27. Chapter 27
Owain
The scent of baking spices drifted from down the hallway.
The urge to race toward her was so strong that my legs shook with the effort of not moving.
I contented myself with simply filling my lungs with the scent as I hid in the shadows of an alcove, trying to hide the telltale shush of my magic anxiously swiping the stone floor at my feet.
Reina burst through the door to the hidden tunnel first. She stomped down the hallway, heading straight toward me.
“This is the exact opposite of staying away, Wain,” she snarled quietly.
It wasn’t choice; it was compulsion. Even if all I got was a glance of Lunette and more of her scent, I had to have it.
Yet that wasn’t the entire reason I was here.
If even a single untrustworthy soul in the castle detected them, or if word of her reached the Assembly too soon, envoys with polite smiles and strict mandates of action would be dispatched.
They’d done it to me at fourteen. Declared my magic “too volatile.” Demanded oversight, containment, as though I were something to be managed rather than a person.
Berian had wanted to give me to them. Only Reina’s intervention had saved me. And I was a prince. They wouldn’t hesitate to declare a grand magus of healing their asset.
I wanted her to be farther from their reach before that happened. So I had placed myself in the way, ready to intercept anyone who might come down the corridor with me as a distraction they couldn’t ignore.
Except Reina didn’t know everything going on with the Assembly yet, so I mustered only a pained grimace in response.
“Stay hidden,” she said huffily. “We’re taking her directly to Berian’s rooms. Arriving, taking in the city and the tunnel has already been a lot for her.”
The mere hint that Luna might be suffering in some way was enough to set me off. My eyes tingled with gathering magic, and the faint pressure forced them shut.
But not before Reina noticed. Her lips formed a thin line. “You will not become another problem I have to manage, Owain.”
“Does she have everything she needs?” I needed to do something, anything to feel connected to her.
Reina eyed me as if I were as transparent as I feared. “Lunette’s apartment is ready, as is her wardrobe,” she said evenly. “In the meantime, get whatever this is out of your system. The entire kingdom needs you stable—with her and Berian at the top of the list.”
“About that first part…” I said lightly. “I had her rooms moved. She’s in the princess’s apartment. To be near Berian.”
Reina made a strangled noise of frustration. “You mean near you!”
I dropped the pretense and lowered my voice even further. “If the Assembly tries to petition for oversight over a dangerous magic user, they cannot demand access to a royal residence without invoking the open censure of the crown.”
Reina looked torn between being proud of me and wanting to smack me again. “You expect them to be interested in her so quickly?”
I nodded. “You’ll understand when you see how powerful she is.”
The hourglass was already emptying. Somewhere in the Tir, a scribe was already sharpening his quill, just waiting for a name to send to our enemies.
“Fine,” Reina grumbled. She threw her hands in the air in a fit of pique. “Even if you have made at least one prudent move, you really are half-mad!”
There was no point denying that. As she demanded, I would give Lunette space, even if it was already proving to be one of the hardest things I’d ever done. I’d thought Reina had only wanted to scold me, but she lingered, body tense.
“You need to know,” Reina said, the sudden gravity in her voice snapping the tether on my attention. “Freuxcourt promised to cover it for another two days, but—” She paused, a flicker of regret clouding her expression before she even spoke. “Theresa is dead.”
The words landed in my chest with a hollow thud. I was empty from missing Lunette, and yet a colossal weight still pressed down to crush the hole in my chest.
My sister-in-law, my queen, was dead. The woman who’d endured council meetings and lavish banquets with a tight-lipped smile, who’d persevered through them and being with my brother for her love of Larethia, was gone. She’d deserved better than Berian gave her.
Reina’s eyes searched my face as if gauging structural damage.
I swallowed hard, the acrid taste of bile rising in my throat. “When?” The hollowness had invaded my voice now, too. It was flat and sounded distant, like a muffled echo.
“Early this morning,” she said, her expression guarded in a way I didn’t see often.
There were few things anyone could’ve said that would’ve distracted me from my obsession with Lunette, but this was one of them.
As royalty, that first moment of shock was the only time I would be permitted to grieve.
Now, it was my duty to plan for the living.
Duty snapped back into place like a manacle, leaving me sick to my stomach but more determined than ever to get this right.
This meant Berian would have to marry quickly. They’d parade one potential bride after another through the castle. I’d happily suffer through endless balls, stuffy feasts, and having scores of nobles crammed shoulder to shoulder for that. If he survived…
If he didn’t… It was almost too much to contemplate.
Every lord in this kingdom would begin plotting my marriage. The Assembly would insist on approving the bride, but only if they decided they couldn’t pull off what they were doing to Gelida. Only if they decided I wasn’t better dead…
And I would need to fight even harder for Lunette than I’d planned.
The chains of duty tugged harder. All I could do was nod.
Reina said they’d cover it for two days, but I was already anticipating less time until someone whispered Theresa’s passing into Assembly ears with one breath and Lunette’s name with the next.
Reina didn’t linger. With a brief, reassuring squeeze of my arm, she was gone, her footsteps fading down the hallway.
For a long moment, I let myself sag against the wall, simply breathing, thinking.
Larethia. My brother. Death. Marriage.
Then the door creaked open again, and the universe, apparently unsatisfied with leaving me grieving, decided to decimate what was left of my wits.
Red hair, hastily tied at her nape. Soft wool dress. A leather belt sagging askew on her hips, as if the rigors of travel and fatigue had stripped away her usual attention to detail. She was thinner. Didn’t like that.
Luna.
Every coherent thought shattered under the sheer, merciless pull of her. My chest ached with a confusing mixture of sorrow and a feral, aching need to run from the alcove just to be closer. There she was. Here. In my home, not twenty feet away.
Mine. Not the Assembly’s. Not Larethia’s. Not anyone else’s to use or contain.
I pressed myself harder into the alcove, nails biting into my palms, hoping the pain would anchor me there. It helped. But willpower did the rest, while I reminded myself again and again that she was here to save something far greater than myself, and it was my job to help and protect her.
The mate bond surged with merciless demands. My magic didn’t care that I was grieving. It swelled against my ribs, desperate and insistent, for her.
It wanted to close the distance. To press her hand flat against my chest, to let her feel the wreckage she’d made of my heart—only so I could offer it to her again.
It wanted to drag me out of the shadows and into the scent of warm spices and citrus, to say things I had no right to say to a woman who didn’t even know what she was to me yet.
No.
Berian. Theresa. Larethia.
I clung to those names like a whispered prayer as Lunette walked with Camrick and Reina at her side. Her steps faltered just as she passed the alcove where I was hidden.
She’d felt me. I knew because I felt our magics embrace, even as she walked away. My heart continued to slam against my sternum until something crashed into place right next to the grief I was actively suppressing.
Clarity. Alignment. And purpose.
For the first time since I’d felt the bond stir, it wasn’t simply pulling me toward her—it also rooted me to the spot.
If she was here, it wouldn’t matter how heavy the chains were. It wouldn’t matter that my people feared me.
The Assembly would send their men. The nobles would plot. But I would protect her. But I was feeling better than I had in what felt like forever because hope had arrived wearing a cornflower-blue dress—and with her by my side, I wouldn’t fail.