Chapter 17 Kess
Kess
I wake to the unfamiliar sensation of warmth pressed against my back.
For a moment I don't move, just lie there cataloging the feeling—his arm draped heavy over my waist, his breath stirring the hair at the nape of my neck, the furnace heat of his chest against my spine.
We're still tangled in sheets that smell like sex and sweat and something smoky underneath that I'm starting to recognize as us.
He's awake. I can tell by the rhythm of his breathing, the slight tension in the arm around me. Waiting to see what I'll do.
"You stayed," I say, my voice rough with sleep.
"You asked me to." His lips brush my shoulder when he speaks. "Do you want me to go?"
I consider the question. Part of me—the wild part, the part that's spent years surviving alone—wants to say yes. Wants space to process what happened last night, what's been happening between us for weeks. Wants to retreat into solitude and figure out what any of this means.
But a larger part doesn't want him to move.
"No," I say. "Stay."
His arm tightens around me, pulling me closer, and something in my chest eases at the contact. He presses a kiss to the back of my neck—soft, unhurried, just his lips warm against my skin. I let my eyes drift closed and sink into the feeling of being held.
This is new. All of it. The gentleness, the morning-after, the choice to stay instead of retreat. I don't know what to do with it yet, but I'm learning.
The bond hums between us—but wrong, somehow. Quieter than it should be after a night like last night. I've noticed it growing fainter over the past weeks, like hearing music through a wall, and I keep meaning to ask him about it. Keep getting distracted by other things.
My stomach lurches suddenly, nausea rising without warning.
I'm out of bed and across the room before I can think, barely making it to the chamber pot in the corner before I'm retching. Nothing comes up—I'm empty, haven't eaten since yesterday morning—but my body heaves anyway, trying to expel something that isn't there.
"Kess—" He's behind me, one hand gathering my hair back from my face, the other warm and steady on my shoulder. "Are you alright?"
"Fine." I spit, wipe my mouth with the back of my hand. "It passes. The contamination's doing something to my stomach—nausea in the mornings, then starving by afternoon."
The pattern's been consistent for over a week now. Sick when I wake, ravenous by midday, exhausted by evening. My body adjusting to whatever changes his blood is making, metabolizing the transformation one miserable symptom at a time.
He's quiet for a moment too long. When I look up, there's something in his expression I can't read—concern, yes, but something else underneath. Something that looks almost like guilt.
"What?" I ask.
"Nothing." He helps me to my feet, hands gentle. "You should eat something. It might help settle your stomach."
"Food is the last thing I want right now." I cross to the water basin and splash my face, letting the cold shock some clarity into my foggy head. "What I want is to hit something."
"Hit something?"
"Sparring." I turn to face him, and something sparks to life in my chest at the idea. "Train with me. Not watching from the balcony—actually train. I want to see what you can do."
He goes still, that dragon stillness that means I've surprised him. "You want to spar. With me."
"Why not? Scared I'll beat you?"
A smile tugs at the corner of his mouth—small, almost reluctant, but real. "I'm scared I'll hurt you."
"You won't." I'm certain of this in a way I can't explain. "The beast doesn't want to hurt me. Neither do you. And I'm stronger than I was—faster. I want to test it. Test us."
He studies me for a long moment, golden eyes searching my face. Then: "Alright. Training yard. Twenty minutes."
"Make it ten. I'm impatient."
The morning air is crisp and cool, carrying the scent of pine from the Forbidden Forest beyond the castle walls. I'm waiting in the training yard when he arrives, already warmed up, a practice sword balanced in my grip.
He's changed into training leathers that fit him like a second skin, showing off the breadth of his shoulders, the power in his arms. His hair is tied back from his face, and he moves across the packed earth with the fluid grace of a predator, each step deliberate and controlled.
The guards who were sparring in the corner have stopped to stare. Carter catches my eye and raises his eyebrows—a silent question. I shake my head slightly. This is private.
They clear out without being told, leaving us alone in the yard.
Rhystan selects a practice sword from the rack, testing its weight, its balance. The wooden blade looks almost fragile in his grip, his hand large enough to wrap around it twice.
"Rules?" he asks.
"Don't hold back." I settle into my stance, blade raised. "I want to know what you're actually capable of."
"You might regret that."
"Try me."
He moves.
Even expecting it, even ready for it, I barely get my sword up in time. The impact jolts through my arms and into my shoulders, rattling my teeth. He's fast—impossibly fast for someone his size—and strong enough that I feel the blow in my bones.
I grin.
Finally.
I counterattack, driving forward with a combination Carter taught me last week. He blocks the first strike, deflects the second, but I'm faster than I was, faster than I should be, and the third catches him across the ribs with a solid thwack.
"Good," he says, and there's something like approval in his voice. "Again."
We circle each other, trading blows, testing defenses.
He's better than Carter—centuries of experience showing in every movement, every decision.
But I'm not the feral creature who attacked him in the sacred grove anymore.
The contamination has remade me into something sharper, something quicker, something that can match him strike for strike.
