The tavern had gone warm and golden at the edges, and Raya, second in command of the palace guard, had stopped counting her drinks somewhere after number ten. She was not much of a drinker and even less of a talker, but the wine had loosened something in her entirely. “I could run this palace better than the King himself,” she announced, wobbling on a chair like a flag in a breeze. “On his best day and my worst.
”
The table erupted. Pike, the youngest of them, howled, “To the captain we deserve! ” and they all drank to it. “I’m serious,” Raya said.
“One week with the run of the place and I’d have it fixed. ”
“Fixed how? ” Brenna grinned over her cards. “Where do I even start?
We requisition forty spears, we get twelve. We order grain for the East Barracks and it goes where? Gone. ” She set her cup down with exaggerated care.
“And the orders. Half of them contradict the other half. My captain and I spend more hours sorting out who told who what than we ever spend actually guarding anything. ”
“Sounds like rotten luck,” Brenna pushed another drink into her hands.
“It isn’t luck. It’s neglect. The man at the top hasn’t the faintest notion any of it’s happening. He’s too busy waxing lyrical over his banquets to notice the whole place is rotting from the floor up.
”
“Strong words,” said a dry voice from the next seat. Raya turned. She hadn’t noticed him sitting down: a man in a traveler’s cloak, hood up despite the heat of the room, a cup of dark ale in front of him that he hadn’t touched. “Not strong.
True. A king ought to know what goes on in his own house. This one couldn’t find the storehouse with both hands and a map. ”
She could make out the lower half of the stranger’s face, the suggestion of a smile.
“The king is young. New to the office? Perhaps no one’s told him that storehouses are in the habit of growing legs. ”
“Then no one’s doing their job, including him.
He’s the king. Not knowing is the one thing he isn’t allowed to be. ”
“You’d say that to his face, would you? ”
Raya thumped the table with her tankard.
“I’d say worse to his face. ”
The table whooped, and the approval went to her head faster than the wine had. “You think he’s ever gone hungry because the grain delivery never came? Ever had to tell a soldier he’s standing another eight hours on the same flagstone he’s stood on since five in the morning?
He doesn’t know how the rest of us live. And he doesn’t care to. ”
A scatter of hear-hears. Pike clapped.
Then the stranger reached up, unhurried, and pushed his hood back. Raya’s first thought, drunk and instant and entirely traitorous, was: Oh, that’s not fair. Because the face under the hood was one she knew. It was on the coins she counted and the portrait she passed forty times a day on patrol.
The painters had managed the light brown hair and the jaw, but what every last one of them had missed was the rest of him. The lazy, unhurried way he held himself. The line of his throat where the cloak fell open. The eyes, pale blue and far too sharp for the easy face they sat in.
And the mouth, already curving into a slow and certain smile that seemed purpose-built to dismantle sensible women. Raya noted, with great clarity, that she would not at all have minded being kissed by that mouth. She was furious about it. “Fenris,” he said pleasantly, as though they were being introduced.
“The king. Charmed. And you are? ”
The laughter drained out of the room the way water leaves a cracked basin, until the loudest thing in the whole tavern was the small, mortified ringing in Raya’s own ears.
Pike found his voice first, a strangled whisper. “Your majesty,” he said, bowing. Somewhere far beneath the wine, Raya’s wolf understood that she should stop talking. The wine had other plans.
“Huh,” she said. “You’re shorter than the portraits. ”
“Am I? I’ll have the painters flogged.
”
Raya bit her tongue. “So you truly think I could learn something from you? ” The king asked, his tone never wavering. “I think that you have no idea what it costs to do my job.
If I were queen, I’d do a damned sight better than you,” Raya snapped, annoyed by how distracted she was by his smile. He raised an eyebrow. Then he leaned in and said it like a dare. “If you were queen, my dear, then we’d have to be married.
”
A test, Raya thought with great satisfaction. He expected her to go red and stammer and take it all back. Well, he’d picked the wrong drunk woman. “Then marry me.
” She thumped the table again. “Go on, I dare you. Marry me and come and see how the rest of us live. ”
If the tavern had gone quiet before, it was now entirely silent.
The king blinked. Raya blinked back. For a moment, they only looked at each other. And Raya, certain she’d just won something, lifted her chin.
“So,” she said, proud as anything, “what’ll it be? Will you marry me? ”
He opened his mouth to answer. The whole tavern leaned in with her.
Raya watched his lips part, watched the shape of the first word begin to form. And then the room tilted gently sideways. The floor and the ceiling traded places, and Raya passed out cold before she heard a single word of it. —
Raya woke to the conviction that she had died in the night and that this was hell.
Hell, it seemed, was extremely bright. But at least she was in her own bunk. She had, against all odds, made it home. The night came back in pieces that didn’t fit together.
The warmth of the tavern, a hand of cards, laughter. She vaguely remembered there had been a man. She couldn’t have said who. A low, amused voice.
Blue eyes. “She lives,” said a voice. Raya cracked one eye. Brenna stood in the doorway, arms folded.
Behind her was Pike, and behind Pike, two or three more heads she couldn’t bring into focus. “Go away,” Raya croaked. “So, big night? ” Pike offered, careful.
“Fine. I drank too much. It won’t happen again. ” The admission cost her.
She was the one who stayed sharp while others didn’t, who saw people home. She expected all of them to mock her. But nobody laughed. Instead, Brenna and Pike traded a look.
“What? ” Raya asked. Brenna grimaced. “You really don’t remember?
”
“I remember enough to be ashamed of. That’s the end of it. ”
“It’s really not,” said Pike. And then, with forced cheer, he added, “But it’ll be fine.
He’s not going to take a word from a guard that drunk seriously. ”
“Pike,” Brenna said, to shut him up. “Best case, he strips her of the post. ”
Raya looked between them, confused.
“What is everyone talking about? ”
Brenna crouched to her level. “I don’t know how to tell you this. But you went ahead and told the king he was shorter than his portraits.
”
Raya blinked. “The king? You’re saying I told his royal majesty, King Fenris, that he was too short? ” Her voice went high.
“Amongst other things,” Pike confirmed. And then it dragged the rest up with her. The hood pushed back by an unhurried hand. The jaw, the blue eyes.
“No,” she said to the memory more than to Brenna. She’d called him a pup. The most powerful alpha in the land, a pup to his face. And she thought that was the bottom.
But then she found a lower floor. Because “Then marry me,” she’d said. She’d proposed to the king of the realm. Her.
A guard. After ten minutes of insulting him to his face. And the worst was that she had no idea how he’d reacted. Had he laughed?
Gone cold? If only she could remember his face. The door at the far end of the barracks banged open. “Raya,” a messenger said.
“The captain wants you. Now. ”
Pike’s hopeful look folded itself away. A summons from Captain Dane at this hour, in this tone.
Raya was in trouble. She panicked the whole way to Dane’s office. It was obvious the king couldn’t let it pass. A king who let a drunk guard mock him and walk off laughing only invited the next mockery and the next.
He was going to punish her. The only question was how bad. He could take her head and not a soul in the realm could say a word against it. Even if he let her live, she’d lose her post.
