It wasn’t fear, exactly. It was the aftershock of being seen by something ancient and deciding not to look away.
The priests had insisted on the proper cleansing after. Oil. Ash-water. Prayer that sounded like stone grinding slowly into order. By the time they finally let him go, his skin still felt too tight around the new mark, as if his body hadn’t decided whether to accept it as wound or crown.
Kairi was already gone to the Phoenix duties that could not be postponed. That was the cruel part of it, how quickly the world took her back the moment the gods finished speaking. A week of temple obligations, and then crown duties layered on top because the palace loved nothing more than a holy story it could parade.
Betrothed. Phoenix vessel. Crown princess. A title-heavy chain, and none of the links were soft.
Kylar told himself it was fine.
He told himself that as he stepped into the bathing chamber and stripped off the ceremonial layers, as if shedding cloth could shed the weight too. Steam rose at once when he turned the water on, heat fogging the glass and blurring the world into something simpler. He stood beneath it and let it pound against the back of his neck, against his shoulders, against the edge of the crest that curled down from his collarbone like a living thing.
For a few minutes, he let himself be a man again instead of a symbol.
He scrubbed the last traces of oil and ink from his skin, careful around the mark. The fresh bite of mint brought a small comfort.
The sensation there around the mark was strange. Not pain, not exactly. More like pressure, like a hand resting on him that refused to lift.
He closed his eyes and tipped his head back under the stream.
A faint warmth spread through his chest. Not from the water.
Something… shifted.
Kylar’s eyes snapped open.
It wasn’t a sound. It wasn’t a voice. It was a feeling that didn’t belong to him and yet landed inside him like it had always had permission.
A small, sharp pang of emotion, quick as a needle. Not fear. Not anger.
Longing.
He blinked as the water ran down his face and dripped off his lashes. His hand rose automatically to his chest, fingers pressing over the curve of the lion crest where it was wrapped down, as if he could hold the sensation in place and examine it like a blade.
Is that… them?
The god-beasts had been loud earlier. A presence like thunder behind his ribs, like the air itself knew who owned him now. This wasn’t thunder.
This was… human.
The longing flickered again, faint, then disappeared like a bird startled into flight. He stood there breathing in the steam, trying to decide if he imagined it.
Then it came again. Not longing this time.
Grief.
It hit hard enough that his breath caught. A sudden hollow ache, sharp and clean, like someone had carved the inside of his ribs with a careful knife.
Kylar’s hand pressed harder to his chest, not to soothe, but to anchor. His vision blurred for a heartbeat and he hated that he had no target for the feeling, no enemy to face, no wound to bind.
And then, as quickly as it came, it faded.
Gone.
Only the water remained. Only steam. Only the steady beat of his own pulse insisting he was still in his body.
Kylar stared at the wall for a long moment. His mind leapt to doctrine and danger, to spies and poison and the temple’s words about bonds and cycles and vessels.
Then, inevitably, to her.
Kairi.
He turned the water off with a sharp twist, as if silence could help him think. The sudden quiet made the room feel too large. He grabbed a towel and dried himself quickly, methodically, as if efficiency could keep questions from multiplying.
It must be the gods, he told himself. Or leftover strain from the ceremony. Or exhaustion.
Anything but the idea that he had felt Kairi’s grief from across the palace, across the city, across whatever invisible line separated their waking lives.
He didn’t have time for this.
Ryder needed him at council. The court was already chewing on rumors. The temples were rewriting plans by the hour. And Kylar, newly branded and newly watched, could not afford to stand in a bath chamber questioning whether he was losing his mind.
He dressed in practiced speed. Shirt. Vest. Jacket. Belt. Boots. He fastened his cloak and felt the lion crest beneath it like a secret pressed to his skin.
As he left the chamber, the hallway’s cooler air tightened around him. He walked like a prince again. Like a vessel. Like a man whose thoughts were disciplined and orderly. Only once, as he turned a corner toward the council wing, did his fingers brush his chest again, brief and unconscious.
The mark was steady. His breathing was steady.
Kylar reached the council chamber and, for once, was grateful for something simple.
He was early.
The room still held that quiet, waiting hush, chairs aligned waiting, the long table bare except for inkstands and the docket laid out with cruel efficiency. The air smelled faintly of parchment and beeswax and the kind of patience that turned into policies.
