The hallway outside the Royal Library was bright, cold, and offensively normal.
Kaia leaned against the stone wall, her knees feeling like they were made of damp sawdust. Her heart was a trapped bird battering against her ribs, and her entire body hummed with the aftershocks of what had just happened against a shelf of ancient history texts.
Aeron stood three feet away, adjusting his cufflink.
He looked… immaculate.
There was not a hair out of place. His breathing was even. His cravat was perfectly tied. If Kaia hadn't just spent the last ten minutes with his head between her legs, she would have sworn he had spent the evening doing nothing more strenuous than contemplating a particularly dull statue.
"You look," Aeron said, his eyes scanning her critically, "like you have been ravished by a hurricane."
Kaia glared at him, reaching up to frantically smooth her silver hair. "I was ravished by a sociopath in a velvet coat. There is a difference."
"Is there?" He stepped closer, reaching out.
Kaia flinched, but he didn't grab her. Instead, his white-gloved thumb brushed against her cheekbone, wiping away a smudge of library dust. The touch was light, possessive, and terrifyingly gentle.
"Your lips are swollen," he noted, his voice dropping to a murmur that made her thighs clench. "And your eyes are dilated. You look guilty, Kaia. Taryns are not supposed to look guilty. They are supposed to look bored."
"It is difficult to look bored when my entire reality has just been upended," she hissed. "And stop touching me. We are in a hallway."
"We are in the East Wing. No one comes here except the cleaners and my brother when he wants to hide from his tutors." Aeron dropped his hand. "Compose yourself. If you walk in there looking like a tumbled maid, Victoria will skin you alive and wear you as a scarf."
The mention of her sister acted like a bucket of ice water.
Kaia straightened her spine. She took a deep, shuddering breath, forcing the heat in her belly to recede into a tight, cold knot. She smoothed her pink skirts, checked her gloves, and lifted her chin.
"Better?" she asked, her voice brittle.
Aeron smiled. It was the "Saint" smile—the one that didn't reach his eyes. "Adequate. Shall we?"
He offered his arm.
Kaia took it.
The return to the Banquet Hall was a masterclass in deception.
The double doors swung open, and the noise of the court hit them like a physical wave—laughter, the clink of silverware, the drone of a string quartet.
Every head turned.
Kaia felt the weight of three hundred pairs of eyes. She felt the Emperor's boredom, the Empress's delight, and—most sharply—Victoria's laser-focused scrutiny.
"Ah! There they are!" The Empress clapped her hands together. "The wanderers return!"
Aeron led Kaia back to the table with a smooth, unhurried grace. He didn't look guilty. He looked like a benevolent shepherd returning a lost lamb.
"My apologies for the delay, Your Majesties," Aeron said, his voice carrying effortlessly to the back of the room. "Lady Kaia expressed an interest in the architecture of the Royal Library. We got caught up discussing the structural integrity of the domed ceiling. It is quite... fascinating."
Kaia choked on air. Structural integrity.
"Oh, how marvelous!" The Empress beamed. "An intellectual connection! I told you, Emperor, didn't I? A meeting of minds!"
Aeron pulled out Kaia's chair. As she sat, he leaned down, his lips brushing her ear under the guise of pushing the chair in.
"Breathe," he whispered. "You're shaking."
He returned to his seat across from her, picked up his wine glass, and took a sip, looking the picture of chaste nobility.
Kaia stared at her plate. Her pheasant was cold. Her appetite was gone.
Beside her, Victoria leaned in. She smelled of expensive rosewater and judgment.
"Your hair," Victoria whispered, her voice like a scalpel, "is loose on the left side."
Kaia instinctively reached up to tuck a stray strand behind her ear. "It... the library was drafty."
"Drafty," Victoria repeated. Her icy blue eyes swept over Kaia's face, lingering on her flushed cheeks and the slight swelling of her lower lip. She didn't know what had happened, but she knew something had. "You look feverish, Kaia. Are you ill?"
"I think the wine disagreed with me," Kaia lied.
"Or perhaps it was the company," Victoria said, glancing across the table at Aeron. "The Prince is intense. He demands perfection. Do not embarrass us by fainting."
"I never faint," Kaia snapped.
"No. You just disappear for twenty minutes and return looking like you ran through a hedge."
On Kaia's other side, Prince Beckett cleared his throat gently.
"Here," he said softly, pushing a glass of water toward her. "You do look a bit flushed, Lady Kaia. The hall is quite warm. Please, drink."
Kaia turned to look at him. Beckett's silver-grey eyes—so like Aeron's, yet so completely different—were filled with genuine concern. He looked kind. He looked safe.
Guilt crashed into her, heavier than the chandelier above.
She had just been... wrecked by his brother. In a library. While Beckett sat here waiting for her.
"Thank you, Your Highness," she whispered, taking the glass. Her hand trembled.
"Please, call me Beckett," he said with a shy smile. "We are to be family, after all."
Kaia felt like crying. She drank the water, trying to wash away the taste of Aeron, the taste of her own desire.
Across the table, Aeron watched the exchange.
He saw Beckett smile at her. He saw Kaia's softness, her guilt.
His hand tightened around the stem of his wine glass until his knuckles strained against the white silk of his glove.
He didn't know why Beckett was smiling. He didn't know why Kaia looked so sorry. But he hated it. He hated the way they looked right together—the dark-haired, gentle prince and the silver-haired rebel. It looked... wholesome.
It looked correct.
And Aeron had never wanted to break something so badly in his life.
"Your attention, please!" The Empress stood up, tapping her fan against a crystal goblet.
The room fell silent.
"Now that our couples are reunited," the Empress announced, her eyes twinkling, "it is time to begin the festivities of the season properly! As you know, the path to true love is paved with shared endeavors."
A murmur of excitement rippled through the court.
"Tomorrow," the Empress declared, "we shall hold the first of the Love Tasks. A test of the soul!"
Kaia exchanged a horrified glance with Aeron. Love Tasks.
"The Great Poetry Competition!" the Empress shouted. "Each gentleman shall compose a sonnet for his intended, to be recited in the Rose Garden at noon. Let us see the depths of your devotion!"
Applause broke out.
Beckett looked terrified. "Poetry?" he whispered to himself. "Oh dear."
Aeron didn't look terrified. He looked bored. But as the applause died down, he caught Kaia's eye across the centerpiece.
He raised one eyebrow. A silent challenge.
A sonnet, his gaze seemed to say. For my intended.
He glanced at Victoria, then back at Kaia.
And then, with a slow, deliberate movement, he brought his gloved thumb to his lips and dragged it across his bottom lip, mimicking the motion he had made earlier with the strawberry.
It was a promise.
He wasn't going to write a poem for Victoria. He was going to write a poem for the woman with the heart-shaped mark on her hip, and he was going to make her listen to every word while she stood next to his brother.
Kaia grabbed her wine glass and downed the rest of the contents in one gulp.