Chapter 5 #2
Valerius turned slightly toward her. “When I was told you had been taken,” he said, and stopped.
For the first time all evening, his composure shifted.
Not much, but enough.
Dara looked at him.
There was no court polish in his next words. No careful princely framing. Just truth, stripped down to what mattered.
“I have never found a road so long.”
Something in her chest gave the smallest, most traitorous pull.
She did not like that sentence.
She liked it far too much.
Which was worse.
He looked at her as if the rest of the thought still lived somewhere behind his teeth, but that was all he offered.
That was somehow more dangerous than a speech would have been.
Dara’s pulse had gone unhelpfully loud.
This, she thought dimly, was why one avoided emotionally articulate royalty whenever possible.
Unfortunately, her life no longer appeared to support that policy.
Valerius’s gaze flicked once to her mouth and then back to her eyes.
There was time, just enough, for Dara to understand that something had changed in the air.
Not suddenly. Not by shock.
By accumulation.
Too many near losses. Too many truths. Too many things left unsaid and now standing too close together to keep pretending they were separate.
He lifted one hand.
Slowly. Carefully.
Not touching her yet.
As if giving her every possible chance to stop him.
Dara did not move.
Perhaps she should have. Perhaps a wiser woman would have.
But Dara had never claimed wisdom as her strongest quality.
His fingertips touched lightly at the line of her jaw.
Warm. Gentle.
The whole world seemed to draw in one quiet breath.
Then he leaned in and kissed her.
It was not dramatic.
Not hungry. Not overwhelming. Not the kind of kiss meant to conquer or claim.
It was soft.
Soft enough to be dangerous.
Gentle and warm and careful in a way that undid her much more thoroughly than anything fierce might have managed.
A kiss that carried too much truth in too little space, as though he had taken all his fear, all his restraint, all the things he had not said when she woke and folded them into one unbearably tender moment.
Dara went very still.
The night. The garden. The lanterns. Grace somewhere respectfully not-looking. All of it blurred around the simple impossible fact of his mouth against hers.
And then, just as gently as he had begun, Valerius drew back.
The distance between them returned by inches.
Dara stared at him.
Her entire face had gone hot.
Not warm. Not pink. Hot.
She could feel the heat in her cheeks, in the tips of her ears, probably in her soul.
He had kissed her.
The Crown Prince had kissed her.
On a garden bench. While Grace absolutely still existed in this universe.
Dara’s eyes widened.
Valerius, curse him, looked calm.
Not cold. Not untouched.
But calm enough that she wanted to throw a flowerpot at him for balance.
She opened her mouth.
No words came out.
Closed it again.
Opened it once more.
Still nothing.
Excellent. Wonderful. A devastating triumph for language.
Valerius’s expression changed by the smallest amount, and she realized with immediate offense that he looked… pleased.
Not smug. Not triumphant.
Simply—and this was somehow the worst option—quietly relieved.
That made this all much more serious than she preferred.
Dara turned her face away sharply and stared at the nearest lantern like it might provide legal guidance.
The lantern did not.
Behind them, Grace shifted with the tactful delicacy of a woman who had very clearly perceived something and had already decided, out of loyalty and self-preservation, to remember as little of it as possible.
Dara wished to become mist.
Or perhaps decorative moss.
Anything that did not have a pulse.
After what felt like an entire century compressed into three seconds, she said, very faintly, “Oh.”
Valerius made a quiet sound that might have been almost a laugh.
That was intolerable.
Dara stood at once.
Too fast. Far too fast.
The bench protested. The shawl slipped. Her dignity fled the scene without notice.
“I—” she said, then stopped because the sentence appeared to have died somewhere on the way out.
Valerius rose immediately as well.
Of course he did. Grace would have approved. The monarchy, probably, demanded it.
Dara did not look at either of them.
She fixed her attention firmly on the middle distance and said, with all the impossible formality of a woman currently dying of embarrassment, “I think that concludes my walk.”
Behind her, Grace’s silence became almost spiritual in quality.
Valerius said, very gently, “Lynara.”
No.
Absolutely not.
She could not survive hearing her name in that tone immediately after being kissed into temporary paralysis.
So Dara gathered her shawl, every scattered fragment of composure she could still locate, and whatever remained of her villainess pride, and turned toward the path.
“Good night, Your Highness,” she said, with perfect enunciation and the full tragic grandeur of a woman fleeing tenderness before it could do permanent damage.
Then she walked back toward the house with Grace falling in several steps behind, and did not once look over her shoulder.
Not once.
Mostly because she was afraid if she did, she might combust.