The servant led her through winding stone corridors lit by sputtering torches. Elena tried to memorize the path, but the citadel twisted like a nervous system—narrow turns, low arches, heavy doors that all looked the same. Every step confirmed she was nowhere near anything resembling home.
"This will be your room," the servant murmured, dropping into a nervous half-bow before slipping away so quickly it almost counted as fleeing.
Elena stepped inside.
The chamber was small but warm. A single lantern glowed on a table, yellow and tired. A bed, a narrow window, a wooden chest. Not much else.
It didn't feel like captivity. It didn't feel like safety either. It felt like medieval IKEA—functional, unwelcoming, vaguely torture-adjacent.
She sat on the edge of the bed and finally let the weight of the night settle over her.
The mist. The impossible sky. The soldiers with swords and questionable dental hygiene.
And Soren—appearing out of the dark like a knife given human form, dispatching danger with brutal ease, looking at her as if every detail were an answer waiting to be solved.
Her rational mind hated all of it.
"Think," she whispered. "Just… think."
But thinking only led her right back to him.
Not because he was handsome—though medically speaking, symmetry of his face was borderline distracting. Not because he was powerful—though she had witnessed enough kinetic evidence of that.
It was something else.
Something in the way he occupied space: quiet, grounded, immovable, as if the world adjusted itself around him rather than the other way around.
Something in the way he looked at her: steady, assessing, intent.
Elena pressed the heels of her palms into her eyes. "Stop it."
The last thing she needed was to develop an attraction—no, a neurological glitch—for a man who walked like a storm and spoke like he expected compliance as a basic courtesy.
She stood and began pacing. Cold stone under bare feet helped. Barely.
Okay. Deep breath. New world. Unknown laws of physics. Unknown dangers. Do not imprint on the first sword-wielding prince who makes eye contact.
Yes, he had saved her life. Yes, he had brought her to whatever counted as safety here.He was also arrogant, unreadable, and dangerously confident in his ability to command a room—and her.
Any attraction she felt was wrong. Misplaced. Inconvenient.
And yet her mind replayed moments anyway:
The instant, reflexive turn when she slipped. The quiet, almost amused glint when he caught her staring too long. The faint, infuriating smirk when he knew she was lying.
Heat crept up her neck.
"Oh no," she muttered. "Absolutely not. We're not doing this."
This was stress.Shock.Disorientation.Classic limbic hijack: imprint on the nearest stable figure because her brain had the survival instincts of a stressed squirrel.
She moved to the window and pulled in a long breath of cold air. Outside, the citadel stretched into the night—towers, torches, stone pathways spiraling into darkness. She searched for anything familiar. A road. A landmark. A skyline.
There was nothing.
The realization hit hard and cold.
She had no idea how to get home. No idea how she arrived in this world. No idea how she was supposed to survive with zero wilderness skills and a professional background in fetal ultrasound and OB triage.
A soft noise at the door made her jump.
A knock. Quiet. Controlled.
Elena froze.
"Soren?" she whispered before she could stop herself.
Silence.A brief pause.Then slow, retreating footsteps.
He had checked on her.
Not entering. Not speaking. Just confirming she was where he left her.
Somehow, that unsettled her more than any threat could have.
Great. Perfect. The murder-mountain does nightly welfare rounds. Totally normal. Nothing to unpack at all.
She returned to the bed and pulled the blanket around her shoulders. Exhaustion weighed down her limbs, heavy and relentless. Her eyelids drifted low, but her traitorous mind offered one last image:
Soren under the twin moons, cloak shifting in the wind, that faint, knowing smirk softening the edges of his otherwise brutal composure—
Her breath hitched. She hated that it did.
Sleep found her eventually—thin, restless, full of shadows.
The last thought she had was one she refused to say aloud:
Why him? Why now? And since when is my type "emotionally repressed forest prince with a sword" ?