're talking about someone they love completely.
"He's my father, Ada. My mother told me when I was small.
Before I could even hold a sword, he was there — teaching me, protecting us, moving us from village to village when the border got dangerous.
He's the reason I'm alive. If even he approves, I suppose I must be doing something right. "
Milan. Hakan's father. The charming wanderer with the crooked smile and warm grey eyes.
"He's a good man," I said.
"The best," Hakan agreed. "Better than me, certainly."
Hakan was quiet for a moment. Then his arms tightened around me, and he pressed his lips to my hair.
"What did I do to deserve you?"
The question was soft. Vulnerable. So different from the demanding, possessive man who'd had his fingers inside me minutes ago. Both versions were real. Both versions were him.
I thought about telling him the truth—that he hadn't done anything to deserve me, that in fact he'd done terrible things to drive me away, that some part of me still flinched when I remembered the worst of it.
Instead, I kissed his cheek and said, "You got lucky."
His laugh was warm against my skin. "Yeah. I really fucking did."
The afternoon bells chimed in the distance.
I groaned and extracted myself from his lap, straightening my skirts and trying to make myself look like someone who hadn't just been thoroughly ravished.
My hands were trembling slightly—not from nerves but from anticipation, from the knowledge that we were building toward something that felt inevitable now.
I wanted him to be my first. I wasn't afraid anymore.
My body ached with it, with the promise of him, and every time he touched me like this I felt the wanting grow deeper, more certain.
"I have to go. If I'm late for dinner, my handmaidens will ask questions."
"Let them ask."
"Hakan."
"I know, I know." He rose from the bench, stretching in a way that made his shirt pull across his shoulders. I tried not to stare. I failed. His smirk told me he'd noticed. "Same time tomorrow?"
"If I can get away."
"You'll get away." He caught my hand before I could leave, pulled me back for one last kiss. "You always do."
I slipped through the door and into the corridor, smoothing my hair and composing my expression into something that didn't scream I just came on a man's fingers in the music room. The servants' passage was empty, the late afternoon light casting long amber shadows across the stone.
Movement at the window caught my eye. I turned, and there she was—Melo, sitting on the ledge outside the corridor window, watching me with turquoise eyes that held too much intelligence for an animal. Today her eyes held something new. Not the usual watchfulness. Not warning, exactly.
Sadness.
As if she knew something I didn't. As if she could see further down the road we were walking and wanted to tell me to turn back but knew I wouldn't listen.
"What is it?" I murmured, pausing to meet her gaze. "What do you see that I can't?"
The fox stared back, unblinking. Then she turned and disappeared over the ledge, a flash of russet against gray stone, gone before I could call after her.
A chill passed through me despite the warm afternoon. I shook it off and continued toward my chambers, but the sadness in those turquoise eyes stayed with me like a bruise.
* * *
The execution was held in Justice Square the following afternoon.
I told myself I wouldn't watch. Told myself I would close my curtains and read a book and pretend the drums echoing across the city were something else entirely, that I didn't recognize the tension that filled the air around the palace.
But when the time came, I found myself standing at my window like everyone else, staring down at the distant square where a crowd had gathered to watch a man die.
The prisoner was a shadow runner—a merchant caught smuggling goods across the border. Spices, silks, luxury items the Light Court had banned to weaken shadow trade. Nothing dangerous. Nothing worth dying for.
But smuggling was treason, and treason meant purification.
"They say he has children," my handmaiden Sera had reported that morning, practically glowing with anticipation. "Three of them. They'll be registered after, of course. Watched for signs of taint."
"And his wife?"
"Shadow Court. She won't be allowed to collect the body." Sera smiled. "Just as well, really. Who would want to touch something so corrupted?"
I'd said nothing. Just watched her bustle around my chambers, laying out gowns for me to choose from, completely oblivious to the horror of her own words.
This felt natural and normal to her. But I'd been seeing it for months now—the cracks in the golden surface.
The plisk servants walking with their eyes down.
The cleansing ceremonies I once thought were mercy.
The way my father watched everything with calculation rather than kindness.
Ferit's casual cruelty, spoken aloud in gardens where anyone might hear, because no one in the Light Court would think to challenge it.
I kept questioning the Light Court methods. Kept seeing the rot beneath the shine.
Now, standing at my window, I watched the crowd swell.
Hundreds of Light Court citizens, dressed in their finest whites and golds, jostling for better views like this was a festival rather than a murder.
Vendors moved through the masses selling honeyed nuts and spiced wine.
Children sat on their parents' shoulders. Everyone was smiling.
The drums changed rhythm—faster now, building toward the main event.
This is what centuries of lies look like, I thought. Not monsters. Not villains who know what they are. Just people who genuinely cannot see it.