She’d trained her whole life to be a guard. It was the only thing she knew how to be. There was nothing else for her. There never had been.
“Enter,” Dane called from behind his desk. She tried to read him. Maybe it wasn’t so dire. Maybe the king wanted the whole thing buried.
Maybe—
“Tell me the whole palace has it wrong,” Dane said. “Tell me you did not, in front of a tavern full of witnesses, ask the Alpha King to marry you. ”
Raya closed her eyes. “Sir.
I can explain. ”
But there was nothing to explain, and they both knew it. Dane, who’d stared down a prison riot without blinking, now looked simply and openly afraid. “What did you say to him?
Everything that left your mouth, Raya. ”
“It’s a blur. But he didn’t seem too mad. ”
“He’s the king.
He doesn’t need to get mad. He can do whatever he wants. Gods, we need to start building your defense. ”
Raya shook her head in shame.
Here was the man who had believed in her when no one else had bothered to look, and she had repaid him by becoming the joke of the entire palace. Suddenly, the bell over the gate began to ring. Dane’s head came up. “That’s the gate.
An official arrival. ”
“And no one cleared it with me. ” His frown deepened. Whatever was coming had gone over the captain of the guard’s own head.
And there was only one person in the realm who could do that. Dane stopped breathing. She saw the same impossible thought reach him in the same instant it reached her. The king was coming.
They both heard it under the second toll, coming up through the floor. Footsteps. Not the step of a detail sent to make an arrest. One man, unhurried, easy, coming this way.
The king wasn’t coming. The king was here. —
The door opened and the king of all the land walked into the little gray office, and the room changed. Raya felt it before she’d fully turned.
The air pulling taut around a true alpha. Her own wolf coming to attention beneath her skin. She’d known he was the king, but the hooded man from the tavern had let her forget. This one let no one forget anything.
He filled the doorway and then the room, broad-shouldered and unhurried, and he was beautiful. What she hadn’t expected was the weight of him. The easy, total certainty of a wolf who had never once in his life had to raise his voice to be obeyed. Drunk, she’d called him a pup.
Standing here sober, she understood that she had been very, very stupid. “Ah,” the king said, giving her a look. “There’s my fiancée. ”
Raya froze.
Had he just called her his fiancée? Her stomach dropped. He hadn’t come for an arrest. He’d come for sport.
He was going to mock her before he destroyed her. “Your majesty,” Dane said. “Forgive me. My guard was gravely intoxicated last night.
Which I take responsibility for. If there’s discipline owed, let it be mine to give and let it be quiet. ”
The king listened with his head tilted, and Raya had the strange sense he wasn’t only hearing the words, but weighing them. And then he was smiling again.
“Discipline,” he repeated, eyes widening. “Captain, I do hope you don’t mean to discipline my delicate bride yourself. I might take it personally. ”
A beat of pure silence.
“Your majesty,” Dane tried. “Please, don’t jest. Raya’s a good soldier. Right.
Yes. And there will be discipline. ”
Fenris’s eyes cut to Raya. “I’ll be seeing to it personally.
Once we’re wed. ” Then he winked at her. Raya’s jaw dropped. “Your majesty,” Dane said carefully.
“You can’t actually mean to marry the girl. ”
The king’s hand flew to his chest. “And why not? She asked me, and I said yes.
” Fenris turned to Raya, all innocence. “Didn’t I, sweetheart? ”
And here was the trouble. Raya genuinely could not remember.
“I… well, you…”
Her voice, which had held through riots and brawls and one memorable knife between the ribs, abandoned her entirely. “I said yes,” Fenris repeated, beaming. “Right before you were sick all over my shoes. ”
The room tilted because she remembered that, and the heat at her neck went straight to the roots of her hair.
“You vomited on the king,” Dane said faintly. “Don’t fuss, Captain. I only found her all the more charming for it. ”
Dane dragged a hand down his face.
“But why? Forgive me, your majesty. Why would you agree to marry her? ”
Silence.
Raya looked at the king. The king looked back, then he beamed. “Well, Captain, you’re a wolf. You know how it goes.
When a bond hits, it hits hard. ”
Raya startled. A bond? Impossible.
She would feel it. A connection, a pull, something. All she felt was the presence of a powerful alpha. Liar, she thought.
With a certainty that startled her. There was no bond. He knew it, she knew it. And he stood here inventing one anyway.
“You’re saying she’s your mate? ” Dane said, voice gone strange. “Well, of course she’s my mate. She’d hardly have dared ask the king of the realm to marry her otherwise, would she?
Imagine it. A soldier of yours propositioning her sovereign in a public tavern for no better reason than a skinful of wine. Not a bond in sight. Can you imagine the scandal, Captain?
”
Raya grimaced. She’d been played. The mate bond was the one thing that made last night anything other than a hanging offense. Deny it, and she was just a drunk guard who belonged in a cell.
Allow it, and the whole mad business turns to fate. The question was, why would he pretend she was his mate knowing it wasn’t true? Beside her, Dane nodded, defeated. “As you say, Majesty.
” He straightened. “Then, while you’re here, I’d ask your leave to increase the palace watch. The business on the hunt last week has sat ill with me. ”
“An old strap and a nervous horse,” Fenris said lightly.
“Don’t lose sleep over it. It was only an accident. Though, increase the watch by all means if it eases you. ”
Dane nodded, relieved.
“Thank you, majesty. ”
“Now,” the king clapped his hands. “Might I have a moment alone with my betrothed? ”
Dane hesitated, but he had no choice.
He bowed and went. And the latch clicked. And Raya was alone with the king. “Your majesty,” she said.
“Last night I was far out of line. I insulted you and what I did after I have no excuse for. I’ll take whatever discipline the captain sees fit. There’s no need to drag the crown into a farce.
”
Fenris dropped into the chair across the desk. “You’re terribly serious in the mornings,” he observed. “Your majesty, please. ”
He watched her.
A slow smile spreading across his face. “Tonight,” he said. “I’ll send someone to bring you to dinner. Wear what you like.
Though I’m given to understand it’s customary to make an effort. ” He rose, pausing at the threshold. “You will make an effort, won’t you, Raya dearest? I’m so looking forward to getting to know my bride sober.
” He winked. And then he was gone. And the apology she’d built so carefully was still sitting in her mouth with nowhere to go. —
Dinner was laid in a small private room.
And Raya sat in it like a prisoner awaiting sentence. When Fenris arrived, his pale blue eyes found her across the room, and something in them made her pulse kick stupidly against her throat. “Well, my dear,” he said. “Pink certainly suits you.
” He surveyed her the way a man surveys a board he’s already won. And she hated that her spine straightened under the weight of that gaze. “You mock me, your majesty. ”
“Now, why would I do a thing like that?
” He lifted a decanter. “Wine? ”
The very word made her grimace. “Right, perhaps not.
I’d hate for you to be sick on me twice in as many days. ”
“Your majesty,” she began, but he interrupted. “Only because it pains me to see you so unwell, my darling. ”
He rolled his sleeves back at some point during the meal, and Raya found her attention snagging on his forearms as he reached for his wine.