Ryder and Serenity were already there.
They sat side by side at the head, close enough to read as united, distant enough to remind anyone watching that they were still playing court’s careful game. Ryder spoke quietly with an advisor at his shoulder; Serenity’s hands rested folded in her lap, posture perfect, eyes calm.
Kylar took his seat, smoothed the docket in front of him, and began to read.
Joint Kingdom Betrothal Agreement , Continued.
Adding to Crown Princess Household.
Moving Crown Princess and Third Prince Rooms to a joint room.
He stopped.
His eyes stayed on that line as if it might rearrange itself into something less… real.
Joint room.
They were taking the holy matrimony and Tearian custom closeness seriously. As if the temples’ decision had already built walls and windows and an entire new wing of his life.
Mates.
The word snagged in his mind again, half temple doctrine, half private joke that had become… dangerously easy to hear as truth.
He forced himself to look down the page.
Masquerade schedule of events.
Tearia War discussion.
Succession plan of Naberia and Tearia.
Heirs.
Kylar looked away from the paper.
They wouldn’t make it that far today. They never did when gods and politics were sharing the same room. But the fact that it was written there, neat as ink, made his stomach turn.
Heirs.
He wasn’t sure what unsettled him more, the idea itself or how quickly the world wanted to drag it into daylight.
He lifted his gaze. Ryder was watching him.
Kylar stilled.
Ryder tilted his head slightly, the expression on his face too familiar not to be brotherly, too measured not to be kingly. “Which line item made you pause for that moment.”
Kylar didn’t answer immediately. He didn’t need to. His fingers hovered over the parchment like a confession.
Serenity’s eyes flicked down the docket once. Her mouth curved faintly, almost amused.
“Probably the joint room, love,” she said softly.
Ryder’s gaze didn’t leave Kylar’s face. He waited.
Kylar nodded once, curt.
Ryder sighed, the sound equal parts exasperation and inevitability. “Father and Rush agreed upon that,” he said. “Enelias and Ricardo influenced it as well.” His eyes narrowed a fraction. “Father is hoping for grandbabies.”
Kylar stared at him.
It wasn’t outrage. It wasn’t disbelief.
It was the blank, horrified pause of a man realizing the palace had already begun measuring cradles. Everything that she was afraid of, listed on this docket as if it was just another thing to check off the list.
Serenity nodded, serene as ever, as if this was nothing more than what was expected. “You would make beautiful babies with her.”
Kylar’s brain went briefly… empty.
His mouth opened. Closed again.
A flush rose under his collar, heat that had nothing to do with the lion mark.
Ryder’s eyes flicked toward Serenity in a silent don’t, but Serenity’s expression didn’t change. If anything, she looked pleased with herself, as if she’d merely pointed out an objective truth.
Kylar cleared his throat. It came out rough. He kept his eyes on the docket like staring hard enough might make the ink apologize and rearrange itself into something reasonable. He lifted his gaze to Ryder, then to Serenity, and said flatly, “We aren’t married.”
Serenity’s mouth curved, faintly entertained. Ryder didn’t smile.
“I know,” Ryder said. “But Father wants a joint suite.”
Kylar blinked. “A suite,” he repeated, like the word mattered. Like it could sand down the edge of the idea.
Ryder leaned back in his chair, pragmatic. “Like Father and Mother’s rooms were.”
Kylar stilled. “Mother and Father were married.”
He hadn’t thought about that in years. Not consciously. The memory surfaced anyway, quiet and oddly sharp: the king and queen’s wing, the shared sitting room where they met for meals and arguments and late-night council, the private corridor between their spaces.
A shared living area.
Separate bedrooms.
Kylar looked back down at the line item.
Moving Crown Princess and Third Prince Rooms to a joint room.
The docket didn’t say “suite.” It didn’t say “shared sitting room.” It didn’t say “separate doors.”
It said it the way the palace always said things, blunt and consuming.
He exhaled slowly through his nose.
“A suite,” he murmured again, more to himself than to Ryder.
He could… tolerate that.
It was still intrusive. Still court-driven. Still full of eyes and assumptions. But a shared space could be a strategic advantage. A place to speak without the palace listening through a hundred hallways. A place where Kairi could breathe without having to cross half a wing guarded by strangers.
And, damn it, a place where he could see her more than stolen minutes between duties.
