Chapter 3
CHAPTER THREE
The palace guards escorting me to my rooms are as silent as specters, but I hear their relief when the door shuts behind me. They didn’t speak a word the entire walk. They didn’t need to. No one wants to witness a princess fall apart.
I don’t cry. Not yet. I bite it back like poison on my tongue. I’m still swallowing it down when the servant girl enters—new, young, her voice trembling. It’s the sound of her that shatters me. The way her auburn hair cascades over her shoulders.
She isn’t Anya. She’ll never be Anya.
And Anya is dead.
My heart claws for denial, insisting it’s a mistake.
But my head knows better. Starsfall is not a place that lets weakness survive, and Anya was never meant for this life.
She was too na?ve. Too easily manipulated.
And I made her a target just by being close to her.
My grief isn’t clean—it curdles into guilt, bitter and thick, because she died for me.
Because I was careless. And I should have known better.
Because my magic brings death, even when it is caged.
The girl introduces herself. Her name escapes me. She smiles as she offers a kind word; I return a glare so sharp it could draw blood. She stammers something about a bath and flees and I barely notice her go.
The magic inside me is rising again—hot and cold at once, pressing against my ribs. It ought to be dormant but it isn’t. It’s a darkness that doesn’t belong here. It never did, because it came from somewhere far darker than even the depths of my father’s ambitions.
My fingers trace the carvings on the table edge as I lean toward the ornate mirror and stare at the girl looking back at me.
She’s tired. So very tired. Her cheeks are hollowed, mouth pinched, as if every word she’s swallowed has left a scar.
There’s a tremble in her hands she can’t disguise, and her hazel eyes—once sharp, once shining—are now rimmed with exhaustion, dulled like glass buried too long in sand.
And somehow, I’m touching my lips. Absent. Thoughtless. Remembering the way his mouth met mine—how soft it was, and how hard it turned when I didn’t pull away. The heat. The shock. The terrifying sweetness of being wanted.
Or maybe I kissed him. I can’t remember quite how every kiss with him happened. Only that some of it was gentle. Some of it was not.
It was a reckoning. It was a mess.
A knock comes, followed by the servant’s timid voice. “Your bath, Princess.”
She leads me through the torchlit halls, chattering about herbs and salts and how everything’s been drawn fresh for me.
The guards flank us without comment. It is only three turns and one stair from my rooms, a short way that feels longer tonight.
The unease sits too heavy for the simple ritual of a bath in the royal pools, and I know that even the warm waters of the royal pools cannot wash away the ruin of me.
We reach the bathhouse and the guards take their stations outside.
Jailors, not protectors. Inside, the water steams like fog over glass.
The scent of lavender and bitterwood curls through the air, earthy and calming.
Light flickers across marble and shadow.
The space is beautiful—ancient, serene, intimate—but I know none of its peace.
The servant girl helps me undress, her hands trembling. I lift my chin and unclasp the cloak myself, draping it over her arms. “I’ll manage from here.”
She opens her mouth, uncertain.
“Go,” I say, gentler. “I need to be alone.”
I keep the distance on purpose. Father plants eyes everywhere, and kindness can be mistaken for trust.
She bows and hesitates. “As you wish, Princess.”
But she doesn’t make it to the door before a low, unmistakable voice speaks. “I’ll stay.”
I turn—slowly—and there he is, framed in the archway like some carved sentinel from legend. Sword at his hip, and the night caught in the hollows of his face.
Mallen.
For a moment, I don’t speak. The torches hiss. The steam curls between us.
“I didn’t summon you.”
He steps forward, his expression unreadable. “Your father insisted someone guard you after the attack from Moonsrise. I wasn’t about to entrust that to the palace watch.” He glances over his shoulder at the servant still frozen behind him. “Leave us.”
Her gaze darts between us, unsure. But this time, she obeys.
Now it’s only us.
Mallen closes the door behind her and remains there, upright and distant, as if chained by his own restraint. His presence pulls at me like gravity, though he keeps his distance as if one more step might shatter his control.
“He’s insisting someone is with you at all times.” He lets the latch click, the sound small in the steaming room. “Your father wants you watched carefully. Too closely for your liking.”
“Mallen—”
“I won’t look,” he says, softly. “Not unless you want me to.”
Only now do I realize how much my ribs ache. How much I needed to exhale. And how much I want to play with fire.
“You think I’m in danger?” I ask.