“You’ve gone quiet,” he observed. “I’m eating,” she said. “No, you’re strategizing. I can see it.
” He leaned in. “Go on. Tell me the thing I shan’t like. ”
She hesitated.
“Why am I here, your majesty? ”
Fenris blinked. “To eat? ”
“You can’t possibly want to marry me.
I’m a guard. I’m tall, and I’m plain, and I’m…” She stopped. She would not stand here and name aloud all the things she wasn’t. “It doesn’t make sense.
”
For a moment, he set his chin on his hand and regarded her with an expression of wounded innocence. “Why not you, Raya? When the bond hits, it doesn’t consult a list. ” His voice had gone low and earnest, and she felt the words settle in her chest.
It was a very good answer. But wanting to believe it was exactly how a clever person got made a fool of. “I’d feel it if we shared a bond. I’d feel something at least, and I don’t.
”
The king pouted. “You feel nothing for me at all? ”
“I feel as though I’m walking on eggshells trying to work out what you want from me. ”
He was quiet for a moment.
“You asked me to come and see how the rest of the kingdom lives. To learn what difficulty truly is. Perhaps that’s what this is. ”
“And how are you learning anything sitting here being fed pheasant?
” Raya asked. “And forgive me, your majesty. But if you’ve the time and the leisure to wine and dine whatever woman you fancy making fun of, then I don’t think you’ve got the first idea what difficulty actually is. ”
Fenris sat back, and she realized she’d gone and said far too much to the king.
Again. “I apologize, your majesty. You have every right to mock me, of course, after how I…”
“You’re right,” he interrupted. She gaped.
“I am? ”
“Yes. ” He set his napkin aside. “I’ve never once stood where you stand.
So show me. Show me your side of it and we’ll find out whether it’s as easy as I think. ”
The mischief had gone out of his eyes. What was left was steady and direct.
“Your majesty,” she babbled. “You don’t have to do that. You’re the…”
“I want to,” he interrupted. Raya fidgeted, more affected than she liked.
Because he was beautiful, yes. But it was the sincerity that undid her. The way he sat there asking her to teach him something. “Fine,” she said.
And her voice came out softer than she’d meant it to. So she showed him. She’d meant to march him through it like an inspection. But the moment she stepped into the armory, something in her loosened.
“Forty spears requisitioned,” she explained. “Twelve delivered. Same with mail, with boot leather, with lamp oil. Every month.
”
Fenris ran his hand along the empty pegs, frowning. “Where does the rest go? ”
“That’s the question, isn’t it? ” She moved down the line.
“The captain flagged it. But it goes up the chain and dies there. No one upstream has ever cared how a barracks actually runs. ”
She waited for the royal platitudes.
Instead, he said, “Show me the duty roster. ”
She blinked. “What? ”
“The duty roster.
You have one, don’t you? ” He held out his hand, expectant. “You said, ‘Show me. ’ I’m being shown.
”
There was something almost boyish about it. The eagerness. Like he’d been handed a puzzle he actually wanted to solve. Raya pulled the battered ledger from the shelf and handed it over, watching as he flipped it open.
When his thumb stopped on the third line, she said, before she could help herself, “No. There. The East Gate doubling. ”
He looked up, and she realized she’d stepped closer.
Was nearly shoulder to shoulder with him. Both of them bent over the page. She cleared her throat and pointed. “That’s the real waste.
Two men where one would do because the order came twice and nobody canceled the first. ”
“So, cancel it,” he said. “I’m second in command. I flag it.
” She pulled the book back, needing the distance. “I can’t just…”
“Why not? ”
“Because I don’t have the authority to…”
“You have it now. ” He straightened.
“Consider this your official royal permission to cancel any order that’s wasting resources. ”
She stared at him. “You can’t possibly mean that. ”
“Of course I do.
” He reached past her for the duty roster again, and she felt the brush of his sleeve against her arm. He was doing it on purpose, she thought. But he wasn’t looking at her. He was genuinely reading the roster.
Something warm and dangerous unfurled in her chest. “Who gives the orders when Dane’s away? ” he asked, not looking up. “Whoever’s nearest the seal and feeling important,” it came out drier than she’d meant.
He laughed. A real one, surprised out of him. She felt the answering tug at the corner of her own mouth. They crossed the yard in the dark.
Raya heard it first. A scrape. Stone on leather. Off to the left, where the shadows pooled thick under the buttresses.
She stopped. “Problem? ” Fenris said. “Quiet.
” Her eyes swept the dark. She knew this yard. Had walked it a hundred nights. Something was wrong.
There. By the woodpile. A shadow that shouldn’t move. It moved.
She let her breath out. A cat. Had to be. “You’ve gone all tense,” Fenris said, too loud.
“Is this the part where you confess you find me irresist…”
She yanked him sideways. A crossbow bolt punched through the air where his head had been, buried itself in the wood pile with a wet thunk. “Was I just shot at? ” Fenris asked.
“Stay behind me. ” She shoved him to the wall. “Don’t move so I can see what’s coming. ”
“It’s surely nothing.
Some recruit practicing in the dark lost his grip…”
“Hush. ” Footsteps. More than one set. Spreading wide.
“That’s not our recruits. ”
They came out of the dark all at once. Four of them. Blades out.
Faces wrapped. Raya tore the pink gown straight up the side and her blade was in her hand. “Stay. ”
“At your back.
Yes, you’ve said,” Fenris said from behind her. He sounded calm. Why was he so calm? The first one came fast.
She caught his blade, turned it, stepped inside his reach, and stomped down hard. The second man was on the ground. Fenris stood over him. “You…” she started, stunned.
“Behind you,” he warned. She dropped. A blade hissed over her head. She came up fast.
Elbow into throat and the third man folded. The fourth went wide, past her, straight for Fenris. Blade up. She didn’t think.
Threw herself across the space and the blade caught her forearm, but she was already moving, twisting, and his wrist snapped under her hand like dry wood. A whistle cut the dark. Sharp. Clean.
The two still standing broke off as one. Not panicking. Not scattering. A disciplined retreat.
Silence crashed back. Raya held her crouch, blade up, scanning. Her arm was on fire, but nothing moved. “Well,” Fenris said, “you do know how to show a man a memorable evening.
”
She stared. “You’re not even surprised. Someone just tried to put a bolt through your skull, and you’re not… Were you expecting this? ”
And then it clicked.
The hunt last week. The business Dane had wanted the extra watch for. “This isn’t the first time, is it? ” She said it slowly.
“Your majesty, is someone after your life? ”
For half a second, something real flickered behind his eyes. Then, “You’re bleeding. Let’s see to that arm.
”
She didn’t take his hand. Who are you? she thought. A king playing fool, or a fool she kept mistaking for a king?
She didn’t know, but she was keeping score. And the list of things that didn’t add up was getting long. —
For the better part of a month, Raya tried to work out what the king was hiding. It was the only sensible response to a man who’d been shot at in his own yard and laughed it off.
Someone wanted Fenris dead. She knew it. So she did what she was good at. She watched.