Kylar’s fingers tapped once against the table, controlled.
Ryder watched him, reading the shift with the ease of a man who’d grown up watching Kylar swallow feelings like they were poison.
“We are not…” He stopped, because what was the argument? That he hadn’t even had time to breathe? That Kairi had duties? That the gods had only just finished speaking?
That last night in the dreamscape he’d been very enthusiastically proving the opposite of restraint.
Kylar’s jaw tightened. “That is not a council discussion.”
Serenity blinked slowly. “Everything is a council discussion,” she said, voice mild. “Especially when temples are involved.”
Ryder looked away like he was holding back a laugh. “She’s not wrong.”
Kylar glared at both of them, then glanced toward the doors where more councilmen were beginning to arrive, advisors filtering in like a flock of crows looking for more shiny items to hoard.
He lowered his voice. “Moving rooms is… excessive.”
Ryder leaned back in his chair, steepling his fingers. “It’s politics,” he said simply. “It’s optics. It’s security. And it’s Tearian tradition, apparently, when a bond is declared holy.”
Kylar’s eyes narrowed. “Kairi didn’t request that.”
Serenity’s gaze sharpened, just slightly. “No,” she agreed. “But the temples did. And your father heard grandchildren and stopped listening to the rest.”
Ryder sighed again, but there was fondness in it, too. “He thinks stability will keep the court from panicking.”
Kylar looked down at the docket again. The words hadn’t changed.
Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.
Joint room.
His chest tightened, and for a heartbeat he felt that earlier oddness again, a faint tug of emotion he couldn’t place. Not grief this time.
A flicker of warmth. Like an amused exhale.
Kylar’s fingers brushed the lion crest under his shirt without thinking.
Ryder noticed. His eyes narrowed, attention sharpening. “Ky,” he said quietly, and the use of the name was deliberate. Private. “Are you alright.”
Kylar forced his hand back to the table. He sat straighter, composed.
“I’m fine,” he lied, because that was what princes did when their lives were being rewritten in ink.
Serenity tilted her head, watching him like she was cataloging the edges of his mask. “You’re going to have to get used to being discussed,” she said softly. “You’re not a shadowguard on the road anymore.”
Kylar’s mouth pulled into a thin line. “I never stopped being one.”
Ryder’s gaze held his for a long moment, then softened just a fraction.
“We’ll handle it carefully,” Ryder said, quieter now. “No one moves you into a shared suite without you and Kairi agreeing on what that looks like. Father can want grandbabies all he likes. He’s not getting them by decree.”
Kylar’s shoulders loosened a fraction. He was already thinking about how to prevent that.
Serenity’s smile was small. “Pity. Decreed babies would be efficient.”
Kylar glared.
Ryder snorted once, then tapped the docket with two fingers. “Focus,” he said, the king returning fully as more councilors took their seats. “We have a kingdom to keep upright while the gods throw furniture.”
Kylar stared at the docket one last time.
Joint room. Heirs.
He could already imagine Kairi’s face when she heard it.
He could already hear her calling him absurd.
And, infuriatingly, a part of him wanted it anyway.
Not because of tradition. Not because of optics.
Because the palace was always listening.
And sharing a room with her sounded like the first thing in days that might feel like a door he could lock from the inside.
More councilors filtered in. Advisors took their places. The room filled with murmurs and parchment and the faint scrape of chairs on stone.
Ryder straightened, the king settling into his spine like armor. He waited until the last man was seated and the doors were shut.
Then he began.
“Let us speak of the betrothal agreement between Tearia and Naberia.”
The room quieted.
Ryder’s gaze moved across the table, calm and deliberate. “King Rush and King Niveus have come to agreements on how Prince Dato and Princess Kairi shall conduct themselves in accordance with our laws and theirs. It will be a mix of customs.”
Kylar kept his expression neutral as every pair of eyes in the chamber turned, subtly, toward him. Toward the empty seat beside him that might as well have been labeled Phoenix Vessel in gold ink.
One councilman cleared his throat. “Your Majesty, will Tearian custom demand public closeness? Physical displays?”
Another advisor leaned in, sharper. “And if Naberian nobility takes offense at foreign practices being elevated above our own?”
A third voice followed, cautious but edged. “What precedent does this set for future alliances? If the gods sanction union, do we now structure policy around divine spectacle?”