Our blades meet with a crack that echoes off the stone walls. Neither of us gives ground.
"You're holding back," I accuse, shoving against his blade.
"So are you."
He's right. I've been fighting like I fight Carter—controlled, careful, pulling my strikes so I don't actually hurt him. But Rhystan isn't Carter. Rhystan can take it.
I stop holding back.
The next sequence happens almost too fast to track. Strike, block, counter, spin. My blade whistles toward his throat and he ducks, barely, the wood grazing his jaw. His counterattack catches me in the shoulder hard enough to bruise, and I snarl and press forward, driving him back across the yard.
Our practice swords meet again and the impact splinters both blades.
We freeze, staring at the broken wood in our hands.
"That's never happened before," he says.
"That's because you've never fought me before." I toss aside the useless hilt and grab two more swords from the rack. Throw one to him. "Again."
We're not sparring anymore. We're something closer to dancing—a violent, beautiful dance of strike and counter, advance and retreat.
The contamination sings in my blood, making everything sharper, faster, more alive.
I can feel him through the bond—muffled but still there—his excitement rising to match mine, his beast purring with satisfaction at finding a worthy opponent.
I land a hit on his ribs. He answers with one to my thigh. My practice sword cracks down the middle and I throw it aside, grab another. His shatters against my block and he does the same.
We're destroying the training yard.
Wooden splinters litter the packed earth. The weapon rack is half-empty, discarded hilts scattered around us. At some point one of us knocked over a training dummy and neither of us bothered to right it.
"You're a monster," I pant, circling him, my fifth sword of the morning clutched in hands that are starting to ache. Sweat drips down my spine, plasters my hair to my neck. I've never felt more alive.
"So are you." He's breathing hard too, golden eyes bright with something that looks almost like joy. "Two monsters recognizing each other."
"Is that what we're doing?"
"Isn't it?" He feints left, strikes right. I block it, barely. "You're the first person who's ever matched me like this. The first one who could."
"What about your warriors? Carter?"
"They hold back. Even when I tell them not to." Another exchange, another crack of wood against wood. "They're afraid of hurting me, or afraid of what happens if they actually win. You're not afraid of either."
"I'm not afraid of anything anymore." The words come out fiercer than I intended. "I spent years being afraid—of my heats, of what I was, of what I might do. I'm done with fear."
"I know." He catches my blade with his, holds it there, our faces close enough that I can see the gold of his eyes, the sweat beading at his temples. "That's why you're still alive. That's why you're the first one who survived me."
We're both breathing hard, both trembling with exertion, both still pressing against each other's swords like neither of us wants to be the one to give ground.
"We should stop," he says. "Before we break every practice blade in the yard."
"Probably." But I don't pull back. "This is the most fun I've had in months."
"Me too." His voice drops, goes rough. "Centuries, maybe."
The moment stretches between us—charged, electric, balanced on a knife's edge.
I close the distance first.
The kiss is nothing like the soft one this morning.
I crash into him with the same ferocity I've been fighting with, teeth catching his lower lip, tongue demanding entrance.
He groans and drops his sword to grab my hips, hauling me against him, and I feel the hard length of him pressing against my stomach through our sweat-soaked leathers.
I bite down on his lip—hard enough to taste copper—and he snarls into my mouth, fingers digging into my hips hard enough to bruise.
For a moment we're not kissing so much as devouring each other, all teeth and tongue and desperate need, the violence of the sparring transforming into something just as fierce.
Then my stomach growls, loud and insistent, breaking the moment.
He pulls back, breathing hard, blood on his lip from where I bit him. And then he laughs. Actually laughs, a real sound of genuine amusement that transforms his face into something younger, lighter, almost unrecognizable.
"There's the ravenous appetite," he says. "Come on. Let's get you fed before you start eyeing me as a food source."
"You'd be stringy," I say, lowering my sword. "All muscle, no fat."
"Flattering."
We return our battered swords to the rack—what's left of them—and survey the destruction we've wrought. Splinters everywhere. Four broken training dummies. A crack in one of the stone walls where someone—probably me—missed a block and a blade went wide.
"The guards are going to talk," I say.
"Let them." He sounds almost proud. "Let them know the king has finally found someone who can match him."
Something warm blooms in my chest at that. Not just the words, but the way he says them—like it matters to him, like having an equal means something after three centuries of being alone at the top.
"Food," I remind him, because if I think about it too hard I might do something stupid like kiss him. "You promised."
"I did." He gestures toward the castle. "After you."
We walk back together, close enough that our shoulders brush occasionally, and I don't pull away. The bond hums between us—still muffled, still wrong somehow—but underneath that wrongness, something stronger. Something that feels like the beginning of trust.
My stomach is ravenous now, the nausea burned away by exertion. I could eat an entire deer by myself. Maybe two.
Strange, how the mornings make me sick and the afternoons make me starving. Strange, how my body has started operating by rules I don't recognize.
But the strangeness feels less frightening when he's walking beside me, matching his pace to mine, his presence steady and warm at the edge of my awareness.
Two monsters who found each other in the dark.
Maybe that's enough.