Chapter 17
SEVENTEEN
FABLE
Iwake to sunlight.
Real sunlight, streaming through windows I don’t recognize, warming my face with a gentleness that seems impossible after the darkness of the battle. The ceiling above me is still obsidian—still carved with patterns of fire and shadow—but it’s different. Higher. Grander.
Not the Throne Hall. Not the healer’s station. Somewhere else.
I try to move. Pain lances through my side, sharp enough to steal my breath, and I gasp before I can stop myself.
The wound. Right. I was stabbed. I was dying.
The last thing I remember is reaching for Zorath—reaching as if my grip on his hand was the only thing keeping me in the world.
I never got the words out. They sat in my chest, urgent and unsayable, while the dark closed in.
Oh gods. I should have said it.
The memory crashes through me, and I squeeze my eyes shut, face burning.
I was bleeding out on the floor, probably delirious, and I should have just—said the words I’ve been carrying for weeks.
The man who’s about to be crowned king of an entire orc kingdom deserved to hear it before I let the dark take me.
But I didn’t. The truth stayed locked behind my teeth, the way it never has when it mattered less.
Some scholar I am. Couldn’t find the right words when they were the only words that mattered.
“You’re awake.”
The voice is soft, exhausted, achingly familiar. I open my eyes and turn my head—carefully, everything hurts—toward the sound.
Zorath sits in a chair beside the bed. The bed I’m lying in, I realize, which is massive—far too large for one person, the kind of bed built for kings.
He’s still wearing the armor from the battle, stained with blood that’s dried to rust-brown.
Dark circles shadow his eyes. His jaw is rough with days of stubble.
And his hands are wrapped around mine, holding tight, as if I might disappear if he lets go.
“How long?” My voice comes out rusty, barely above a whisper.
“Three days.” He doesn’t let go of my hands. Doesn’t look away from my face. “The healers weren’t sure—the blade nicked something internal. There was a fever. You—” His voice catches. “You almost died. Twice.”
That long. I’ve been unconscious that long.
I look around the room properly for the first time.
The furnishings are sparse—weapons on the walls, a desk buried in scrolls and reports, a balcony with a view of smoke and distant fire.
The kind of space that belongs to someone who’s been living in siege mode for years, stripping away anything that might be used against him.
The king’s chambers. No—the prince’s chambers. The rooms that belonged to Zorath’s father before Morvak died. The rooms that belong to Zorath now.
He put me in his bed. While I was unconscious. While the kingdom needed him.
“You should be—” I start, then have to stop as my throat rebels. He reaches for a cup of water on the bedside table, helps me drink, his hand cradling the back of my head with a tenderness that makes something in my chest ache.
When I can speak again: “You should be planning the coronation. Meeting with the nobles. Consolidating power.”
“Vaela is handling it.”
“You can’t delegate everything to—”
“I can delegate whatever I want.” The words come out sharp, then soften. “You almost died, Fable. You almost died because I left you in the Throne Hall while I chased Juk into the crypts. The throne can wait. The nobles can wait. Everything can wait.”
“That’s not how kingdoms work.”
“It’s how mine is going to work.” He lifts my hand to his lips, presses a kiss to my knuckles.
The gesture is gentle, almost reverent, and it sends warmth spreading through me that has nothing to do with the volcanic heat of the Keep.
“You held on to me. At the end. Like you weren’t going to let go even if it killed you. ”
My face flushes. “I was dying. I wasn’t thinking clearly.”
“You were thinking clearly enough to look at me like there was something you couldn’t say. Something you’d been carrying.” His amber eyes hold mine. “Did you mean it? Whatever it was you couldn’t say?”
The familiar instinct rises—reach for dry humor, for academic distance, for all the armor I’ve spent years building. But I’m tired of armor. Tired of defenses. Tired of pretending that what I feel for this man is anything other than what it is.
“Yes.” The word comes out quiet but certain. “I meant it.”
His face changes by degrees. The exhaustion remains, but beneath it—beneath the days of worry, the weight of the crown he hasn’t officially claimed—something else emerges. Relief. Joy. A vulnerability I’ve only glimpsed in stolen moments.
“Good.” He leans forward, presses his forehead against mine. “Because I’ve been sitting here the whole time trying to figure out how to say it first. And I was terrified you’d wake up and pull back. That whatever was in your eyes at the end was just the blood loss.”