She gathered. Was the engagement a shield? A guard at his side he could keep close without explaining why? Every day she came up with new theories.
The king did not cooperate. She’d ask a sharp question, and he’d answer with a joke. She’d press, and he’d flirt, sliding the conversation sideways so smoothly she wouldn’t notice until it was three topics gone. She’d corner him on the assassination attempt, and he’d tell her she was beautiful when she was suspicious.
He gave her nothing she could use, and a great deal she didn’t know what to do with. Because the longer she watched him for danger, the more she found herself simply watching him. And worst, somewhere in those long blurred days, Raya stopped wanting him to go away. It crept up on her like a fever.
The first morning he came to the blade stores, he tipped his head back against the door frame, lamplight sliding down the long line of his throat, and she lost the thread of her own sentence halfway through. “You stopped,” he said, smiling. “I’m thinking. ” She was not thinking.
She was looking at his mouth. He came to the east wall at the cold edge of a night watch with two cups of cocoa, and when he handed hers over, his fingers brushed the backs of hers and her whole arm lit up to the shoulder. She nearly dropped the cup. She covered it by glaring out at the dark.
“You’re not looking at the stars,” he murmured. His voice did something to her. Low and amused and meant only for her, this close in the dark. “They’re stars,” she managed.
“Mhm. They’re rather outshone tonight. ” He was looking at her, openly, taking his unhurried time about it. Raya, who had stared down armed men without blinking, could not hold his eyes for more than a breath before she had to look away.
He smiled into his cocoa like a man who’d won something and said nothing and let her stew. That was the unbearable part. He was toying with her and she could never tell how much of it was real. She did not know which man she was falling for.
But she lay in her narrow bunk after the late watches with her body humming and sleep nowhere, and her traitor mind went straight to him. And so it came to a one-on-one late in the armory. He came in and sat on the bench across from her like he’d done it a hundred times. No papers, no question about the watch.
Nothing she could file the visit under. Just him in the lamplight watching her. “What do you want? ” she snapped.
It came out raw. “You. ”
“No. I’m at the end of it.
” Her hands were not steady and she didn’t care. “Every day you won’t say what you’re after and you won’t leave me be and I cannot… I can’t keep doing this. ” Her voice cracked. “Tell me it’s a scheme.
Tell me you need a sword you can trust. Tell me anything that makes sense, because I am not built to want things I can’t have and you are making me want… I stop. Too late. ”
“Want what?
” Fenris asked. “Don’t. You know what. You’ve known for days.
You’ve been enjoying it. ”
He stood. He came round the bench slow, the way you approach something that might bolt. “What if I simply want you?
” he asked. He was close now. Close enough that she had to tip her chin to hold his eyes. “Men like you don’t want women like me.
” But it came out as a whisper. And she was staring at his mouth again. “You don’t believe me,” he said softly. “So, tell me to stop and I’ll go.
Right now. I’ll walk out and never trouble you again. ” His voice dropped to almost nothing. “Or ask me to prove it.
”
The armory was very quiet. Her pulse was very loud. “Prove it. ” She heard herself say.
He kissed her. And every careful thing in Raya’s head went white and silent at once. His hand slid into her hair and his mouth was warm and certain and thorough, and there was no audience for it. There was only the two of them and the lamplight and the sudden, total, overwhelming fact of him.
Her knees forgot their job. She made a sound against his mouth she would have been mortified by if she’d had a single thought left to be mortified with. Then her nose caught up with the rest of her, and what it found wrecked her. His want.
Unmistakable, rolling off him in a hot, dark wave. The scent of a man who wanted her badly. It hit her low and molten and folded her resistance in half. Raya had been wanted for her sword, for her watch.
She had never in her life stood in the path of a man’s plain, helpless desire aimed at her. She let her hands find him. Up under the edge of his shirt to the hard, flat plane of his stomach. The muscle leaping under her palms.
The rough groan that broke against her mouth when she touched him there pulled low. She fisted her other hand in his collar and dragged him down and kissed him like she’d been thinking about it for a fortnight. Because she had. His hand spanned her waist, slid to the small of her back, pressed her against the long, warm length of him, and she felt exactly how much he meant it and shivered head to foot.
“Raya,” his voice had gone ragged. She pulled back just enough to meet his eyes. They were dark, blown. “I’m sure,” she said.
His hands found the laces of her tunic. Hers found his shirt. Fabric whispered. She got her palms flat against his chest, warm skin, the hammering of his heart under her hands, and he made a sound like she’d hurt him, and grabbed her by the hips and lifted.
Her back hit the wall. Her legs wrapped around his waist. His heat, his hands, the sound of him. There was nothing else but him, and the coiled, tight ache inside her finally, finally easing into something sweet and devastating.
This was not a scheme. This was not a strategy. This was just a man wanting her for no reason but wanting. And gods help her, she wanted him back.
—
Raya had stood guard at a hundred balls. She had never once been a guest at one. And now here she was in blue silk, feeling exposed. She caught Fenris’s eye across the room, and he smiled.
Slow, private. The smile he’d given her this morning when she’d rolled out of his bed at dawn. And the tightness in her chest eased. “You look devastating,” he murmured against her skin.
“I look like I’m playing dress-up. ”
“You look like you’re mine. ” His eyes were warm. “And I’m the luckiest bastard in the kingdom.
”
“Flattery,” she said, but her voice had gone soft. “Fact. ” He tucked her hand into the crook of his arm. “Come.
Let me parade you around so everyone can see what I get to keep. ”
He steered her away through the crowd with easy authority, and Raya let herself be steered. Let herself lean into the warmth of his palm against her spine. He took her out onto a colonnade where the music thinned and the night air came cool off the gardens.
For a moment neither of them spoke. “You hate this,” she said, watching him. She’d spent the last days in Fenris’s bed, learning the shape of his laughter against her throat. The way he said her name in the dark.
She could tell when he was and wasn’t enjoying himself. “Mhm. ” He was watching the dancers through the arch. “Hate’s a strong word.
”
“You’re lying. ”
He laughed, surprised, genuine. “I am, aren’t I? ” He turned to face her, and the charming ease had gone out of his expression.
What was left looked tired. “I’ve been doing this since I was nineteen. The smiling, the performing, the being what they need me to be so they don’t look too closely at what I’m not. And I can’t decide if that makes me clever or just…” He stopped, shook his head, smiled, but it was thin, defensive.
“Or just what? ” she asked. “Nothing. Ignore me.
I’m being maudlin. ” His smile widened and went brittle. “Too much wine and not enough Fenris. ”
She reached up and touched his face.
His breath caught. The false smile crumbled. “You’re not what they think you are,” she said quietly. “You’re so much more than some performance.
And the man underneath—I like him. A lot. ”
Something cracked open behind his eyes. “Raya,” he said, voice rough.
Then he kissed her, fierce and grateful and something close to desperate. She leaned into it, into him, and the world shifted. It wasn’t the heat. She knew the heat, the wanting, the familiar pull of desire.
