t go of my

tay exactly where

o run. There's n

slow, like he's deciding to trust his own hands more than

till murmuring above us. It is not the last time he calls me that. By the time we reach the Warriors' Fortress three hours

uarded gates, yes, but also warm light through tall windows and a ki

corridor. The room is bigger than anything I've ever had to myself, a real bed, a wi

tell the Coun

rom that room." He says it lightly, but s

bed like it weighs nothing. "Home sweet gilded

posed to be

ugs, unbothered. "I find honest work

pulling out a chair at the long tab

t down on

ing golden and fried that I don't recognize, and waits until I actually

s back

uth twitches, not quite a smile, but close enou

ibrary, curled into a window seat with a treaty

ersonally offended you," he says, dropping i

l seize an omega's stipend for 'beha

point of t

terrible

est underneath the teasing, the kind of attention that makes my spine straighten instead of cur

ugh, at something he says about the Council's drafting committee having the legal reasoning of a sta

g me shut it back down. "That

anywhere. He simply appears in whatever room I've claimed for the evening, settles into the f

m the fourth night, uncertain what to d

ng. Looks back down at

all, and somehow that feels like the c

that the fire's banked low, that I've eaten enough. Saving my sharpest arguments for whenever Kieran wanders into whatever room I'm in, because I like watching his face when I land one he did

ud one night, to no one, staring at the ceiling o

orking

and Kieran has me backed against the wall before I fu

close enough that I can feel

m n

ne beside my head, not trapping me, just close, close enough that the space

know what

reverent. "The bond isn't weakening, Liora. It's growing. All of them. You're not diluting anything the

ot what I

s my jaw, barely there. "D

. It feels like a question with the answer already half decided, and

era

oor o

his gentleness since the binding. It doesn't come. His expression settles into something else entirely, something that looks unmistakably like

and walks away like he didn't just

ack to whatever quiet rhythm three weeks have built, that I imagined the weight of Cael

slam open hard enough

it does before a storm breaks, territorial and furious and barely contained. Caelan moves to intercept him. Kieran's hand dri

id during the crowning, instant and total, except this time ther

a man who has just found out e