The moon hung low over the citadel, silver light casting soft shadows across the polished stone floors. The palace was unusually quiet, the kind of stillness that wrapped itself around the halls and refused to let go. Lira clutched the satchel tighter with every step, the torchlight flickering over cold marble like shadows whispering her name. They had sent her to heal him. The one no one else could touch. The one who'd claimed her life with a glance.
The Prince Bleeds in Silence
The guard didn't speak when he opened the door to the prince's private wing—he only gave Lira a look of subtle pity, or perhaps warning, before disappearing down the hall. She stood for a breathless moment in the threshold, cloak clutched to her chest, staring into the dimly lit chamber.
No gold. No velvet banners. Only stone and shadow and heat.
Kaelith sat by the hearth, his back to her. One arm rested on the armrest of the chair, fingers clenched tight around a goblet. His tunic clung to his frame, dark with sweat and torn down one side. The fabric over his ribs had been burned clean through.
The smell of scorched leather and iron hung thick in the air.
"I was told you needed healing," she said quietly, stepping inside.
He didn't turn. "The castle is full of healers."
"Yes," she replied. "But none of them can touch you."
Silence, heavy and smoldering.
When he did speak, his voice was a low rasp. "And you think you can?"
Lira stepped closer, squinting through the firelight. His body was taut, restrained like a creature barely holding to form. His skin shimmered faintly along the edges of his wound, embers pulsing beneath the surface.
The curse. It lived just under his skin.
"I'm not sure what I think," she said honestly. "But I was sent. And I don't scare easy."
A heartbeat. Then another.
"Irinel never flinched either," Kaelith murmured.
Lira's heart jumped—but she didn't let it show.
She set the satchel down, knelt beside him, and reached for the torn fabric.
"May I?" she asked.
He didn't answer.
But he lifted his arm.
Beneath the Flame
The shirt came away with a soft hiss of tearing cloth. Beneath it, Kaelith's torso was a canvas of fire-kissed muscle and half-healed wounds. Across his side stretched a laceration lined with glowing orange—like magma traced beneath skin. And further up his ribs, thin trails of silver-scaled flesh crept outward like frost meeting flame.
Dragon.
He was dragon in the way thunder was storm—inevitable, wild, barely contained.
Lira's breath caught. She dipped two fingers into the healing salve, the ointment warm from the ambient heat of his body. Then, carefully, she touched him.
His entire body tensed.
Not from pain. From something else.
The salve sparked at first contact—her magic responding without command. A soft blue glow pulsed from her fingertips, sinking into the wound. The ember light flared—then faded, soothed by her touch.
Kaelith hissed through his teeth. "What are you doing?"
"Healing you," she said, voice thinner than she meant.
"Not just that," he growled.
Lira looked up—and found him watching her. His eyes, usually so sharp, were unfocused now. Dazed.
"You're calming the flame," he said, almost in disbelief.
"I didn't mean to."
"But you are."
Their gazes locked. The glow beneath her hand pulsed again—softer now, warmer. His chest rose, slow and even, the tension in his muscles easing. Her fingers hovered, uncertain, but the magic guided her. It wanted to linger.
So she let it.
Touch and Tension
Her palm pressed gently to his chest, where dragon scars flared beneath the skin like molten rivers frozen in time. His skin was hot to the touch—not just fever-warm, but like embers left too long in a hearth.
Kaelith didn't move.
But he didn't push her away.
His breath hitched when her thumb brushed over one jagged edge of a scaled scar. Lira's magic surged in answer—uncontrolled, intimate. It was like a breath shared between them. A current. A tether.
She should've pulled away.
Instead, she whispered, "Does it hurt?"
"Only when I fight it," he replied.
She hesitated, then said, "Then don't fight me."
The words hung in the space like smoke.
Kaelith closed his eyes. "I'm not sure I can."
Lira's hand trembled. She should have stood, should have finished the healing, wrapped the wound and left. But her hand was still pressed to his chest. And the fire in her blood—hers, not Irinel's—refused to go out.
Almost
The healing was nearly done. The worst of the wound had closed. The curse had quieted.
And still they hadn't moved.
Lira realized her other hand had curled into the fabric of his trousers—steadying herself. Grounding herself. She let go, flustered, cheeks warming.
Kaelith noticed.
His voice dropped, rough like smoke, like truth scraped raw. "You feel it too."
She tried to deny it, tried to shake her head, but her breath caught. "I don't know what I feel. This isn't my life."
"But you're living it now." His hand rose—hesitant, reverent—and brushed her hair behind her ear.
She froze.
It was the gentlest touch she'd known since arriving in this world, and it unraveled her faster than fury or fear.
He leaned in—slow, deliberate—but stopped just shy of her lips. The firelight danced between them. His breath fanned her cheek. Her pulse pounded.
"I shouldn't," she whispered, voice barely audible.
"No," he agreed, his mouth close enough she could feel the word. "You shouldn't."
But neither of them moved away.
Seconds stretched. The air between them shimmered with everything unsaid—heat and hesitation, the ghost of a kiss that hadn't yet happened.