The questions came in waves, like they had been held back out of politeness and now spilled freely because the doors were closed and the king had invited them to speak.
Ryder listened. Let them empty themselves.
Then he answered with the measured patience of a man who understood council was less about decisions and more about convincing the room it had been part of them.
“Tearian closeness will be adapted to Naberian court decorum,” Ryder said. “We will not invite scandal. But neither will we disrespect Tearian tradition, especially when their temple has been explicit in what they require.”
A councilman’s brow furrowed. “And the Crown Princess household? How many guards? How many attendants?”
Ryder glanced briefly at Serenity, then back to the table. “Her household will be expanded. Ash Guard presence will be formalized. Temple-trained staff will be selected and vetted. The princess will not be placed at risk because our palace enjoys gossip.”
That got a few nods. A few tight mouths.
Kylar sat still, hands folded. Every time someone said princess he felt the lion crest beneath his shirt like a reminder.
Ryder continued. “As for the suite arrangements,” he said, and Kylar felt his shoulders tighten before he forced them down, “that will be done in the style of the former king and queen’s quarters. Shared living spaces. Separate rooms. Security improved.”
A beat of silence. Then a slow exhale rippled through the table. Not agreement, exactly. But acceptance. The kind that came when there was no cleaner option.
Arguments followed, of course. Pushback. Concerns about optics, about cost, about precedence. A few tried to challenge the balance of power implicit in honoring Tearian customs at all.
But the bones of the agreement held.
Piece by piece, the room settled into it.
By the time Ryder reached the end of the discussion, the betrothal agreement stood on the table like something that could not easily be knocked over.
Ryder set his hands flat on the wood, sealing the moment with posture alone.
“Then it is accepted,” he said.
Kylar didn’t move. He didn’t let himself exhale too obviously.
But inside, somewhere beneath ceremony and ink and the lion’s steady weight, something in him loosened a fraction.
Accepted. Formalized. Real.
And he tried not to think about how much he wanted to see Kairi right now, just to tell her: They’ve decided what our lives look like again. Come laugh at them with me so I don’t start growling in council.
Kairi sat with her hands folded in her lap like she’d been taught as a girl, spine straight, chin level, expression calm.
Inside, she was debating what the last feeling she felt from Kylar was exactly.
The king’s solar was warm with lamplight and the slow, heavy comfort of wealth. Thick rugs. Dark wood. Windows that looked down over Carlbrin like the city was something the palace had built and could unbuild if it wished.
Rush stood near the window, arms crossed, the posture of her brother who had never learned to sit still when there was work to do. Niveus had taken the high-backed chair as if it had been carved specifically for his patience to become law.
Kurt was posted near the wall, quiet as a shadow. He wore boredom like armor, eyes half-lidded, face polite, but Kairi had lived beside him long enough now to recognize the lie.
He wasn’t bored.
He was thinking himself into knots.
Darius wasn’t here.
She had sent him. Not because she wanted him away from her, but because Jayce’s pale face and the way his thoughts seemed to snag on invisible hooks had been bothering her since the previous day. Darius was blunt and steady and, most importantly, stubborn enough not to leave a man alone just because that man insisted, he was fine.
Rush glanced over his shoulder. “You’ll have to hold a gathering,” he said, tone like he was announcing the weather. “Tea. Snacks. Get to know the other ladies.”
Kairi kept her smile polite. “You say that like it won’t be warfare.”
“It will be,” Rush agreed immediately. “Just with lace and smiles.”
Niveus rubbed at his temples. “And fewer knives where you can see them.”
Kairi nodded. It was easier to treat it like a mission. Missions had rules. If she could learn the names, the families, the alliances, then the faces stopped being an ocean and became a map.
Rush continued, “If you’re going to be their Crown Princess, you can’t remain an exotic rumor they only glimpse at banquets. You must become… familiar.”
Familiar meant approachable.
Approachable meant touchable.
Kairi kept her expression smooth anyway and tucked the discomfort down where it couldn’t show.
Niveus leaned forward, forearms on his knees. “And you and Serenity should spend plenty of time together.”
Kurt’s eyes flicked once, quick as a blade glint. Darius and he had discussed the hallway. Both had their opinions.
Kairi didn’t look at him. She only nodded. “Of course.”
