Chapter 17 #2
“I dreamed about you.” His voice is quieter now, rougher with exhaustion. “While you were unconscious. I kept dreaming you’d died. That I was too late. That I’d lost you the way I lost my father, my mother, everyone I’ve ever—” He stops.
I turn my head, press a kiss to the nearest part of him I can reach—his jaw, rough with stubble. “I’m here. I’m alive. You didn’t lose me.”
“I know.” His arm tightens around me. “I know. But I can’t stop—” Another pause. “Watching you breathe and praying you wouldn’t stop. I’ve never been so scared of anything. Not the Regents. Not the assassination attempts. Not any of it.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t apologize. You saved the kingdom. You walked into the Throne Hall and destroyed Juk’s coalition with nothing but evidence and courage.” His lips brush my forehead. “I’m just—I’m never letting you out of my sight again. I hope you know that.”
“That seems impractical.”
“I don’t care.”
I smile against his shoulder. “The terrible diplomat.”
“The worst.” His voice is fading, exhaustion finally winning. “But you love me anyway.”
“I do.” The words come easily now. Naturally. “I really do.”
His breathing slows. Deepens. The tension drains from his body as sleep finally claims him, and I lie there in the circle of his arms, watching sunlight paint patterns on the obsidian ceiling.
My body needs rest. I know that. But I can’t stop looking at him—at the face I almost never saw again, at the man I almost lost before I could tell him the truth.
I love him. And he loves me. And somehow, despite everything, we’re both still breathing.
The door opens silently.
I tense, hand reaching for a weapon I don’t have, but the figure in the doorway is familiar. Silk robes, sharp eyes, an expression that gives nothing away.
Vaela.
She takes in the scene—the king asleep in his bed with a human woman curled against his side—and something flickers across her face. Something I might call grief, if I didn’t know better.
“He hasn’t left your side.” Her voice is barely above a whisper, pitched not to wake Zorath. “Not once. Not for the coronation planning, not for the council meetings, not for anything. Lords have been demanding audiences since the battle ended. He’s ignored all of them.”
“I tried to tell him—”
“I know.” She steps closer, her movements silent on the stone floor. “He wouldn’t listen. Gravik tried. Thalzar tried. Everyone tried.” A pause. “I’ve never seen him like this. Not even after his father died.”
I don’t know what to say. The rivalry between us—Vaela’s ambitions, her designs on the throne, her plans to become queen—hangs in the air unspoken.
She speaks first. “I was going to marry him, you know. Before you arrived. Before you—” She stops, jaw tightening. “He would have accepted eventually. A political alliance, advantageous for both our houses. I would have made a good queen.”
“You would have.”
“But he never looked at me the way he looks at you.” Her voice is flat, controlled. “Never held my hand while I slept. Never refused to leave my bedside, even when his kingdom needed him.”
“Vaela—”
“I think you’ve ruined him for anyone else.” The words land somewhere between accusation and acceptance. “Whatever you did to him—however you made him love you—he’s never going to want anyone else. You’ve claimed him more thoroughly than any political marriage could.”
I meet her gaze. “I didn’t plan this. I came here to find the truth, not to—”
“I know.” She cuts me off, not unkindly.
“That’s what makes it worse. You weren’t even trying, and you still won.
” A pause. “And yes—I was the one who copied your note to the Regents. Back when I thought you were a threat to be managed rather than an ally worth cultivating.” Her gaze doesn’t waver. “I’m not proud of it.”
The words land like a key turning in a lock I’d forgotten was closed.
There were moments, moving through the Keep’s passages in the dark, when I thought I’d understood every angle of the conspiracy.
I hadn’t known—but I’d felt it. Someone with inside access.
Someone who knew which note would do the most damage.
I look at her for a long moment. The rage is there, somewhere beneath the exhaustion and the healing—the clean fury of knowing exactly who put me in the path of that blade.
She nearly got me killed. She knows that.
The fact that she’s standing here saying it rather than pretending it never happened is its own form of accounting.
“Why tell me?”
“Because you’ll figure it out anyway.” Her chin lifts slightly.
“You’re an archivist. You follow evidence.
Eventually you would have traced the note back to me, and I’d rather you hear it from me first.” A beat.
“And because he trusts you completely. If you’re going to be beside him on that throne, you deserve to know what kind of person is standing at his back. ”
The honesty in that costs her something. I can see it.
“I’m not going to forget it,” I say quietly. “When I’m recovered, we’re going to have a full conversation about what happened and what it means going forward. That’s not a threat—it’s what you asked for when you walked through that door.”
Vaela’s chin lifts a fraction. Respect, maybe. Or relief at being taken seriously rather than forgiven too quickly.
“Fair,” she says. And means it.
Silence stretches between us. Zorath’s breathing remains steady, deep in the sleep his body desperately needed.
Finally, Vaela speaks again. “Take care of him, archivist. The kingdom needs the man you’ve made him. The king he’s becoming because of you.” She turns toward the door, then pauses. “And for what it’s worth—I’m glad you survived. The alternative would have destroyed him.”
She’s gone before I can respond. The door closes silently behind her, and I’m left with the weight of her words wrapped around me.
The man you’ve made him.
I didn’t make Zorath anything. The capacity for justice, for truth, for love—it was in him the whole time. Hidden beneath years of grief and rage and the armor he’d built to survive. All I did was show him it was there.
But maybe that’s enough. Maybe being seen—really seen, for what you could be instead of what you’ve become—is its own kind of making.
I ease deeper into Zorath’s embrace, let my eyes drift closed. The pain in my side is fading, masked by exhaustion and the steady presence of the man beside me. Outside the windows, the volcano rumbles its eternal song.
I don’t know what comes next. The coronation. The politics. The thousand complications of a human woman in an orc court, loving a king who wasn’t supposed to love anyone.
But right now, in this moment, none of that matters.
I’m alive. He loves me. And whatever the future holds, we’ll face it the same way we’ve faced everything else.
With truth. With courage. And with each other.