She could feel the pull in her chest, the treacherous ache of wanting something forbidden. Something she didn't understand.
His hand lowered, barely grazing her jaw—fingertips ghosting down her throat like a promise he wasn't ready to make.
Lira exhaled, trembling.
Kaelith closed his eyes—just for a moment. A war waged behind them.
Then, with a breath as sharp as a blade's edge, he pulled back.
"Go," he said quietly. Not an order. A shield.
Her knees felt unsteady as she rose.
He didn't look at her again as she left—but the air stayed scorched behind her.
And neither of them would sleep that night.
The Burn She Left Behind
She left soon after.
Kaelith stood in the center of the room, the air still holding the shape of her presence. The fire had dulled to embers, and yet… the space pulsed with heat.
He looked down at his chest—bare, still marked with faint silver scales peeking from beneath the skin. Her touch had faded, but the place she'd touched? Still thrummed. Not with pain. Not quite with peace either.
With want.
His fists clenched at his sides.
He had felt it the moment her fingers met his skin—his curse reeling back as if soothed by a command even he couldn't comprehend. His breath had hitched. Not from pain, but from restraint.
He had wanted her.
Not just physically—though gods, the scent of her still clung to the air like crushed petals and wild dusk.
Her scent lingers on his cloak.
He turned and saw it—his outer cloak still draped across the back of the settee where she'd laid it when she arrived. He walked to it, slow and unsure, as though nearing something sacred or profane.
He lifted it.
Inhaled.
And that was his undoing.
Jasmine. Rain. And smoke. The scent of someone who did not belong here—and who fit nowhere else.
Kaelith let the cloak fall through his fingers.
He should have sent her away. Should have ignored the strange pulse that stirred in his blood when she first touched him in the execution hall. Should have treated her like the Empress's pawn, like a liability wrapped in legend.
But instead—
He had spared her.
He had named her his bride before a court of wolves.
And now… she'd looked at him with eyes that didn't belong to Irinel Valehart. Eyes that saw him, and didn't flinch.
What was she?
Who was she?
Certainly not the woman he'd seen executed with his own eyes four years ago.
But this new one—this Lira cloaked in Irinel's face—she had touched something in him no spell ever had.
Not submission. Not control.
Stillness.
The dragon's curse inside him slept when she was near.
That terrified him.
Because he had spent years mastering the rage. The fire. The thing that coiled in his blood and threatened to become him.
And now a stranger had soothed it with a touch.
She doesn't know what she's doing, he thought. She doesn't even know who she is.
But that truth didn't change the other truth:
He'd felt it.
The way her fingers trembled.
The way she had looked at him. Not like a monster. Not like a prince.
Like a man who could be broken.
He pressed his hands to the stone mantel, bracing himself.
Lira was dangerous.
Not because of what she might become.
But because for the first time in years… he wanted something more than control.
He wanted her.
And that was the kind of weakness that burned empires down.
After the Flame
The door closed behind her with a soft click.
Lira stood alone in the hallway, the echo of Kaelith's breath still warm in her memory. The corridor stretched silent before her, lit only by slivers of moonlight falling through stained-glass windows. She didn't move. Couldn't.
Her heart hadn't stopped racing since she left the room.
She touched her palm to her own chest, half-expecting it to still glow from where it had met his skin. It didn't. But her fingertips tingled. A phantom echo of the way he'd looked at her—like her touch had silenced the fire screaming through his veins.
Like he needed her.
And not just for political leverage.
That, somehow, was worse.
She exhaled slowly, sliding down the stone wall until she sat on the floor, knees drawn to her chest. The air was cooler here. The silence familiar. The silence was hers.
Lira Morgan, girl from nowhere, had once run from cops in alleyways, patched wounds with duct tape, used a switchblade as a key to survival.
But tonight… she'd touched a prince's bare chest. Had soothed the monster inside him with her hands.
And part of her—gods help her—had wanted to stay.
Not just for the power.
For him.
It terrified her.
Because she didn't know who she was supposed to be. Irinel Valehart had died in blood and fire. Lira had died in twisted steel and shattered glass.
This version—the one wearing silk, who held dragons with bare hands—was still a mask.
She reached into her sleeve and pulled out the small leather-bound journal. Her real secret. Her lifeline. She uncapped the pen she'd smuggled from the healer's kit—too fine to be questioned, too small to be noticed.
And in the glow of the moon, she wrote.
Lira's Survival Rules
Mask Rule 2: If someone looks at you like you're the only flame in the room—don't let them see how cold you are inside.
(Let them burn for you. Just never let them feel how frozen you really are. Not yet.)
~~They'll want to believe.~~ They do believe.
~~I can't let them know.~~ I can't stop.
He looked at me like I was the "ember." If only he knew
~~I'm just borrowing light. He didn't see the cold behind my ribs. The pieces still frozen from the last life
—L.
She shut the journal and held it to her chest, leaning her head back against the wall.
Tomorrow, she would play the dragon's wife. The survivor.
But tonight… she was only a girl trying to breathe through smoke.
And remembering the way his eyes had closed—like her hand was the first mercy he'd ever known.