Niveus watched her for a beat longer than the words required, as if weighing whether she meant it or whether she’d said it because it was expected.
Then the door opened and Zudo entered. He bowed to Niveus, nodded to Rush, then looked to Kairi with the careful courtesy of someone who understood she was both guest and volatile holy symbol.
“My kings,” Zudo said, voice measured. “An update.”
Niveus gestured him forward.
Zudo opened his notes. “The lords are… unsettled. They support strengthening the alliance, but they have concerns about moving toward war without clear terms. Specifically: troop commitments, provisioning, chain of command between Tearia and Naberia, and what guarantees we have if Saebria escalates beyond the border.”
Rush nodded slowly, gaze narrowing as if he could already see the battlefield and where men would die because someone argued over ink.
“They want certainty,” Rush said.
“They want control,” Niveus corrected mildly.
Zudo nodded. “Both.”
Silence sat between them for a moment, thick as smoke.
Kairi remained still, listening, storing it away. She was learning a new kind of court language. Less poetry, more pressure. Less promises, more leverage.
Rush exhaled through his nose. “If it would settle them,” he said, “I can marry. A political union. One more piece on the board.”
Kairi’s stomach clenched.
Niveus didn’t even blink before his gaze cut pointedly to her, and the meaning landed without a single word spoken.
This is why I care about your betrothal being visible. This is why the court needs a ‘happy thing’ that isn’t another sacrifice.
Then Niveus spoke aloud, voice calm and infuriatingly direct. “She can marry,” he said, nodding toward Kairi as if she were a treaty clause. “She is in love.”
Kairi’s cheeks warmed, but she kept her face composed. She refused to shrink in a room where men-built futures with sentences.
Rush frowned. “Don’t use her like that,” he said, quieter now. Not angry. Protective.
Niveus held his gaze. “I’m not using her. I’m acknowledging what already exists and what the gods have already sanctioned.”
Zudo shifted, uncomfortable with the talk between the two kings. The show of the Lion and the Phoenix on Dato’s name day was its own political headache. His days have become long and stressful sitting on meetings with Enelias and Ricardo.
Rush looked away. “I can deal with a loveless marriage Niveus. Kairi shouldn’t have to for alliance purposes.”
Niveus’s expression softened, just slightly. Not sympathy. Understanding.
“That,” Niveus said, “is precisely why you shouldn’t.”
Kairi’s fingers tightened against her skirt.
Rush’s shoulders rose and fell once, a controlled breath. “Then what do you propose,” he asked, tone edged.
Niveus leaned back, steepling his fingers. “We let the court have what it wants most,” he said. “A story they can repeat until they believe it. Stability. A visible bond. The gods’ approval. Your sister and my son. What are the gossips saying Zudo?”
Zudo gave a soft low sigh before reciting. “A love match made by the gods my King.”
Kairi kept her chin lifted. She didn’t flinch. But the words still felt like they were placing them both on display even more. Then she noticed Rush’s sharp gaze. She gave a small nod. She watched the faint softening to his expression then.
Zudo cleared his throat softly. “The lords will still ask what this means for the alliance beyond sentiment.”
Niveus nodded. “Then we give them terms,” he said simply. “And we give them a date. And we give them a gathering.”
Rush’s eyes narrowed. “The tea party.”
“The tea party,” Niveus confirmed, as if that were the true battlefield. “Let their wives and daughters meet her. Let them see she isn’t a dragon’s weapon or a foreign threat. Let them see… a princess.”
Kairi pushed down the irony. They want me softened.
She could do soft. She could be steel underneath it too.
Rush looked at her. “Can you handle that.”
Kairi’s smile turned sharper at the edges, the kind that would look sweet to anyone who didn’t know her.
“I can host tea,” she said. “I survived being hunted across a continent. I think I can survive pastries.”
Kurt made a faint sound that might have been a laugh disguised as a cough.
Niveus’s mouth curved. “Good.”
Rush huffed. “And Serenity.”
Kairi nodded again. “I will spend time with her.”
Zudo’s eyes flicked to the window, as if he could see the whole court gathering beyond it, whispering already.
Kairi sat very still, letting their decisions move around her without letting them move through her.
Because she could feel it already, faint as a tremor under the skin:
The court would want her to be the happy thing.
And she intended to be more than that.
She intended to be a line that held.
A story they couldn’t twist into a weapon.
