Chapter 23
TWENTY-THREE
TAMSIN
Iwake to cold arms wrapped around me and a room that smells of winter and woodsmoke.
For a moment, I don’t move. Don’t open my eyes.
I just lie there, feeling the solid presence of Auren’s body against my back, the rise and fall of his chest as he breathes.
His arm is draped over my waist, his hand spread across my stomach, and even through the sheets, I can feel the chill of his skin.
It should be uncomfortable. It isn’t.
Something has shifted in me since last night. Something I’m still trying to understand. When I came to his door, I told myself I needed something real—something to ground me after the horror of killing my sister. And he gave me that. Gave me his body, his bed, his carefully guarded space.
But it was more than physical. More than distraction. When he held me afterward, when he watched me sleep with those gold eyes soft in a way I’ve never seen from him—something clicked into place. A piece I didn’t know was missing.
This dragon who spent decades hating everything my bloodline represents. This ice-cold strategist who built walls so high even his brothers struggle to reach him. He let me in. Not just into his chambers, but past every defense he’s constructed.
And I don’t know what to do with that. Don’t know how to hold something this fragile without breaking it.
Morning light filters through the frost patterns on his windows—patterns that weren’t there last night.
Evidence of what we did, written in ice across every surface.
The headboard. The walls. The ceiling. We made a mess of his precise, organized quarters, and some part of me finds that deeply satisfying.
I shift slightly, testing whether he’s awake, and his arm tightens around me.
“Don’t.” His voice is rough with sleep, his breath cold against the back of my neck. “Stay.”
“I wasn’t leaving.” I turn in his arms until I’m facing him, our noses almost touching.
His gold eyes are soft in the morning light, lacking the sharp calculation they usually carry.
He looks younger this way. Less guarded.
More human, somehow, despite being anything but.
“I was just checking if you were awake.”
“I’ve been awake for hours.” His hand traces up my spine, leaving goose bumps in its wake. “Watching you sleep.”
“That’s either romantic or deeply unsettling.”
“Can’t it be both?” The corner of his mouth quirks up—the closest thing to a smile I’ve seen from him that doesn’t involve strategy or satisfaction at an enemy’s defeat.
My chest does something complicated at that almost-smile.
This isn’t how I imagined falling for someone.
Not in the middle of a war, not with a man who should have been my enemy, not while I’m still carrying ash in my lungs from my sister’s death.
But here I am, tangled in ruined sheets with a dragon who makes my heart race when he quirks his lips, and I can’t bring myself to regret it.
I kiss him instead of trying to articulate any of that. Soft, unhurried, nothing like the desperate intensity of last night. His cold lips warm against mine as the kiss deepens, and when I finally pull back, his eyes have darkened.
“Good morning,” I murmur.
“It is now.”
We lie there for a while, tangled in sheets that are half-frozen and half-scorched, not talking.
His fingers trace idle patterns on my hip.
My hand rests against his chest, feeling the slow beat of his heart beneath my palm.
The silence is comfortable in a way I didn’t expect—no need to fill it with words, no pressure to perform or explain.
I find myself studying his face in the morning light.
The sharp angles of his jaw. The pale gold of his hair against the darker pillows.
The way his lashes cast shadows on his cheeks when he blinks.
He’s beautiful, in a cold, carved sort of way.
The kind of beauty that makes you want to see if you can make it crack.
Last night, I made it crack. Made him lose control, made that ice shatter into something burning. The memory sends heat pooling low in my belly.
“You’re staring,” he says, without opening his eyes.
“Admiring.”
His eyes open, and the softness in them makes my breath catch. “The feeling is mutual.”
Morrigan is dead.
The thought surfaces unbidden, and some of the warmth drains from the moment. I killed my sister yesterday. Burned her from the inside out with power she spent her whole life trying to steal. And then I came here, to Auren’s bed, and let him make me forget for a few hours.
“Stop.” His voice cuts through the spiral of my thoughts. When I look at him, his gaze has sharpened again—reading me with that uncanny accuracy. “Whatever you’re thinking, stop.”
“I killed her.”
“You stopped her.” His hand cups my jaw, tilting my face toward his. “There’s a difference.”
“Is there?”
“Yes.” No hesitation. No comfort wrapped in pretty lies. Just certainty, cold and absolute. “Morrigan made her choices. Every single one of them led to that ritual chamber. You didn’t kill your sister, Tamsin. She died decades ago, when she decided that power mattered more than family.”
I want to argue. Want to cling to the guilt, because guilt feels safer than the emptiness that’s trying to take its place. But Auren’s gaze holds mine, steady and unflinching, and I find myself believing him.
Or at least wanting to.
“How are you so certain?” I ask.
“Because I spent decades blaming myself for Lyric.” His thumb traces my cheekbone, the touch almost tender.
“For not being there. For not seeing through Morrigan’s deception.
For every choice that might have changed the outcome.
It nearly destroyed me.” He pauses, something shifting in his expression.
“I won’t watch you walk that same path.”
The protectiveness in his voice undoes something in my chest. This man who built walls of ice to keep the world out—he’s trying to protect me from myself. From my own guilt. It’s such an unexpected kindness that I don’t know how to respond.
I press my forehead against his, breathing him in. Cold and clean, with an undertone of something sharper—magic, maybe. Or just him.
“Thank you,” I whisper.
He doesn’t answer with words. Just kisses me again, slow and thorough, and for another few minutes I let myself forget that the world exists beyond this bed.