The memory of his touch, the heat in his stormy eyes, was a brand on my soul. I had replayed the moment a hundred times—the way his fingers had hovered over the sigil at my throat, the low rumble of his voice praising the color I wore for him, the terrifying, exhilarating inch that had separated our lips.
And then Valerius had knocked.
The frustration was a physical ache, a simmering pot left on the stove. I had spent the night tossing in my lavish bed, the Duke's fur cloak draped over me, its scent of frost and sandalwood a torturous reminder of the man just a few cold corridors away.
Dawn came, pale and unforgiving. Brigid arrived to help me dress, her eyes wide as she laid out the garments.
Not the sapphire wool. Not the battle leathers.
Lysander had sent a new set of clothes.
They were the color of a winter sky just before a storm—a deep, relentless grey. But woven through the fabric were subtle, almost imperceptible threads of that same sapphire blue, catching the light only when I moved. The trousers were supple and reinforced for riding, the tunic fitted and warm. Over it all was a riding coat, cut to the waist in the Northern style, trimmed with the same silver fur as his own.
It was a masterpiece of subtle declaration. I was in his colors, but the blue—my color—was woven into the very fiber, a part of the whole. It was a promise. A claim. A uniform for the partner he had chosen.
My heart did a traitorous flip. This was the Cold Duke not just accepting a strategy, but romancing it. He was speaking a language of power and possession that was utterly intoxicating.
He was waiting for me in the main courtyard, a man carved from the same winter morning. He wore similar riding leathers of unrelenting black, the silver fur at his collar mirroring mine. Frostfall was strapped to his back. His eyes, that stormy grey, swept over me from boots to brow, and the approval in them was a hotter flame than any hearth.
"You are… efficient," he said, the word laden with a new, intimate meaning.
"As are you, Your Grace," I replied, my voice thankfully steady. "Your tailor works miracles."
A ghost of a smile touched his lips. "The miracle is the fit, not the tailoring."
The air between us crackled. This was the good stuff—the sharp, witty banter layered with undeniable attraction that readers devoured.
Our horses were brought forward—a massive, terrifying black stallion for him and a sleek, intelligent-looking grey mare for me. He didn't offer me help to mount. He simply watched, a silent test.
I gathered the reins, put my foot in the stirrup, and swung up into the saddle with a grace that Seraphina's body remembered. I settled myself, meeting his gaze.
The ghost of a smile became a real one, there and gone in a heartbeat. "Good."
Captain Killian and a hand-picked unit of six guards were our escort. They were already mounted, their faces set in expressions of grim professionalism, but I saw the way their eyes flickered to our matching outfits, the subtle exchange of glances. The rumor mill would be churning before we even passed the gates.
We rode out in a column of purposeful silence. The world was frozen and beautiful, each branch coated in glittering hoarfrost. The only sounds were the crunch of hooves on snow and the creak of leather.
After an hour, the path began to climb, winding into the lower slopes of the Frostfang mountains. The air grew thinner, sharper. Lysander fell back from the head of the column, bringing his stallion alongside my mare.
"The vents are ahead," he said, his voice low. "The air will smell of sulfur and heat. The snow will be patchy. The wildlife is… strange. Adapted."
"A microclimate," I said, nodding. "A pocket of one environment trapped inside another."
He looked at me, that familiar intensity in his gaze. "You see the world in patterns no one else does."
"It's how I survived," I said softly. "It's how I intend to keep surviving."
He held my gaze for a long moment, the unspoken words hanging between us. With me.
The path turned around a jagged outcrop of rock, and the geothermal area opened before us. It was as he had described—a valley where steam rose from fissures in the ground, painting the air with a warm, eggy scent. Lush, strange mosses grew in vibrant greens and oranges around bubbling mud pots. In the center of it all was a small, perfectly clear pool, its water emitting a visible haze of warmth.
It was a hidden paradise. A secret heart of fire in the body of the ice.