And when she glanced toward Kurt again, she caught the smallest tightening of his jaw, like he was already planning how to stand between her and every smiling hand that came too close.
Not bored at all. Not even a little.
Kairi’s slippers barely made a sound on the stone as she and Kurt moved through the west-wing corridor. This palace had the same way of swallowing footsteps with silence. The echoes didn’t travel far, dampened into the quiet.
Kurt walked half a pace behind her, posture straight, expression neutral in the practiced way of a man trying very hard to look like he wasn’t thinking at all. Kairi had learned Kurt’s “bored” face. It was the same face he wore right before he asked a question that could cut bone.
They turned the last corner toward her rooms.
And there he was.
Kylar leaned against the wall beside her door as if he’d been put there to hold the hallway together. One boot braced behind him, cloak draped loose, hair still damp at the edges like he’d dressed too quickly or just came from the sparring yard. The lamplight caught the shape of his jaw and the dark shadows beneath his eyes, and Kairi’s chest tightened at how tired he looked.
He lifted his head the moment he sensed her, and something in him shifted. The prince-mask stayed mostly in place, but his gaze softened in a way that was purely his.
He pushed off the wall as she drew near, the movement controlled and careful, like he didn’t trust his body not to betray how much he’d missed her.
Kurt stopped immediately, stepping to his post with quiet efficiency. He positioned himself a few paces away, angled to watch the corridor and the turns, eyes forward, sworn not to see what didn’t concern him.
Kairi didn’t pretend not to notice Kylar’s exhaustion.
“You should sleep,” she whispered, as if saying it any louder might snap the fragile thread holding him upright.
Kylar’s mouth curved faintly. He nodded once. “I should.” His gaze swept over her with a slow attention that felt like hands: checking for bruises, for strain, for anything out of place. “I missed you.”
It wasn’t dramatic. It wasn’t public. It was simply the truth, set down between them like something precious that didn’t need defending.
Kairi’s fingers twitched at her side, wanting to touch him. Wanting to climb into the small space of safety his presence always made.
“I missed you too,” she admitted softly.
Kylar exhaled, the smallest relief in it, and then his eyes narrowed, focus sharpening as if his mind remembered what his heart kept trying to forget.
“How was your day?” he asked, voice low. Calm. Almost casual, if you didn’t know him.
Kairi studied him for a moment. His shoulders were too tight. The way his attention kept flicking, quick and guarded, to the corridor behind her, to Kurt, to the shadows between archways.
It wasn’t only being tired.
It was vigilance. Something restless and hungry beneath the skin. Something must have happened earlier when she felt that pang of heat.
“It was… long,” she said carefully. “But productive.”
His gaze stayed on hers. He let the silence stretch, giving her room to speak and giving himself time to read what wasn’t being said.
Kairi sighed, then tipped her head slightly toward her door, a wordless question.
He didn’t step inside. Not yet. Not in the hallway where walls listened and servants passed like ghosts. Just a slight shake of his head was all he gave.
So, Kairi stayed where she was, keeping the conversation small and contained.
“The kings met again,” she said. “More realm politics. More planning. I was there with Kurt.”
Kurt didn’t move, didn’t react, but Kairi felt rather than saw the way he listened.
Kylar’s eyes flicked once toward Kurt, then back to her. “And?”
Kairi hesitated.
Kylar’s brows pulled together. “Kairi.”
His voice wasn’t harsh. But it carried that edge he used when something mattered.
She took a breath. “Jayce.”
The name landed, and Kylar’s gaze sharpened instantly, as if he’d been searching for the source of the grief and finally found a doorway that might fit.
“What about him?” he asked.
Kairi watched the way he held himself, like a man bracing for news he didn’t want to hear.
“He’s stressed,” she said quietly. “More than he wants to admit. Darius noticed it too.”
Kylar glanced past her for a moment then back to her. “What kind of stressed.”
“The kind where he doesn’t sleep,” Kairi answered, and her voice softened with concern. “The kind where he smiles and jokes and then goes quiet when he thinks no one’s looking.”
Kylar’s eyes went distant for a heartbeat, a flicker of memory. Jayce’s steady presence. His watchfulness. The way he had carried too much for too long without ever making it anyone else’s burden.
“I sent Darius to keep an eye on him today,” Kairi continued. “Not to hover. Just… to notice if he slips.”
