45. Chapter 45
Owain
By the time silence settled between us, the candles had burned lower.
I hadn’t enjoyed telling Lunette everything the assassin said.
The fear that flickered across her face was enough to have me forcing back the weapon that wanted to form in my hands.
I liked even less that I still didn’t know what the mages’ next plans were.
Eventually, she fell back asleep, still tired from the healing.
I hadn’t told her yet that I’d already had Reina’s spies intercept a marriage contract signed by Berian. The strokes of his name were uneven from illness, but still unmistakably his. The spot next to it had been waiting for the moment someone got her alone and forced her hand to parchment.
My hand had closed around the contract. It had crumpled. Then burned to ashes.
Camrick had said, “This is definitely treason-adjacent.”
“Only adjacent?” I’d asked.
He’d grinned and used a conjured gust of wind to scatter the evidence to the breeze.
Luna didn’t know that I’d burn every single one he would have rewritten. She didn’t know that I’d burn everything to the ground to stop that from happening to her. I hoped never to have to prove it.
I had a million things to do to get us all out of this mess, but I didn’t want to move.
So I indulged and simply existed in the purest moment of peace of my entire life.
With Lunette, silence was her heavy warmth resting on my chest. It smelled like everything I never knew I needed.
Before her, silence had only ever meant absence—the judgement of a room stilled by my presence, a court holding its breath.
If I stayed here, I thought, I might truly forget the world exists.
The mate bond thrummed between us in a steady rhythm.
There was still the sharp, possessive edge I’d become comfortable living with these past few weeks, but now it had relaxed into something that felt anchoring as well.
I felt her presence as readily as my own pulse, strumming beneath my ribs with a constant, effortless awareness.
I brushed my nose along the curve of her neck as I drew in a slow breath, my lips meeting her skin in an attempt to settle myself. Yet, inevitably, the peace thinned at the edges, dissolving as something colder slipped in through the back of my mind.
Vaustin Maeron was somewhere in the keep with his conclave, moving carefully, being too quiet, making no mistakes I could see.
He needed to die, but my kingdom’s need for a strong leader had to outweigh my personal desire for justice.
The problem was bigger than me. I had to wait for them to make the next move, even if it put me in an even worse position than I was already in.
I hadn’t spoken to Camrick since before Berian’s assassination attempt yesterday. I hadn’t gotten a full accounting of anything. Nor did I know what story was circulating about Lunette’s display of power—or whether our ploy to make the court believe she was mine had held after what Berian had said.
The ignorance ate at me. Worse, the illusion of control I’d been conjuring since yesterday would fracture if I didn’t reinforce it.
I pressed my lips to her shoulder then forced myself to move. She woke, and her lilac eyes followed me as I threw on clothes then moved to my armor racks. If my men were suffering in padding and steel, I would too.
I moved by habit, gambeson settling over me as I conjured shadows to act as my squire, tying and holding in place what I couldn’t reach with my own hands.
Lunette had pushed herself up onto her elbows, hair a soft, tangled halo around her face, eyes still heavy-lidded but focused entirely on me.
With every move I made, her rising worry bled faintly into me through the bond.
Mine. Cursed gods, she was mine—forever. I’d thought I was the luckiest man alive when my horse brought me to her front door, but having her made it undeniable.
“You’re brooding,” she said, lips curled in a tight smile.
“I’m putting my greaves on.”
“You’ve been holding the same plate for about a minute.”
I looked down. The greave was half-balanced on my ankle, half balanced on the chair leg beneath me. I’d briefly forgotten what I was doing, because I’d been so lost in thinking about her.
“Has it really come to you being in full armor?” she asked softly.
“Trying to avoid a war,” I said.
Or decide which version of it we can survive.
She sat up slowly, the furs pooling at her waist, granting me the delightful view of two dusky pink nipples. I tore my eyes away to notice her studying me.
“You’re going to tell me to stay here,” she said flatly.
“I am,” I replied without adornment.
Lunette made a soft, unimpressed sound and shifted, shrugging off the furs before sliding from the bed. She crossed the room without hurry and picked up her chemise. I’d been so distracted that I’d only gotten to the sabatons, greaves, and chainmail.
I’d just finished pulling on the chain shirt when she stepped between my knees, still undressed. My hands stilled. She reached out and caught my chin with her fingers, tipping my face up toward hers. The contact sent a shiver through my body.
“I want to be with you,” she said. Not quite a command, but not quite a request either. Always a temptation.
“You have to stay here,” I said, kissing her before she could organize any objections.
When I had somewhere to be, kissing her was also, arguably, a mistake—one I couldn’t bring myself to regret.
On first contact, the bond responded by flooding my body with warmth. My awareness of her sharpened until I could feel the echo of my own pulse in her.
By the gods, she wanted me. I could feel it. It seemed impossible that someone like me should find a mate like her.
“Keep the rest of your armor on,” she whispered as she untied the laces of my trousers, her fingers brushing at where I was already straining my trousers with every movement. Each touch was deliberate enough to unravel my focus. But it was lowering herself onto my lap that truly did me in.