Lysander dismounted in one fluid motion and came to my horse, his hands closing around my waist to lift me down. The contact was electric, even through the layers of leather and wool. His hands lingered for a second too long, his thumbs pressing into the curve of my hips.
"This is the place," he murmured, his face close to mine, our breath mingling in the warm, steamy air.
The guards had fanned out, giving us a wide berth, their backs tactfully turned. We were, for all intents and purposes, alone in this magical, hidden world.
I walked to the edge of the warm pool, kneeling to dip my fingers in the water. It was hot, almost too hot to touch. "The source of the fire-berry," I said, looking up at him. "The antithesis to your cold."
He knelt beside me, his shoulder brushing mine. The proximity was deliberate, intimate. "My family has known of this place for generations. We called it the Heartfire. A place of life that our curse could not touch." He looked at me, his expression stark and open. "I have never brought anyone here before."
The confession was a gift. More valuable than any jewel. He was sharing his sanctuary. His secret.
"It's beautiful," I whispered, overwhelmed.
"It is," he agreed, but he wasn't looking at the pool. He was looking at me, his gaze tracing the lines of my face, the way the steam curled around my hair. "The fire-berry grows on the far ridge. We will collect what we need. But first…"
He reached out, his fingers, cool from the air, gently tilting my chin up. The world narrowed to the storm in his eyes.
"The Steward interrupted us," he said, his voice a low, thrilling vibration that resonated deep within me.
"He did," I breathed, my heart hammering against my ribs.
"I find I dislike interruptions," he murmured, his thumb stroking my jawline.
This was it. The payoff. The moment the tension broke. The scene readers yearned for—the powerful, cold Duke brought to his knees by desire for the one woman who truly sees him, in a hidden, magical place that symbolizes their connection.
His head bent, his lips a breath from mine. "Elara…"
And then, from the ridge above us, came a sound that shattered the moment. Not a Steward's knock. Not a political crisis.
It was the sharp, metallic zing of a crossbow being fired.
The world shattered.
One moment, I was lost in the stormy grey of his eyes, my entire being focused on the promise of his lips. The next, I was slammed into the steaming, sulfurous mud as Lysander's body covered mine, a human shield of muscle and fury.
The crossbow bolt meant for his heart buried itself in the trunk of a stunted pine with a sickening thwack, a mere hand's breadth from where his head had been.
Chaos erupted.
Captain Killian's roar of "Ambush!" was swallowed by the sudden clash of steel. Our guards, professional and deadly, had already formed a protective circle, their swords meeting the daggers of dark-clad figures who seemed to melt from the steam vents themselves. These weren't Uruks or bandits. They moved with a silent, lethal grace, their faces obscured by grey cloth—professional assassins.
Lysander was on his feet in an instant, Frostfall singing from its scabbard. The vulnerable man was gone, replaced by the terrifying General. But his rage had a new, specific focus. They had not just attacked him. They had attacked us. They had violated the sacred space he had shared with me.
He moved like winter's wrath incarnate. His first parry disarmed an assassin with a twist of his blade that shattered the man's wrist. The second strike was a clean, brutal thrust through the throat. There was no feral curse-driven fury here. This was colder, more precise. This was protective annihilation.
I scrambled to my feet, mud clinging to my new, beautiful clothes, my heart a frantic drum. Fear was a cold knot in my stomach, but beneath it surged a white-hot anger. They had stolen our moment. My hand closed around the hilt of the small, sharp dagger Lysander had insisted I carry strapped to my thigh. A pretty weapon, he'd called it. For pretty threats.
This threat was ugly.
An assassin broke through the guard's line, his eyes—the only visible feature—locked on me. The weaker target. The distraction.
I didn't scream. I didn't freeze. I dropped into a crouch, the memory of self-defense classes from a lifetime ago firing through my nerves. As he lunged, I sidestepped, the movement clumsy but effective. His dagger grazed my arm, a searing line of pain. But my own blade found its mark, plunging into the soft tissue of his upper thigh.
