The cold air of the hidden passageway was the first taste of freedom Adrian had breathed in weeks, and it tasted like her gamble.
The stone tunnel spat them out into the chill of morning. Adrian drew in a sharp breath, air biting his lungs with a freshness so stark it almost hurt. After weeks of rot and iron, of damp stone and stale despair, the dawn carried the sting of life itself.
Celine didn't pause to savor it. Her boots touched the mossy stones of the secluded courtyard, and already she was moving—eyes scanning, shoulders tense, every sense sharpened. The sun was only beginning to bleed over the horizon, painting the sky in fractured reds and bruised purples. The palace walls towered above them, but for this fragile moment, they were unseen.
Adrian followed, his steps soundless despite his size, his soldier's body remembering freedom as if it had only been a day since his last battle. He paused when she did, shadow to her flame, his gaze drinking in the open air with quiet hunger.
She turned then, and the first true light of morning caught both of them—the pale gold brushing her features, turning her eyes into sharp, unflinching mirrors, and catching in his dark hair, making him seem less man than weapon newly reforged.
His voice broke the fragile silence. Low. Hard. Unyielding.
"What's the price?"
She tilted her head slightly, as though the words surprised her. They didn't.
"You freed me," Adrian continued, eyes narrowing, "not out of mercy. Not out of pity. You risked everything for this. So tell me, fiancée—" he spit the word like a curse, "—what do you want from me in return?"
Celine did not flinch. The morning chill bit at her skin, but her gaze remained steady, sharp as the blade she knew he once wielded. This was the moment—the instant where lies would shatter or bind them closer than blood.
She did not command. She did not plead.
Instead, her voice was quiet, steady, and chilling in its simplicity.
"If you want revenge," she said, each word striking like the toll of a bell, "live. And if you live—" her lips curved, not into a smile, but into something far more dangerous, "—live for me."
The words fell into the silence between them, heavier than chains, sharper than steel.
For a heartbeat, Adrian's expression remained unreadable. But his eyes—those dark, merciless eyes—burned with a fire she had not seen before. Not gratitude. Not loyalty. But recognition. The recognition of someone who had just been handed not freedom, but purpose.
She did not wait for his reply.
Celine turned, melting back into the shadows of the palace she had been born to suffer and now intended to rule. Her figure slipped away, her presence vanishing like smoke on the wind, leaving only the echo of her vow behind.
Adrian remained where he stood, alone in the courtyard as the first true light of dawn broke fully across the sky. The cold air still stung his lungs, but it no longer tasted like freedom.
It tasted like her.
And like the promise of war.