"When mates collide, passion is not a choice, it is an inevitability, a wildfire that consumes hesitation and leaves only truth in its wake."
The Royal Library had never felt so small. By all rights, it was a cathedral of knowledge: towering shelves stacked with leather-bound tomes, maps older than kingdoms, scrolls of laws and decrees that I had studied and memorized. The air always smelled of parchment and dust, of candle wax and polish. I had always found peace here, comfort in the order of rows and rows of words, each in its place.
Tonight, that order was gone. The moment Juno's mouth crashed into mine, the library transformed into something dangerous, forbidden, intoxicating. My back slammed against one of the shelves, the wood biting through my jacket, the faint rustle of old paper whispering down as if the books themselves disapproved.
And yet I could not stop.