He grunted in surprise, more shocked than wounded. It was enough.
A black blur shot past me. Lysander didn't decapitate the man. He simply grabbed him by the throat, slammed him against a rock with enough force to crack bone, and leaned in close, his voice a whisper of pure, murderous ice.
"Who sent you?"
The assassin choked, his eyes wide with terror at the face of death so close to his own.
Lysander's grip tightened. "Was it Hoff?" The name was a curse.
The man gurgled, a desperate, negative shake of his head.
Lysander's eyes narrowed. He leaned closer, his lips almost touching the assassin's ear. "Then give your master a message from the Duke of the North," he whispered, the intimacy of it more terrifying than a shout. "Tell him he has made this personal. And I do not lose what is mine."
With a final, contemptuous shove, he released the man. The assassin scrambled backward, clutching his throat, before turning to flee into the steam. Lysander let him go. The message was more valuable than the kill.
The remaining assassins, seeing their mission a failure and their comrade's fate, disengaged with the same silent efficiency, melting back into the landscape.
Silence returned to the Heartfire, broken only by our ragged breathing. Two of our guards were down, being seen to by their comrades. The warm, earthy scent of the oasis was now tainted with the coppery tang of blood.
Lysander turned to me. His chest was heaving, his expression a turbulent mix of fury and a fear so profound it shook me to my core. His eyes scanned me, taking in the mud, the torn sleeve, the thin line of blood on my arm.
In three strides, he was before me. His hands, still holding the terrifying broadsword, came up to frame my face. His touch was not gentle. It was desperate.
"Did they touch you?" he demanded, his voice raw. "Are you hurt?"
"I'm fine," I managed, my own voice trembling. "It's just a scratch."
His thumb, slick with someone else's blood, smeared across the cut on my arm, a possessive, primal gesture. "This is not a scratch." The growl in his voice was pure, undiluted male possessiveness. "This is a declaration of war."
He was still breathing heavily, his body vibrating with adrenaline and a rage I knew was directed at himself as much as the attackers. For letting our guard down. For almost losing me.
"You used my lesson," I said softly, trying to anchor him. "You sent a message."
His stormy gaze locked on mine, the fury in them banked by a dawning, terrifying realization. "The only message that matters is the one I am giving you right now."
He dropped Frostfall. The legendary sword landed in the mud, forgotten.
Both his hands came up to cup my face, his grip firm, forcing me to look at him, to see the absolute truth in his eyes.
"This is no longer a transaction," he said, each word a vow hammered out on the anvil of violence. "This is no longer a strategy. You are not an asset. You are not a partner in a game."
He leaned his forehead against mine, his breath warm against my lips. The scent of blood, sweat, and wintergreen filled my senses.
"They came for you to get to me," he rasped, his voice thick with an emotion that finally, finally had a name. "And they revealed a truth I have been fighting. You are my vulnerability. And you are my only strength."
He pulled back just enough to sear me with his gaze. "I will burn this world to the ground for you, Elara. So you will stay. Here. With me. Not for a year. Not for a decade. Forever."
It wasn't a question. It was a claiming. A consummation of everything that had simmered between us, forged in the fire of an ambush and sealed with blood. It was the ultimate fantasy—the powerful, untouchable Duke brought to his emotional knees, declaring a devotion that was as terrifying as it was absolute.
And as his lips finally, fiercely found mine in the midst of the chaos, I knew the readers would be screaming. This was what they paid for. This was the good stuff.
The world didn't shatter so much as it splintered.
One heartbeat, I was falling into the gravity well of his gaze, the steam from the hot springs clinging to my skin like a promise. The next, the air itself screamed. Not a battle cry, but the raw, mechanical shriek of a crossbow string releasing its death.
Lysander moved. It wasn't a thought; it was a reflex written in bone and muscle. He didn't shove me. He rotated, a violent, graceful pivot that put his body between the sound and me. His arms wrapped around me, and we went down. Not a romantic swoon into the moss, but a hard, driving tackle into the warm, sulfurous mud.