This was something else entirely. Relief, fear, something fierce and tender, a warmth that poured in through the place where they touched, and it wasn’t hers. She could feel him. His emotions, distinct and clear and utterly foreign.
Raya jerked back with a gasp. Fenris’s eyes were wide, his pupils blown. “Did you…” he started. Her heart was slamming so hard she thought he must be able to hear it.
“Raya, I think that was…”
He took another step toward her, and she saw it in his face. The want, the desperate aching need to close the distance between them and touch her again, to prove to himself it was real. “It was just a kiss,” she heard herself say. Fenris froze.
“A kiss,” he repeated. His face shuttered. “Right. You’re right.
Probably nothing. ”
But his voice had changed. Gone careful and distant, the way it did when he was hurt. A servant appeared at the edge of the colonnade, silver tray balanced on one palm.
Two cups of wine, dark as blood in the moonlight. “Your majesty,” the servant murmured, and offered the tray. Fenris didn’t move. He was still looking at Raya, and there was something wounded in his eyes that made her chest ache.
“Fenris,” she started. He turned to the servant, reached for the wine, and Raya’s wolf snarled. Every instinct she had screamed wrong. She didn’t think, didn’t breathe, just moved.
Her hand shot out and knocked the cup from his fingers. Glass shattered on stone. “Don’t. ” Her hand closed around his wrist hard enough to bruise.
“Don’t touch it. ” She was already dropping to a crouch. “The smell. Underneath the wine.
Do you smell it? ”
She watched his nostrils flare as he caught it. The bitter edge beneath the fruit and oak. “Nightshade,” she said.
“Or something close enough. ” She turned to look at him, kneeling beside her in the moonlight, staring at the broken glass like he couldn’t quite make sense of it. “This was meant to incapacitate you. Perhaps even kill you.
”
The color drained out of his face. She could hear her own pulse in her ears, could smell the poison and the wine, and underneath it all, Fenris’s scent. Familiar, safe. And the thought that if she’d been looking away, if she’d been distracted for even a moment, he’d be dead.
Her grip on his wrist tightened convulsively. “Raya. ” His free hand came up to cover hers. “You will tell no one.
”
She stared at him. His face had gone hard. Not afraid, but calculating. “Not Dane, not the watch, no one,” he said.
“Do you understand me? ”
“No,” she pulled her hand free. “No, I don’t. ”
“We have a foreign king fifty feet away,” he interrupted.
“And his daughter, too. If word gets out that someone tried to poison me under my own roof at my own ball, I will have a war before midnight. ”
“So what? You just… you just pretend nothing happened?
You smile and dance and act like someone didn’t just try to murder you? ”
“Yes,” he said simply. She wanted to shake him. “Fenris, this is the third time in a month someone’s tried to kill you.
You’re in danger. I can’t protect you if you won’t let me. ”
“Raya. ” He reached for her.
“I need you to trust me. Just this once. I know what I’m doing. ”
“Do you?
” The fear was making her mean. His expression crumbled. He closed the distance between them and pulled her against his chest. “Hey,” he murmured against her temple.
“I’m here. I’m fine. You saved me. ”
“This time,” her voice was muffled against his jacket.
“And the next,” he said, “because you’re brilliant and you see everything and you’re the best guard I’ve ever had. ” He pulled back just enough to frame her face with his hands. “Right now though, I need you to let me handle this my way. Can you do that?
Can you trust me? ”
Every part of her that was still a guard said no. She trusted him, but she didn’t trust anyone else to keep him safe. But she could still feel the ghost of his emotions against her skin.
“All right,” she heard herself say. “I promise. ”
Relief flooded his face. He pressed his mouth to her forehead, quick, grateful.
And she felt it again, that rush of warmth through the contact. Then he stepped back and the mask slid back into place. The charming smile, the easy grace, the king who had everything under control. “I’ll be back soon,” he said.
“Wait for me. ”
She nodded because her voice had stopped working. He kissed her once more and then he was gone. Leaving her alone on the colonnade with broken glass and spreading wine and the sick, hollow knowledge that she’d just lied to a man she’d fallen in love with.
She’d promised to let him handle it. But someone had just tried to kill him. And he’d walked back into that ballroom like it was nothing. She gave him a thirty-count.
Then she followed. She kept to the edges the way she’d been trained. She watched him smile and nod and deflect questions with practiced ease. Watched him step through a side door and how the moment he was out of sight the smile dropped from his face.
Raya’s stomach dropped with it. She followed him down two flights of stairs toward Dane’s office. The door clicked shut behind him. For a moment Raya stood in the dark of the corridor and could not make her legs work.
Then very quietly she crossed to the door and opened it. Fenris was behind her captain’s desk. The drawers were open. “What are you doing?
”
He looked up. For a long, airless moment neither of them moved. “Raya. ” His voice was very calm.
Very steady. “This isn’t what it looks like. ”
—
Fenris never paused. He always had the answer before you’d finished the question.
But now he stood behind Dane’s desk with the sheaf of papers in one hand and he paused. His jaw tightened. Her stomach dropped. “Someone just tried to put poison in your cup,” she said.
“You told me to say nothing. And then you come straight down here in the dark to go through my captain’s private papers. ” Her throat had gone tight. “So, tell me, Fenris, what is going on?
”
Every instinct she owned was screaming that something was wrong. And still, she stood in the doorway and offered him the way out, because eight hours ago she had woken in his bed with his arm heavy across her waist, and she did not want this to be what it so plainly was. He set the papers down. “I’ve been investigating Dane.
” His voice had gone quiet, even terribly gentle. The smooth, careful one he used on dukes and frightened councilmen. The one he hadn’t used on her in weeks. He was using it on her now.
“Embezzlement, sabotage. The supplies that never come. The orders that contradict each other. All of it deliberate.
Bleeding the coin meant for the watch into House Revel. And I think the men who’ve tried to kill me have been carrying his money. ”
The floor went out from under her. “No,” she said.
He stepped around the desk toward her. Not fast, careful. “Raya. ”
She stepped back and he stopped at once.
“That’s not… Dane wouldn’t. You don’t know him. He’s not…”
She stopped. Because underneath the noise of not Dane, never Dane, something cold and quiet had started assembling itself.
“You needed someone close to him,” she heard herself say. “Someone he trusted. That’s why you said yes in the tavern. You’d been hunting a way to get close to him, and a drunk fool stood up on a chair and handed you one.
”
He said nothing. He held her eyes and did not deny it. “Say I’m wrong,” her voice cracked. “Fenris, say I’m wrong.
”
He looked at her for a long moment. She watched him try to find the words, and he didn’t say she was wrong. She pressed her face into her hands. She’d been so stupid.
He’d kept asking questions. The rota, the stores, who held the keys when Dane was away. And she had thought he was interested. “All of it,” she whispered.
“It was all a lie? ”
“Not all of it. ” He came around the desk and she retreated into the corridor, and again he stopped. “Raya, please listen to me.
” His voice had roughened. “I won’t pretend the engagement didn’t start as cover, but it stopped being…”
“Why didn’t you just ask? ” she interrupted. “If you suspected him, why not haul him in?