Kylar eased a fraction, as if something inside him finally found a place to set his weight down.
So that had been it. Not Kairi. Not the palace. Not some unseen hand tugging at her through the bond.
Jayce.
His mind had been circling the wrong fear because the correct one felt too complicated to name.
Kylar nodded slowly. “Good.”
Kairi blinked. “Good?”
He looked at her, eyes steady. “Good that you noticed. Good that you sent Darius.” His gaze softened again, and for a moment the prince disappeared entirely. “Good that Jayce has someone watching him the way he watches everyone else.”
Kairi took a step closer to him and had to look up a little more to keep eye contact. “And you?”
His gaze drifted, briefly, to the door behind her. His exhaustion showed again, like the lamplight had shifted and revealed the true lines of him.
His eyelids lowered for a heartbeat, and Kairi saw it, the tiny sway of someone who had been moving on adrenaline and duty for too long.
“Dato,” she murmured, using the name that always seemed to reach the parts of him “Kylar” couldn’t. “You’re barely standing.”
A faint, rueful sound left him. “I’m standing.”
“On stubbornness,” she countered.
That pulled the smallest smile from him, soft and tired and real.
“I thought you might be hurt,” he confessed quietly, and the vulnerability of it slipped out before he could smooth it away. “I felt… something. And I didn’t think it was the Lion.”
Kairi’s eyes widened slightly. “Today?”
He nodded once.
Kairi’s mind ran quickly through the day. The meeting. The tension. Rush’s sharp words. Niveus’s cold calm. The countless times her stomach had clenched at the mention of war.
And then Jayce’s face looked too pale, too distant, too frayed at the edges.
“I wasn’t hurt,” she said gently. “But I was worried about him. A lot. Do…you think?”
He exhaled, slow, like he’d been holding a breath since the pang hit him in his chambers.
Kairi lifted her hand and, carefully, touched the edge of his sleeve near his wrist. Not enough to scandalize. Enough to be steady.
“You don’t have to carry every flicker of fear like it’s yours,” she whispered.
His gaze dropped to her fingers, then back to her face. Something in him softened further, and for a moment he looked very young, not quite nineteen, a man who had been forced to learn how to be steel before he’d learned how to be anything else.
“Even when it isn’t mine,” he murmured, “I want to fix it. Especially, if it…if it’s yours”
“I know,” Kairi said.
She let the silence sit between them, quiet and familiar. Kurt shifted slightly down the hall, a subtle repositioning like a sentinel adjusting to a new angle of threat.
Kylar’s gaze flicked toward that movement, then toward the corridor beyond.
The palace. The potential spies. The listening walls. The court that would chew on them the moment it tasted their weakness.
He was thinking again. Overthinking. Planning three moves ahead and still not satisfied.
Kairi stepped closer and lifted her other hand. With a tenderness that felt almost absurdly intimate in a hallway full of shadows, she tapped his cheek lightly, the way she would in the dream meadow when he got too lost in his head.
His eyes refocused on her instantly.
“Go sleep, my beloved,” she whispered.
His lips parted as if to argue.
Kairi lifted a brow.
He surrendered with a quiet huff that almost made her smile. “Yes, my lady.”
“My beloved,” she corrected, just as softly.
That earned her a look, equal parts fondness and quiet surrender.
“Yes,” he said, voice low and certain. “My beloved.”
He hesitated, then leaned in just enough to speak near her ear, where the palace couldn’t steal it.
“Lock your door,” he murmured. “And if you wake and feel afraid. Wake Darius. Don’t be brave in silence.”
Kairi’s chest tightened, warmth and ache braided together. “I won’t.”
He nodded once, satisfied, and then he took one step back as if forcing himself to break contact before he forgot where he was.
He glanced at Kurt, the slightest acknowledgment of the man’s presence, and Kurt gave a near-invisible nod in return.
Then Kylar looked at Kairi one last time, as if committing the sight of her to memory before he let the night take him.
“I’ll see you,” he said, voice softer. “Soon.”
“In the meadow,” Kairi whispered.
That was all it took.
Kylar’s smiled like the promise of that place could carry him through the last few steps.
He turned, moving down the corridor with quiet discipline, leaving Kairi at her door with Kurt standing guard and the palace listening to footsteps it would never fully understand.