The impact drove the air from my lungs. The world was a blur of black wool, steam, and the thick smell of wet earth. The crossbow bolt thudded into a tree behind us with a sound like a butcher's cleaver hitting a block.
Then, the world dissolved into noise.
Killian's roar was a raw thing, torn from his throat. "CONTACT!"
Steel rang against steel, a discordant, ugly music. These weren't howling barbarians. The men who came out of the steam moved in silence, their footsteps whispers on the wet rock. Their faces were wrapped in grey linen, their eyes dark and empty. Professionals.
Lysander was on his feet before I could gasp. He didn't yell. He didn't posture. He just killed. Frostfall was in his hand, and it was no longer a symbol of office. It was a tool. A brutal, efficient extension of his will. He parried a dagger thrust, not with a clang, but with a grinding twist that wrenched the weapon from the attacker's grip. His return stroke wasn't a slash; it was a short, vicious punch that sank the point of his blade into the man's throat. It was ugly. It was intimate. It was over in a second.
He was protecting more than his life now. He was protecting the one sliver of peace he'd ever shown anyone. The rage on his face was cold and absolute.
My own fear was a live wire in my chest. I pushed myself up, mud sucking at my boots. My beautiful new clothes were ruined, caked in filth. The dagger at my thigh felt absurdly small. An assassin broke the guard's line, his eyes—flat and dead—locking onto me. The soft target.
My mind went blank. Then it filled with the ghost of a Krav Maga instructor from a downtown gym a lifetime ago. "They expect you to freeze. Don't. Move. Now."
As he lunged, I didn't try to be heroic. I dropped, my body remembering the motion better than my brain. His blade seared a line of fire across my upper arm. I cried out, more in shock than pain. But my own knife was in my hand, and I shoved it upward, not aiming to kill, just to stop. The blade sank into the meat of his thigh.
He made a sound, a wet grunt of pure surprise. He hadn't expected a fight.
It was all the opening needed.
Lysander was there. He didn't run the man through. He moved past the dying guard he'd just engaged, his left hand shooting out to grab the assassin by the throat. He slammed him against a rock face with a crack that made me wince. He didn't yell. He leaned in, his face so close to the assassin's they could have been lovers.
"Who." The word was a chip of ice.
The man gagged, his feet kicking at empty air.
Lysander's voice dropped to a whisper that somehow carried over the clash of steel. "Hoff? Did that bloated pig send you?"
A frantic, gurgling shake of the head. No.
Lysander's eyes were pitiless. He pulled the man closer, his lips almost brushing the assassin's ear. I saw his knuckles whiten. "Then you crawl back to whatever shadow sent you," he whispered, the intimacy of it more terrifying than any scream. "You tell them they didn't just attack the Duke. They attacked what is mine. And I am coming for them."
He opened his hand. The assassin dropped, clutching his ruined throat, and scrambled away into the mist without a backward glance. The message was more valuable than the corpse.
The fight was over as quickly as it began. The remaining assassins, their mission a bloody failure, vanished. The sudden silence was deafening, broken only by the groan of a wounded guard and the steady, angry drip of water from the rocks.
Lysander turned. His chest was heaving. He looked… wild. His hair was disheveled, mud splattered his perfect cheekbones, and his eyes held a storm I'd never seen before. They found me, cataloging the mud, the torn sleeve, the blood welling from the cut on my arm.
He crossed the space between us. He didn't ask if I was okay. His hands came up, rough and shaking, and framed my face. His thumbs, calloused and stained with blood that wasn't his, smeared across my cheeks.
"Where else?" he demanded, his voice a harsh rasp. "Are you hurt?"
"It's nothing," I breathed, my own heart trying to beat its way out of my chest. "Lysander, I'm—"
His thumb pressed against the cut on my arm, not hard, but enough to make me hiss. The pain was sharp and clean. "This is not nothing." The words were a growl, low and guttural. "This is a line crossed."