“Zorath—”
“I love you.” The words come out rough, as if they’re fighting his throat to escape.
“I’ve loved you since you walked into the archives and looked at me like I was a puzzle to solve instead of a problem to avoid.
I’ve loved you since you stood in front of the council and made truth into a weapon sharper than any blade.
I love you, Fable. And I’m done pretending I don’t. ”
I’m crying. When did I start crying? Tears slide down my cheeks, hot and unexpected, and I can’t seem to stop them. A few days ago I was dying on a stone floor, convinced I’d never get to hear these words. And now—
He kisses me. Soft, careful, mindful of my injuries. His lips brush mine with a tenderness that makes me ache, and I taste salt—my tears or his, I can’t tell anymore. When we break apart, his hands are trembling.
“The kingdom needs you.” I have to say it. Have to remind both of us that there’s a world beyond this bed, beyond this moment. “You can’t hide in here forever.”
“I’m not hiding. I’m waiting for you to recover enough to attend the coronation.” His thumb traces my cheekbone, wiping away tears. “I’m not being crowned without you there. The woman who made it possible. The woman who—” He stops, jaw working.
“The woman who what?”
“The woman I want beside me. On the throne. For the rest of our lives, however long that is.”
My heart stutters. “You can’t mean—”
“I mean exactly what you think I mean.” His gaze holds mine, steady and certain. “When you’re recovered. When the coronation is done. There are things I want to say. Properly. With the ceremony they deserve.”
A human woman on an orc throne. The nobles would object. The traditionalists would rage. The complications are real, and we both know it.
But looking at him—at this man who refused to leave my side, who told me he loved me with the same certainty he brings to battle—I can’t make the practical arguments win.
“Ask me later.” My voice comes out thick with emotion. “When I’m not lying in your bed covered in bandages. When I can give you a proper answer.”
“Is that a maybe?”
“That’s a ‘stop making declarations while I’m too weak to argue with you.’” But I’m smiling. I can feel it, stretching across my face despite the pain in my side. “Now tell me what happened. Everything. From the moment you left the Throne Hall.”
He tells me. Juk’s flight through the crypts, the final confrontation among the tombs of dead kings, the serpent’s last attempts at manipulation. The hammer blows that ended twenty years of conspiracy. The desperate run back to the Throne Hall when Gravik brought news of the attack.
I listen, watching his face as he speaks. The way his jaw tightens when he talks about finding me bleeding. The way his voice roughens when he describes the healers working, the hours of uncertainty, the fever that nearly killed me in the middle of the second night.
He hasn’t slept. I can see that now. All that time at my side, refusing to leave, refusing to let anyone else sit with me. The circles under his eyes are nearly black.
“You need rest.” I squeeze his hand, feel his fingers tighten around mine. “You look terrible.”
“You were dying. Sleep wasn’t a priority.”
“I’m not dying anymore. The healers saved me. Now you need to—”
“I’m not leaving.”
“Zorath—”
“The last time I left you alone, someone put a blade in your side.” His voice drops, fierce and raw. “I’m not leaving this room until you’re strong enough to walk out of it with me.”
The counter-arguments are all there. A king can’t neglect his court in the opening days of his reign. The nobles need handling. The coronation won’t plan itself. Every one of those things is true.
But I’m tired. And hurt. And the warmth of his hand around mine is the most comforting thing I’ve felt since waking.
“Then at least sleep here.” I shift—carefully, painfully—making room in the massive bed. “If you’re determined to stay, you might as well be comfortable.”
He hesitates. “I don’t want to hurt you.”
“You won’t. Just—” I tug his hand. “Please. I spent the whole time dreaming about you. I’d rather have the real thing.”
He doesn’t need more convincing. He kicks off his boots, shrugs out of the worst of the armor, and climbs onto the bed beside me. Carefully, so carefully, he sinks against the pillows, and I curl into his side with my head on his shoulder and my wounded side protected from pressure.
He’s warm. Solid. Real.
“This isn’t proper.” His voice rumbles through his chest, vibrating against my cheek. “The king sleeping with a woman who isn’t his wife. The nobles will talk.”
“The nobles have been talking about us for weeks. This is hardly the worst scandal we’ve caused.”
A huff of something that might be laughter. “Fair point.”
I close my eyes, let myself sink into the solidity of him. The pain in my side is still there—probably will be for weeks—but it’s manageable now. Background noise compared to the relief of being alive, being held, being loved.