“Always.”
“From you?”
His gaze lifts to meet mine, and his eyes are far too bright in the darkness. They glint, as if there’s something wild beneath their emerald color. “If you choose it.”
It’s a cruel thing, the way my stomach flips at his voice.
The way warmth pools where it shouldn’t.
Mallen is a man who’s torn men’s lives away.
A king’s blade in daylight, and a patient knife in the dark.
But he’s also the man who pressed me against him and kissed me like it might be the last thing he ever did.
And still.
Still, I want to know how much this means.
“I don’t want a guard.”
He doesn’t move. “So bathe. I’ll watch the wall instead.”
My fingers play with the laces of my tunic as I hesitate. I’ve undressed before him a dozen times before. But it was never like this. Not with this weight between us. Not with the memory of his mouth still lingering on mine.
I turn slightly, keeping my back to him. My voice is steady now, clipped and cool. “You may stay. But if you look, I’ll know.”
There’s the faintest sound—perhaps a breath, perhaps a laugh—but he says nothing.
I want to turn. More than anything I’ve ever known. He’s only standing a few paces behind me, silent as a shadow, so I pretend the heat in my face is from the steam curling over the bath. This should be like any other evening. Routine. Unremarkable.
I step out of my sandals and trousers, curling my toes at the edge of the pool.
Think of the steps. Just the steps. Not the man behind you. Not the way my breath tangles in my chest. Just water. Just normal. Not the way I’m pulling at the knots in my hair as I let it fall over my shoulders like armor I never asked for.
When I finally glance back, Mallen’s gaze is fixed on the torchlit stone—staring at the shimmer where the light hits the wall, as if the answer to every unspoken thought might rise from its surface if he watches long enough.
The water welcomes me, warm and calm. I pause at the waist, hands drifting to the tie at my hip, the last barrier between this strange new self and the man who’s trying not to watch.
I freeze, the water lapping softly at my hips.
The tension pulling at me is like a drawn bowstring.
Taut. Dangerous. A game I shouldn’t be playing, but that makes it more exciting.
I take another step deeper into the heat.
And then I hear something else—his breath catching. Uneven.
A slow smile tugs at my lips. If this is what it feels like to be wanted, truly wanted, then I understand why people hunger for it. Why they chase it through fire. Why they surrender to its flames, offering their hearts as kindling.
I draw the knot loose and let the fabric slip from my shoulders. I turn to see it half-floating, half-submerged behind me. Entirely forgotten.
Mallen doesn’t move. His chest rises and falls, heaving and controlled, like a man fighting a battle he refuses to lose. His hand curls at his sides, white-knuckled. His muscles tense, as if restraint hurts him.
“Maybe you should turn around,” I mumble.
The water swallows me as I glide deeper and I close my eyes as heat seeps into my aching muscles. A moan slips from my lips. Not performative—just real. Honest. My fingers rub along my shoulder and neck, chasing away the tension, and for a heartbeat, I forget everything.
When I open my eyes again, he’s gone.
Panic flutters in my throat. I’m alone, and Mallen said he wouldn’t leave. Only now do I understand how much I need him. I turn, scanning the mist, and I’m disorientated when I find him standing at the edge of the pool—close now. Watching. Silent.
I inhale too sharply.
“Princess,” he says.
“Mallen.”
His arms fold across his chest, but not lazily, as though he’s bracing against a storm only he’s caught in.
The motion makes his form more severe. Regal.
Warrior-like. As if he’s holding himself together through sheer force of will.
There’s nothing flirtatious in it. But his eyes—those piercing green eyes that trace the shape of me like a map he’s memorized and can’t stop revisiting—devour every inch of me with a reverence that makes me ache.
And this game—gods, this game—is a wicked kind of worship, a sacred tension drawn between us like a blade held at the throat of control.
“I told you. There’s no escaping me.”
His voice is rough, but the arrogance is tempered now, quieter. A truth, not a threat.
There’s a difference between being looked at and being seen. And Mallen sees too much.
I square my shoulders and lift my chin, unwilling to flinch beneath the intensity of it.
The corners of my lips curl into a grin I cannot hide as my fingers trace my collarbone.
Mallen sees that too, and I realize he’s also waiting.
Not to win, but for me to want to play. This is invitation, not conquest. A challenge extended, not forced.
“A sponge,” I say, extending a hand. “Unless you’d rather I ask one of your soldiers for help.”