The adrenaline was fading, leaving a terrifying void in its place. I could see it in him, the crash coming. The rage was for them, but the fear—the raw, undiluted terror in the depths of his stormy eyes—was for me.
He was still holding my face. He was breathing me in.
"You fought," he said, and it sounded like an accusation. "You didn't scream. You didn't hide. You fought."
"You told me to be useful," I whispered, the words trembling.
A sound escaped him, something between a sob and a laugh. He dropped his forehead to mine. His skin was cold. He was shaking.
"They came for you," he breathed, the words a confession torn from a place so deep it hurt to hear. "To get to me. And they showed me… they showed me what I already knew."
He pulled back, his hands sliding from my face to my shoulders, his grip almost painful. He forced me to look at him, to see the brutal, unraveling truth in his gaze.
"This is not a deal anymore. It's not a strategy. You are not a pawn on my board, Elara." His voice broke on my name. "You are the reason the game matters."
He let go of me suddenly, as if my skin burned him. He took a step back, running a hand through his hair, leaving a streak of mud in the black strands. He looked lost. He looked young.
"I have spent my life building walls," he said, his voice raw and quiet. "I made myself into a fortress. And you… you didn't even knock the gate down. You just walked through the stone like it was air."
He looked at me then, really looked at me, covered in mud and blood and the aftermath of violence. And the ice in his eyes finally, completely melted.
"I will tear this world apart for you," he said, and it wasn't a boast. It was a simple, terrifying fact. "So you will stay. Not because of a contract. Not for protection. You will stay because I cannot… I will not… do this without you."
It was the most honest thing he had ever said. It was messy. It was desperate. It was real.
And when his lips finally found mine, there was nothing cold about it. It was a claiming, yes, but it was also a surrender. It tasted of mud and blood and the sweet, hot steam of the springs, and it was the only thing that had ever made perfect sense.
The kiss was not gentle.
It was a claiming. A desperate, furious sealing of the vow he'd just torn from his soul. It tasted of the iron-sharp fear of nearly losing me, of the sulfurous mud on our lips, and the raw, unvarnished truth. His arms locked around me, one hand tangling in my hair, the other splayed against the small of my back, pressing me against the solid, unforgiving wall of his chest. I could feel the frantic hammer of his heart against mine, a wild drumbeat syncing our terror and our relief.
This was it. The payoff. The moment the tension shattered. Not in a soft bed of rose petals, but here, in the mud and the blood, with the ghosts of assassins still clinging to the steam. It was real. It was messy. It was perfect.
When he finally broke away, we were both breathless. His forehead rested against mine, his eyes closed, his breathing ragged. The mighty Duke of the North, brought to his knees not by a sword, but by a feeling.
"They will pay," he whispered, the words a dark promise against my lips. "Whoever did this will learn the cost of touching what is mine."
The possessiveness should have chilled me. Instead, it ignited a fierce, answering fire in my blood. I wasn't a possession. I was a prize he'd fought for. I was the treasure he'd slaughter armies to protect.
"We will make them pay," I corrected, my voice steadier than I felt.
His eyes opened. The storm in them had calmed, replaced by a burning, possessive light that made my knees weak. A slow, dangerous smile touched his lips—the first true, unguarded smile I'd ever seen from him. It transformed his face, carving a devastating handsomeness from the severity.
"We will," he agreed. His thumb stroked my cheek, wiping away a smudge of mud. The gesture was infinitely tender, a shocking contrast to the violence minutes before. "My little villainess. My beautiful, cunning, lethal wife."
He said the words like a prayer. Like a revelation.
The sound of a discreet cough broke the spell. Captain Killian stood a respectful distance away, his face a mask of professional neutrality, though I saw the faintest glint of approval in his eyes.
"Your Grace. My Lady. The area is secure. We have one man with a deep gash to his leg. The others are minor wounds."
