Kael's POV
The door clicked shut.
For a long moment, Kael didn't move. The echo of her voice still lingered — sharp and soft in turns, like the ghost of a blade that couldn't decide whether to wound or caress.
He stood by the window, staring at the faint smudge her hand had left on the brass handle. That was Zelene Evandelle — leaving traces everywhere she went, even when she swore she wouldn't.
He should have followed her. Should have said something. Anything.
Instead, he let the silence swallow him whole.
His hand found the edge of the desk, knuckles whitening. He'd faced battlefields, tribunals, executions — all of it without so much as a flicker of doubt. But this? This woman who waltzed into his life with fire on her tongue and chaos in her wake — she unsettled him in ways that terrified him.
He closed his eyes, forcing his breathing steady.
Zelene wasn't wrong. He had been avoiding her.
Three days of buried reports, false errands, and sleepless nights spent scouring the remnants of a threat that refused to stay dead.
The assassin who had tried to kill her wasn't alone. The one Kael caught two nights later had confirmed it — or rather, almost had.
He remembered the man's eyes, wide and glassy under the influence of Kael's power. Obey, Kael had commanded. His power thrummed, a force honed through years of control and cruelty. It wasn't light. It was compulsion — the art of bending the weak-willed until they snapped.
"Who sent you?" Kael had asked.
The assassin's mouth had trembled, words caught between defiance and surrender.
Then, suddenly, blood. From his nose. His eyes. Whatever enchantment or curse had been placed upon him had triggered the moment he tried to say more. Kael could still hear the gurgled gasp before the man's body went limp, lifeless.
A clean kill from afar. Someone protecting their trail.
And now, he knew only one thing for certain:
The attempt on Zelene's life wasn't random.
They'd gone after her because of him.
Because of that night at the ball — when she, with that damned confidence, had smiled at him before the entire capital and whispered, "You'll have to look at me like you mean it, Kael."
And he had.
Too well.
The court had seen it. The nobles had whispered. The Crown Prince himself had raised a brow at how convincing their affection looked.
And somewhere among those glittering masks and jeweled smiles, someone decided that the best way to wound Dravenhart — the unshakable, the untouchable — was to target the woman he couldn't possibly love.
Not in the way he was supposed to — not the way she deserved. But in the quiet between words, in the tension that burned like a brand whenever she stood too close. In the way she laughed at him like she wasn't afraid, and the way her eyes never looked away when others did.
Zelene Evandelle was everything Kael had trained himself not to need.
And yet, somehow, she'd slipped through the cracks of his composure like light bleeding through armor.
He pressed a hand against his face, the cold metal of his signet ring biting into his skin.
He knew who he was — Kael Dravenhart, Duke of the North, commander of the Iron Regiment, the man who'd crushed rebellions and silenced threats before they were even spoken aloud. A man forged by discipline, defined by loyalty, and feared by enemies who didn't know where his mercy ended and his cruelty began.
But lately… he didn't recognize himself.
Because she made him feel again.
And that was dangerous.
He turned toward the window. Outside, the frost had begun to creep along the glass, catching the morning light in threads of silver. The world looked almost peaceful — a lie he knew too well.
Kael's reflection stared back at him: eyes rimmed with sleeplessness, jaw set in grim resolve.
"I told you to stay away," he murmured under his breath — not to Zelene, but to the ache she left behind.
He straightened, forcing his voice back into the steel tone that commanded men and armies alike.
There would be no more mistakes.
Whoever dared to use her against him would learn exactly why the name Dravenhart was spoken like both a curse and a prayer.
He reached for the dagger still lying on his desk — the assassin's weapon — its hilt marked with an unfamiliar sigil: a crimson serpent coiled around a blade.
A message.
And Kael Dravenhart was never one to leave a message unanswered.