You’re the king. ”
“Being king doesn’t make me untouchable. ” He sighed. “Dane holds the army.
An old name, powerful friends, the loyalty of every soldier in this city. If I’d arrested him on a hunch with no proof, there’d have been blood in the streets by dawn. ” He shook his head, and for the first time the steadiness frayed. “Tyrants bully their way through.
They jail whoever frightens them and wonder why there’s a knife in them three years on. I had to be certain. I couldn’t move on him until I had something not one man alive could argue with. ”
It was a good answer.
That was the worst of it. It was a good answer, and she hated that, too. “You’re wrong about him,” she snapped. He picked the papers up and held them out to her, his voice gone hoarse.
“Read it yourself. He’s bleeding the watch dry. Your watch. The exhausted men you stood on a chair and defended.
”
No. She would not look. Because Dane was the one thing in her whole life that had never once been a lie. Dane had hauled her out of the dirt.
Dane had seen something in a plain girl with a sword. “Not everyone is like you,” she said. “Some people are simply what they say they are. ” The tears spilled over and she didn’t try to stop them.
“Is that why you didn’t tell me? Because you thought we’d both been conspiring against you. ”
“No. ” His hand shot out.
“Gods, Raya. If anything, you’re the one person in this palace I cleared instantly. ”
That stopped her. “Why?
” she said before she could stop herself. “Because you were drunk. That night in the tavern. Drunk people don’t dissemble.
They just say the true thing. And the true thing you said up on that chair was that everything wrong with this kingdom was my fault. ” His mouth twisted. “Half my court believes exactly that.
Not one of them would ever say it to my face. But you did. That’s how I knew you weren’t part of anything. ”
He took a half step closer.
When she didn’t retreat, he took another. “Was that your conclusion, Raya? That the boy king was to blame for the lot of it? Or was that something the good captain helped you to see?
”
She opened her mouth. Nothing came. Because she could hear it now. Dane, across a hundred late nights, grinding his teeth over the supply lines and the contradictory orders.
“He’s too busy with his nobles to notice. ” “A king ought to know what goes on in his own house. ”
Her words in the tavern. His words first.
She had carried his grievances in her own mouth for years and never once noticed they were not hers. “You should have told me,” she said, her voice shaking. “You knew I was innocent. You watched me put my own body between you and a blade twice.
I bled for you in that yard. I let you into my bed. And in all of it you never once told me the truth. Why not me, Fenris?
”
He looked at her, and when the answer came it was barely above a breath. “Because I didn’t think you’d believe me. I didn’t think you’d trust me enough to change your mind about the captain. And I was right.
Wasn’t I? ”
It hit her like a slap because it wasn’t wrong. So instead she reached past it to the older wound. “It doesn’t matter,” she said.
“That first night at dinner. Men like you don’t see women like me as anything but useful. And you sat there and let me believe I was wrong. ”
“It is wrong, Raya.
” His hand came up, reaching for her face the way it had on the colonnade. Fingers already curving to cup her jaw. “Don’t. ” She jerked back hard enough that her spine hit the wall.
He froze, the touch ungiven. “Don’t say that. Not when the only reason you’re saying any of it is that I walked through the wrong door at the wrong moment. ”
For a long moment neither of them moved.
His face was open and stricken. She turned for the door. “Raya. ” His voice cracked.
“Please. There’s a poison here loose in this palace and a foreign king downstairs and I…” He caught himself, forced better words. “I need you. Please.
”
And there it was. Even now, even with her whole heart in pieces on her captain’s floor, I need you. Not I’m sorry. Not I can’t lose you.
“Good night, Your Majesty,” she said. And she walked out into the dark of the corridor. —
It was all a lie. She pressed the heels of both hands to her eyes hard enough to see stars.
Gods, she was stupid. “Raya. ”
The voice cut through the air like a blade. She found Dane standing ten paces down the corridor.
Just standing there, like he’d been waiting. And before she could think better of it, she was moving toward him. He’d pulled her out of the dirt when she was thirteen and made her into someone who could stand on her own. Except she wasn’t standing very well right now.
“Raya. ” His hands came down on her shoulders. “What happened? You’re white as a sheet.
”
And because it hurt too much to hold in, she told him. “It was a lie, Captain. Fenris never wanted me. He used me.
I was just…”
She couldn’t force the words past her lips. Dane’s face softened. “I know,” he said gently. “I hoped to spare you this.
I’m sorry, Raya. ”
She thought he’d probably known from the very first night. Everyone had known. Everyone but her.
“I’m sorry,” Dane said low. “But I didn’t know how to tell you that he’s been bedding the princess. ”
Raya’s head snapped up. “And Raya,” Dane sighed.
“I’m afraid it’s even worse than you think. The visiting king’s daughter. She wasn’t willing, Raya. He drugged her.
Compromised her. Made sure she’d be found ruined so her father would have no choice but to sign the alliance. I saw it myself. Not an hour ago.
”
Raya took a step back. Fenris was a liar, yes. But she knew, the way she knew her own heartbeat, he would never do such a thing. Never.
Her mind raced. Dane said he’d seen it an hour ago. The timeline was wrong. The story was wrong.
None of it added up, which meant Dane was lying. The man who’d pulled her out of the dirt. He was lying to her face right now. Fenris had told the truth.
The stolen funds. The men who’d tried to kill him carrying Dane’s coin. Her hand twitched toward her sword. Old instinct.
But no. Not yet. Not when she was one woman against a captain who commanded every soldier in this building. Dane expected her to be hurt and angry and willing to believe the worst.
“What do we do? ” she asked, making her face crumple. Dane’s eyes sharpened. “We go to the foreign king before Fenris can twist it.
A king who’d drug a man’s daughter isn’t fit to rule. He’ll fall. And there are good houses ready to steady the realm after he’s gone. House Revel among them.
”
Raya made herself nod. “But it can’t come from me,” he went on. “I’m a captain. They’ll say I’m grabbing for power.
It has to come from someone they’ll believe. ” His voice went soft, almost kind. “It has to come from you. The king’s own intended.
If you tell the foreign king you saw Fenris take his daughter, no one in that room will doubt a word. ”
They walked, and it was the longest walk of her life. She had to get into that room and flip Dane’s trap back on him, and she had nothing. Just her word.
And one wrong word and the entire kingdom could end up at war. The foreign king had taken a council room in the east wing. Fenris was with him. He looked up when she came in behind Dane, and for half a second his whole face lit.
Then he saw who she walked in with, and the light went out. “Your majesty,” Dane bowed. “It grieves me to bring this, but your daughter has been wronged by the man at your right hand. ” He laid it out.
The drug, the alliance bought with her shame. “That’s a lie,” Fenris said. “Every word of it is his. ”
“He’d say that,” Dane said.
“Of course he would. But the king’s own bride was there. ” He turned. The whole room turned with him.
To Raya, silent by the door. “It’s plain to all that Raya loves the king. She has every reason to protect the man she’s to marry. ” He held a hand toward her.
“But ask her. Raya, tell his majesty what you saw. ”
Every face in the room swung to her. The foreign king leaning forward, desperate.