Lysander's posture shifted instantly, the lover replaced by the commander. But he didn't let me go. He kept one arm around my waist, tucking me against his side in a gesture of blatant, unmistakable ownership. Every guard could see it. They would talk. The story would spread through the ranks like wildfire: The Cold Duke has melted. And it was for her.
"See to the wounded," Lysander commanded, his voice back to its usual authority, but with a new, resonant warmth. "We secure the fire-berries and return to the Keep. We have a traitor to root out."
"Aye, Your Grace." Killian bowed and turned to carry out his orders.
Lysander looked down at me, his gaze softening. He gently took my injured arm, his touch surprisingly clinical now. He examined the cut, his brow furrowed. "This needs cleaning. The mud here… it's not clean."
"I'll manage until we get back," I said.
"No," he said, his tone leaving no room for argument. He led me to the edge of the clear, hot spring pool. He tore a strip of clean linen from the hem of his own tunic—a shocking act of practicality from a man who wore clothes worth a commoner's yearly wages. He soaked it in the steaming, mineral-rich water.
"This will sting," he warned, his voice low.
He was right. It did. I flinched as he dabbed at the cut, cleaning it with a focused, meticulous care. This was the other side of the Cold Duke. The battlefield medic. The protector. He wasn't just a force of destruction; he was a man who took responsibility for what he protected.
He finished and tied the linen strip around my arm with a secure, efficient knot. His fingers lingered on my skin for a moment longer than necessary.
"There," he murmured, his eyes meeting mine. "No scars. Not from this."
The subtext hung in the steamy air between us. I will not let anything mark you. I will be the shield that keeps you whole.
It was the most romantic thing I had ever experienced.
He stood, pulling me up with him. His hand found mine, lacing our fingers together. It wasn't a hidden touch in a shadowy corridor. It was a public declaration in the light of day, in front of his men.
"Come," he said, his voice a low rumble meant only for me. "Let's find your antithesis. We have a world to conquer."
And as we walked hand-in-hand through the surreal, steamy landscape, the guards giving us a wide and respectful berth, I knew. This was the fantasy. Not the easy win, but the hard-fought victory. Not the perfect prince, but the flawed, fierce, terrifyingly powerful man who would kneel in the mud to tend your wound after decimating your enemies. This was the stuff that sold a million chapters. This was the good stuff.
The journey back to Blackwood Keep was a different world.
The biting wind still sliced through the mountain passes, and the sky remained the same leaden grey. But inside our small column, the atmosphere had transformed. The air crackled with a new, unspoken energy. Lysander rode close by my side, his presence a constant, warm pressure against the cold. His gaze, once distant and assessing, now lingered on me with a possessiveness that made my breath catch. Every so often, his gloved hand would reach out and brush against my reins, or rest for a moment on my thigh—small, claiming touches that screamed louder than any proclamation.
The guards felt it. Their posture was less rigid, their silence less austere. They weren't escorting their Duke and a political obligation anymore. They were protecting a matched pair. Their lord and his lady. The shift was subtle, but it was there in the way Captain Killian glanced back at us, a grim satisfaction in his eyes.
We were a living, breathing romance novel cover, and the audience was loving it.
As the stark towers of the Keep rose in the distance, the real world began to reassert its claims. The cozy bubble of the journey popped. By the time we clattered into the main courtyard, Lysander's face had settled back into its familiar, stern lines, though the heat in his eyes when they flicked to me remained.
Steward Valerius was waiting, his ledger in hand, his expression as impassive as ever. But even he couldn't miss the mud staining our fine clothes, the makeshift bandage on my arm, or the way the Duke dismounted and immediately came to my side to help me down, his hands lingering at my waist.
"Your Grace," Valerius intoned, giving a perfunctory bow. "There have been... developments."
Lysander didn't release me. "Report."
"The Baroness Croft's granary master has been apprehended. He was siphoning grain, selling it to a merchant who then sold it back to the Crown's forces at a markup. The Baroness is... displeased." A flicker of something that might have been respect showed in Valerius's eyes. "She awaits your judgment in the hall."