Luckiest. Man. Alive.
My defenses crumbled under the assault. Whatever she wanted, she could have.
“You don’t want me to leave,” I said against her mouth. What was another thirty minutes? An hour?… Two?
“That and,” she laughed, “I’ve thought about doing this while you wore armor since the very first time I saw you.”
“I was nearly dead when you met me, Lunette,” I accused, a smile playing on my lips.
She shrugged, rocking her hips side to side, grinding on me so perfectly I nearly came undone. “The heart wants what the heart wants.”
Before our next shared heartbeat, she welcomed me back home, sheathed within her. Something in my chest that had no name loosened completely. “Not sore?” I asked.
“Yes, but hush,” she said, moving against me.
Yes, ma’am.
I reached between us, but the angle meant I couldn’t give her the attention she deserved. So I lifted her up and turned her around, drawing her down onto me as my hand found her heat, learning her again by touch alone.
“Cheat,” she said, walls fluttering around me. She was so close.
“Not cheating yet,” I whispered into her hair.
Shadows moved on my command to trace the line of her hips, down to her core, warm and sparking the connection between our magic with every inch of contact.
It had always been an extension of my will—even when it brought out the worst of me—but in this, we shared an infatuation with her. Devoted and hungry.
They moved to fill every inch of space I couldn’t reach—pressing, caressing. I had never used my magic like this during intimacy before, so I didn’t expect the sensual feedback it sent me.
It felt like I was touching her twice for every movement I made or willed. For one impossible moment, the bond between us disappeared. The distance between us vanished entirely. Her joy became mine. My admiration became hers. It pushed me over the edge just as she screamed out her pleasure.
Ropes of shadow held onto her so she wouldn’t collapse. But, by the gods, it felt like the entirety of my soul left my body as I filled her.
Sweating in the padded gambeson and chainmail, I pulled her onto my chest and leaned back in the chair, still connected to her. My hands moved up to caress her breasts as I kissed a line of devotion across her shoulders. “My mate.”
“You have to do that again…soon.” Her red curls bounced as she nodded against my chest. “Though the armor is very attractive, it isn’t as comfortable to cuddle with.”
I laughed and kissed her soft skin one more time. “Now it really is time for me to get dressed,” I said, already resenting it.
She reluctantly got up, and we both refreshed ourselves, her throwing on a gown. “I want to help you get your armor on,” she insisted.
As she was tying the last pauldron in place, a booming knock thundered against the door.
Camrick’s voice carried through the wood, tight with urgency. “We have a problem!”
My stomach dropped. Lunette and I moved at the same time. We were both at the door before the second knock landed.
Cam stood in the corridor wearing full armor, his jaw set. His eyes went from me to Lunette and back, wholly unsurprised. But where I expected a cheeky grin to grow, the look of alarm on his face remained.
“The assassin has been murdered,” he said without preamble. “The bannermen in attendance are in a bloody uproar.”
I dropped my head for one heartbeat. The fucking Assembly had already silenced him. They’d committed murder under my roof.
The quiet inside my chest grew into a growl. “Do we have a witness?”
“No.” Camrick crossed his arms. “That guard shift only had mundane men. Convenient timing.”
I clenched my jaw so hard it sent a shock of pain all the way down my neck. “Residual magic?”
Camrick nodded. That was proof a mage had been involved in covering their tracks. Vaustin likely didn’t know the assassin had already exposed their plans. Yet I couldn’t bring myself to take any comfort in that fact. Every single one of them was a snake. Their planning was remarkably insidious.
I turned back to Lunette. I needed to tell her about the contract, but the world outside was pressing in. And she was already regarding me with an expression that told me she was about to argue. “I can help with the court—”
“No,” I said. I made myself soften it. “You are my—” I stopped. Mate sat too close to the wrong kind of possession when spoken aloud like that. I had to be careful with my moonlight. “You are the most valuable target inside these walls,” I corrected. “Which makes you my highest priority to secure.”
She crossed her arms. “I can take care of myself,” she said, as if daring me to deny it.
“True,” I said evenly. “That doesn’t change the fact that you collapsed yesterday after saving my brother’s life. You’re still recovering.”
Her eyes narrowed.
I pulled her closer before she could protest further and kissed her forehead. Camrick looked away to give us privacy, but I could still feel his impatience.
“I am not negotiating this,” I said quietly against her skin. “But I am asking. Stay here. Rest. Let me do what I need to do so that this doesn’t become worse than it already is.”
All the fight went out of her at once, shoulders drooping. “Fine,” she said. “I could use a nap.”
I turned to my captain. “Ten men remain. No one enters. No one leaves.”
A chorus of assent arose as I followed Camrick out of the family wing. Yet something made me pause just before Berian’s door. His guards were there. Everything seemed fine. Lunette was safe, yet a niggling feeling persisted anyway—the way joints could ache long before the approaching storm arrived.
All that was left to me now was a desperate hope that I was right, and that the fallout wouldn't destroy us.