The advisers. Dane, sure of her, already counting it won. And Fenris, who thought she’d come to bury him. She looked at him.
I’m sorry, she told him, with no words at all. I should have believed you. Then she turned to the foreign king. “I saw nothing of the sort.
Because it never happened. Captain Dane is lying to you. ”
The room snapped tight as a drawn bow. Dane went rigid beside her.
“He says it happened within the hour,” she said, “but an hour ago the king was at his own ball with me. He never went near the princess. ” She faced the foreign king directly. “And there have been three attempts on King Fenris’s life.
There was poison in his wine tonight. I knocked it from his hand. ” Her chin came up. “Search the captain’s quarters.
Now, while he’s standing here and can’t reach them. See whether you find proof of a wronged princess or a paymaster’s ledger and poison that could kill an alpha king. ”
“This is hysteria,” Dane’s calm cracked. “She’s distraught.
”
“Then a search costs you nothing,” said the foreign king quietly. He nodded to his guards. And Dane’s face changed. The grave, honest captain was gone.
What was left was cornered. He ran. He came straight at her, and she saw the knife slide out of his sleeve half a beat before he reached her. “Raya!
” Fenris’s voice, raw with terror. But this was the one thing in the whole night she knew how to do. She turned into him, caught the knife arm at the wrist, wrenched, and used his own weight to put him face down on the stone. Her knee dropped between his shoulders.
She leaned close to his ear. “You trained me,” she said. “You should have remembered what I’m good at. ”
Then the guards had him, and they hauled him up and dragged him out, and it was done.
The foreign king went to his daughter first, safe, asleep, and never touched. The advisers hurried off in tight clusters. The guards took Dane. And then it was just the two of them.
Fenris hadn’t moved. He was staring at her like he’d never seen her before. “You saved my life. Even after everything, you still…”
“I came to stop a traitor,” Raya said flatly.
“That’s all. ”
The light in his face flickered. “Raya. ” He hesitated.
“The bond… it’s real. You felt it tonight. I know you did. ”
“It doesn’t matter if it’s real,” she said coldly.
“I saved you because it was my duty and because Dane was a traitor. Not one second of it was forgiveness. You used me, Fenris. ”
His face fell.
The hope drained out of it. “Raya. I love you. I don’t care how it started.
That doesn’t change what it became. You’re the truest thing I’ve ever…”
“Don’t. ” She stepped back. Every instinct she had was screaming at her to let him touch her, but she was done being a fool.
“You can say mate like it fixes everything. You looked me in the eye for weeks and used me. A bond doesn’t undo that. ”
He flinched.
“I’m sorry. I’m so…”
“I don’t want your apology. ” She turned for the door. “I’m glad you’re alive.
You’ll be a good king. ” A beat. “But I can’t trust you anymore. I don’t know if I ever will again.
”
She saw it in his eyes. The realization that he’d broken something that would never be whole again. “Raya, please. I’ll do anything.
I’ll…”
She walked out. —
She’d been captain of the guard for six months, and she was good at it. She’d always known she would be. The palace was a different place now.
Dane sat in a cell beneath the old fort. The rot he’d worked into the guard for years cut out clean. The king had done all of that, and the city had started to love him for it. He’d made her captain.
He’d also spent the last five of those six months trying to win her back. The flowers arrived a month in. She came off a dawn watch and found the entire barracks yard full of them. Her own people grinning like idiots, watching to see what she’d do.
“Send them to the infirmary,” she said. “And the temple. ”
He tried in the council chamber next. She stood at the war table twice a week now, and he was always there across from her.
He’d catch her eye and his whole face would do something hopeful and uncertain. And she would look back down at the troop numbers. After, he’d find a reason to linger by the door. “Captain,” he’d say softly.
“Could I have a moment? ”
She always walked out anyway. The bond didn’t help. Leave a bond open and it deepened.
Deepened and it set. So she kept it closed and hoped it would wither from neglect and let her go. Meanwhile, Fenris wrote to her. His letters came two and three a week in his own hand.
Some were short. Some ran for pages. Some weren’t even about her. A posting, a pension dispute, as though her honest answer were still worth something to him.
One read: “I keep writing the same word a hundred ways. Sorry. It’s a small, stupid word for what I did, and I don’t have a bigger one, so I’ll just keep sending it. ”
Another: “You said I felt close enough to take you to bed and not close enough to tell you the truth.
You were right. Instead of earning your trust, I just spent it. It’s the worst thing I’ve done. ”
And one near the bottom of a long page she’d sworn she wouldn’t finish: “I don’t want you back because you’re useful.
I want you back because none of this matters if you’re not with me. ”
Pike and Brenna always had opinions. “Good,” said Brenna in the early weeks. “Make him sweat.
You don’t owe that man a thing. ”
A month or two on, the line had moved. “He sorted the back pay,” Pike said one evening. “And he’s written you what?
Forty letters? ”
“Forty-three,” said Brenna, who apparently counted. By the fifth month, they’d given up subtlety entirely. “Captain,” Brenna said, “with respect, talk to the man.
”
“There’s nothing to talk about. ”
“You’re miserable. He’s miserable. And the rest of us have to stand here and watch.
”
Raya set down her pen. “I was used. I’m not queuing up for another turn. I’m a good captain, the guard runs well, and I’d like to be left in peace to do my job.
”
One night in the sixth month, a letter came that was different. “Raya, I’m sorry. You deserved better. You’ve made yourself clear and I’ll respect it.
I’ll stop now. ”
She read it twice. This was what she’d wanted. So why did it feel like losing?
He kept his word. No more letters, no more flowers. When she passed him in corridors, he’d nod. “Captain,” even and polite, not cold, never cold, just done.
“This is what you wanted,” she told herself the first week. She did her job. She did it well. And every night the warm, patient thread under her ribs stayed exactly where it was, refusing to fade.
Until the knock. Pike came into her office, Brenna at his shoulder, both of them the particular gray color of people who have made a very large mistake. “What? ” Raya said slowly.
“Did you do? ”
“He’s gone,” Brenna said. “The king. Off the grounds.
Not in his chambers, not anywhere. ” Brenna swallowed. “No one’s seen him since the tenth bell. ”
“Is this a joke?
” Raya asked, knowing very well it wasn’t. “What do we do, Captain? ” Pike’s voice cracked clean down the middle. She was on her feet without deciding to be.
“When was he last seen? And by whom? Where was he headed? ” She was already pulling on her sword belt.
“Wake the trackers. Take his scent off his chambers and every gate. Quietly. No bells, no alarm.
If word gets out, we’ll have a panic by dawn. ”
“Took him? ” Pike repeated faintly. “Move.
”
They moved. No horse gone, no coin drawn. His clothes present, his sword on its stand. The room neat and ordered and empty.
The trackers caught his scent and lost it at the east postern, where it simply stopped. The way a scent stops when a man is being careful. Or when a man is being carried. Raya stood in the courtyard with the pre-dawn wind cutting through her uniform.
There was one way left to find him. She’d known it from the second Brenna had said gone. She pressed a hand to her chest over the bond she’d been trying to smother for half a year. “It’s duty.