One problem solved. A thread of the conspiracy pulled loose.
"And the Frostwrought glaive?" Lysander asked, his voice dropping.
"Earl Frostforge reports the metal is... unworkable by normal means. It resists the forge's heat. He believes it requires a magical catalyst to melt or shape. He is consulting the old texts."
A dead end. For now.
Lysander gave a curt nod. "See that the Duchess's things are brought to my chambers. And have a bath drawn. With the lavender salts."
The command was delivered with such casual authority that it took me a second to process. My things. My chambers. My bath.
Valerius's eyebrows twitched a millimeter upward. It was the equivalent of a shouted oath from another man. "Your chambers, Your Grace?"
"You find my wording unclear, Steward?" Lysander's voice was soft. Deadly.
"No, Your Grace. At once." Valerius bowed again, deeper this time, and retreated with unseemly haste.
Lysander turned to me, the ghost of that dangerous smile playing on his lips. "The walls have ears, my love. Let's give them something to listen to."
He was moving me. Publicly. From the gilded cage of the East Wing to the inner sanctum of the West Wing. To his space. It was the political equivalent of shouting our relationship from the battlements. It was a declaration of trust, of possession, and a blatant challenge to anyone who thought to use me against him.
He didn't wait for my response. He simply took my hand—the one bearing his ring—and led me into the Keep, not as a prisoner or a guest, but as its mistress.
The staff we passed stopped and stared, their eyes wide. Whispers would fly. The news would reach Baron Hoff before the hour was out. It would infuriate him. It would terrify our unknown enemy.
And it sent a thrill through me so potent it dwarfed the fear.
He led me not to the formal receiving rooms, but through the corridors toward the private wing. As we passed the door to the library, a voice called out.
"Your Grace! A moment!"
It was the royal emissary, Lord Tavish, looking pale and flustered. He'd clearly been waiting to ambush us. "I must protest the increased patrols on the southern road! The Crown views it as a provocative—"
Lysander didn't break stride. He didn't even look at the man.
"He can file a complaint with the trade master," he said, his voice cutting through Tavish's sputtering like Frostfall through bone. He tightened his grip on my hand. "My wife is tired. She requires rest."
He used the word. Wife. Not "the Duchess." My wife.
He pulled me past the stunned emissary, around the corner, and into the quiet of the West Wing corridor. The moment we were out of sight, he pushed me gently against the cold stone wall, his body caging mine. His hands came up to frame my face, his thumbs stroking my cheeks.
"That man is a gnat," he murmured, his breath warm against my lips. "But even gnats can carry disease. I will not have his nonsense touching you."
He was so close. I could see the flecks of darker grey in his irises, the faint scar on his lip. The scent of him—winter air, leather, and the faint, clean smell of him that was now imprinted on my soul—was everywhere.
"This is a dangerous game you're playing," I breathed.
"Everything worth having is dangerous," he countered, his voice a low thrum that vibrated through me. He leaned in, his lips brushing the shell of my ear. "Welcome home, Elara."
And then he was leading me again, down the hall, to a heavy oak door I had only ever seen from the outside. To the forbidden West Wing. To his bed.
He opened the door and guided me inside.
The room was not what I expected. It was not a grim, cursed chamber. It was spacious, sparsely furnished, but dominated by a large, canopied bed and a massive hearth where a fire already roared. My trunks were there, looking small and out of place. A copper tub steamed invitingly in one corner, filled with water and scattered with the lavender salts he'd ordered.
He closed the door, shutting out the world. The only sound was the crackle of the fire.
He turned to me, all the masks finally, completely gone. Here, there was no need for the Duke, the General, or the Strategist. There was only the man, and the raw, terrifying need in his eyes.
"The bath is for you," he said, his voice rough. "You're cold."
He reached out and began to slowly, deliberately, unbuckle the mud-caked leather coat from my shoulders. This was it. No interruptions. No politics. Just us.
The romance novel was opening its hottest chapter.