He’s the king. Finding him is my job. ”
It was not all this was. She opened the bond.
It hit her like a door blown open in a storm. Sadness first. Deep and bottomless. The twin of the one she’d been carrying for months.
Then anger turned inward, then despair, raw and suffocating. And underneath it all, confusion. Slow. Swimming.
Drowsy. His thoughts coming loose and drifting. He’s been drugged. She was moving before she finished the thought, out at a dead run, following the pull of him like a rope hauling her forward.
Behind her, Brenna. “Raya, wait. ”
She didn’t wait. The bond pulled her down through the lower city into the narrow streets where the pre-dawn light barely reached.
She came to a tavern. Warm light at the windows. She hit the door low and ready, hand on her hilt, braced for a back room, a blade, a body. And stopped.
There was just the king, slumped half across the bar at the far end of the room, collar open, hair a complete disaster, one hand wrapped loose around a cup, talking earnestly and at great length to a deeply uncomfortable barman. Behind her, Brenna arrived breathing hard. “Is he drunk? ”
Raya looked at the way he was holding onto the bar instead of the other way round, at how when he gestured the whole top half of him swayed after his hand like a tree in a strong wind.
“Dear gods,” Brenna breathed. “He is. ”
Relief hit Raya first. A bright, hot wave of it, because he was alive.
He was safe. And then the fury came right behind it. She was going to kill him. She got close enough to hear what he was saying.
“Of course I’ve tried apologizing,” he slurred. “For months I have apologized in every conceivable way. She won’t hear a word of it. ”
The barman made a noncommittal noise that suggested he’d been hearing about this for some time.
“Letters,” Fenris continued. “I wrote letters. Did I mention the letters? ”
“You did,” the barman nodded.
“And she closed our bond. ” He raised his cup, found it empty, and held it out. “Another. ” The barman sighed and poured.
“The thing is,” Fenris took a grateful swallow, “there’s nothing left for me to do but give up, is there? But how do you give up on your mate? ” He paused. “Did I tell you she was my mate?
”
“Extensively,” the barman sighed. “She’s so stubborn. Won’t hear me. Won’t do anything but work.
” He made a wide gesture that nearly took his cup off the bar. “And she’s very beautiful while she works. Very competent. But she was also beautiful and competent when we…”
Raya reached the bar and plucked the cup clean out of his hand.
“That’s enough. ”
The barman shot her a look of profound gratitude. “I was drinking that,” Fenris slurred. Then his eyes found her face and stuck.
He blinked. His whole ruined, miserable expression cracked wide open into something so delighted it hurt to look at. “Raya,” he breathed. And through the still open bond, she felt it slam into him all at once.
Joy and relief and disbelief. “What were you thinking? ” she said, low and furious. “Vanishing like that.
No guard, no word, no…”
“Relax,” he waved her off. “I’ll be back before anyone notices I’ve gone. ”
“The entire guard,” said Raya, “has noticed you’ve gone. ”
He swayed slightly.
“Oh. ”
“Come on,” she sighed. “Let’s go. ”
“I’m not going.
” He tried to pull away from her grip and nearly fell off the stool. “I’m very happy here. ”
“You’re nearly passed out on a bar stool. ”
“What do you have against this stool?
It’s a perfectly good stool. ”
“Nothing. It’s you I’m annoyed with. ” She hauled him upright.
He stumbled into her, all warm dead weight, and the scent she’d been trying not to think about for six months. “Yes,” he mumbled into her shoulder. “I’ve noticed. You’re very angry with me.
You’ll never forgive me. ”
“You betrayed me,” she snapped. “I didn’t know you. ”
He pulled back to look at her blearily.
“And then I did know you. And I loved you. And I was afraid of losing you. ”
Raya stopped breathing.
She could feel the frustration and sorrow and fear of it pouring straight through the bond, unguarded. “I knew you’d be angry,” he went on. “You were so certain I couldn’t possibly want to court you. But I happen to very much enjoy courting you.
” It was just true, sitting there in him, warm and plain and utterly without artifice. “But it was so obvious,” he sighed, “that the captain had you eating out of his palm. He spent years making you believe the only thing you’re good for is serving his guard. And you believe it still.
”
She stopped. It was, perhaps, a little bit true. “That doesn’t change the fact,” she said, “that you should have told me. ”
“Yes,” he nodded.
“I was a coward. ”
She nodded back, vindicated. “Just like you’re being a coward now,” he added, making her gasp. “What?
”
“You’d rather strangle our bond, a connection between our actual souls, than risk getting hurt twice. ” The finger wobbled. “You are a coward. ”
“I am not a coward,” Raya snapped.
“Prove it. ” His eyes were sliding half shut. “Marry me. ”
The world stopped.
“What did you just say? ”
“Marry me. ” He tried for dignified and landed somewhere near pleading. “I dare you.
”
She looked at him, caught between wanting to throttle him and wanting to hold him up because he was listing slowly toward the floor. “Marry me. Please. ” The bravado fell away, and what was left was raw and small and utterly undefended.
“I’m a wreck without you. I’ll spend the rest of my life making it up to you. I swear it. I’ll…”
He ran out of words and dropped his head into his hand.
But the sincerity of it, the love, the missing her so much it felt like dying, all of it poured through the bond. No mask, no angle. The man who hid everything hiding nothing at all. “I won’t ask again,” he mumbled, eyes falling shut.
“I’m sorry. I said I’d stop. I’ll stop asking. I’ll leave you alone.
I’ll…”
“Ask me again when you’re sober,” she said. “Ask me again tomorrow when you can actually remember asking. ”
His eyes cracked open. “And you’ll say yes?
” he breathed. She opened her mouth to answer. And then the king of all the land passed out cold against her shoulder. His head lolled against her neck, his breath warm and even and smelling powerfully of strong liquor.
And Raya stood there and felt herself smile for the first time in six months. She pressed a kiss to his forehead. His skin was warm, his hair soft against her lips. “Ask me tomorrow and find out,” she whispered.
—
In the end, it took him four months. Four months of asking. Every single day, sober, in every way a man could think of and a few no sane man should. He asked across the war table until Brenna threatened to resign in writing.
He asked on the east wall with cocoa going cold in his hands. He asked badly and beautifully. And once with so many flowers the barracks smelled like a funeral for a week. And every day Raya told him to ask again tomorrow.
Until one perfectly ordinary morning, she looked at the man grinning hopefully at her over breakfast, and she said yes. The whole city came out for it. The boy king nobody had taken seriously, and the plain guard who’d seen the man behind the smile before anyone else bothered to look. He cried during the vows.
She’d known he would. She didn’t quite. But it was a near thing. And the bond gave her away anyway.
And he laughed at her through his own tears, and she stopped caring who saw. “You’re stuck with me now,” he murmured when it was done. “No taking it back. ”
“Why would I take it back?
”
“I’m the one who proposed to you first, if you recall,” said Raya. “Drunk. On a chair. ”
“Best decision you ever made,” Fenris concluded.
She kissed him. For once, she didn’t argue.
