Chapter 15: Silent Vow
The certainty of his claim, then it is mine, echoed in my bones long after the plates were cleared. It was a ghost that followed me through the day, a silent companion as I was measured by a quietly efficient seamstress in his chambers, as I tried to read a book in his solar while he dealt with a stream of petitioners, his voice cool and dismissive. He never looked at me during those meetings, but his hand would sometimes lift, a faint gesture towards the couch where I sat, a subtle sign of inclusion that every courtier noted with sharp eyes.
Now, darkness held the room. The crimson drapes were drawn against the chill, the only light a single candle guttering on the bedside table. I was asleep, or had been. The fatigue of the last few days was a leaden weight, pulling me under into dreamless depths.
A touch dragged me back.
Not a grip. Not the demanding possession of his hands from the bath. This was different. The barest whisper of contact, a stroke so light it could have been a draft across the skin of my lower stomach. I lay still, feigning sleep, my breath caught in my throat. His scent—cedar and autumn air—enveloped me. He was sitting on the edge of the bed, his weight causing the mattress to dip.
I cracked my eyelids open the smallest fraction.
He was shirtless, his back to the candlelight, his torso a landscape of lean muscle and pale skin marked faintly with old, silvered scars. He wasn’t looking at my face. His gaze was fixed on my abdomen, visible above the line of the silk sheet. His expression was one I had never seen. The controlled mask was gone. In its place was a naked, stark focus that was almost frightening in its intensity. His green eyes were chips of sea glass, unblinking.
His fingertips traced again. Not a circle, not a pattern. A slow, deliberate line from my hip bone towards my navel, a touch so reverent it burned.
He thought I was asleep. This was a secret. His secret.
My heart hammered against my ribs, a frantic drum trying to betray me. I kept my breathing deep and even, my body utterly relaxed. His hand stilled, his palm flattening over the place where my womb lay. The heat of it seeped deep. He left it there for a long moment, as if listening for a heartbeat he couldn’t possibly hear.
A minute passed. Another. The candle wax dripped with a soft hiss.
His voice, when it came, was so low it was less than a whisper, a vibration meant only for the dark.
“Mine.”
The word wasn’t a claim of ownership. It was softer. Deeper. It was a quiet, ferocious prayer. A statement of fact to the shadows. He leaned down, and for a heart-stopping second, I thought he would press his lips to my skin. Instead, he pressed them to my forehead. The kiss was dry, lingering, and so unbearably gentle it made something crack open behind my sternum.
He stayed there, his lips against my skin, his hand a brand on my stomach, for what felt like an eternity. I felt the tickle of his hair against my cheek. I felt the slow, controlled expansion of his breath.
Then he straightened. The mattress shifted as he stood. He pulled the sheet up higher, tucking it around my shoulders with a meticulous care that was entirely at odds with the man who shattered bed frames. He watched me for another long moment, his face once again unreadable in the dim light, though his eyes still held that strange, possessive gleam.
He blew out the candle.
Darkness swallowed the room. I heard the soft rustle of him moving around, the click of a buckle, the sigh of fabric as he pulled on sleeping pants. The bed dipped again as he slid in beside me. He didn’t reach for me. He lay on his back, close enough that I could feel the warmth radiating from him.
I waited, listening to his breathing even out into the slow rhythm of sleep. Only then did I let my own silent tears fall, hot and swift, soaking into the pillow. They weren’t tears of fear. They were tears of a terrifying, dawning comprehension.
The ruthless High Fae heir, the strategic mind, the male who commanded with a look and took with brutal certainty… he had just knelt in the dark and worshipped a possibility.
And he loved me.
He didn’t say it. He would probably never say it. Words were tools for him, for negotiation and command. This was beyond words. It was in the terrifying gentleness of his hidden touch, in the vow sealed against my forehead. It was in the way he’d asked are you okay? It was in the meticulous tucking of a blanket.
He loved me, and it was the most formidable thing I had ever witnessed.
I cried until my head ached and my tears ran dry. The emotional storm left me hollowed out and trembling. I slowly turned onto my side, facing him. His profile was a sharp cut against the lesser darkness of the room. In sleep, some of the sternness had left his mouth.
Tentatively, moving an inch at a time, I shifted closer. I pressed my forehead against the hard muscle of his shoulder. I slid my hand across the cool sheets until my fingers just brushed his.
He didn’t stir.
Then his hand moved. In the deep, unconscious rhythm of sleep, his fingers laced through mine, locking them together. His grip was firm, anchoring. A soft, sighing breath escaped him, and he turned his head slightly towards me in the dark.
I lay there, our hands knit together, the phantom warmth of his touch still blooming on my skin, and I knew nothing would ever be simple again.
The morning arrived not with a sunrise, but with the sound of the door opening. A servant, I presumed, with breakfast or news. Eris was instantly awake. I felt the change in his body beside me, the transition from sleep to lethal awareness in the space between one heartbeat and the next. His hand tightened on mine once, a brief, silent communication, before letting go.
He sat up as a figure stepped into the dim room. It wasn’t a servant.
The male was tall, older, with russet hair streaked with silver and a face that was a harder, colder mirror of Eris’s own. He wore robes of deep burnt umber, and an air of absolute authority clung to him like frost. His eyes, a pale, wintry green, swept over the scene: the rumpled bed, me with the sheet pulled to my chin, Eris shirtless beside me.
Eris did not move to cover himself. He simply sat there, a king in his disheveled bed, and met his father’s gaze.
“Beron,” Eris said. His voice was morning-rough, but devoid of any surprise or welcome.
The High Lord of the Autumn Court stared at his son, then his gaze sliced to me. It was a look that stripped away the sheet, the skin, the humanity. I was assessed, categorized, and dismissed as insignificant in the span of a second. The contempt in that glance was a physical chill.
“My study,” Beron said, his voice like grating stone. “Now.” His eyes flicked to me one last time, a silent condemnation of my very presence. “Alone.”
He turned and left, leaving the door open behind him.
The silence he left in his wake was thicker than the dark had been. Eris swung his legs out of bed. He dressed with swift, efficient motions, pulling on trousers, a dark tunic, boots. He said nothing. His expression was once again that impenetrable mask, but his movements were tighter, sharper.
When he was finished, he walked to the side of the bed and looked down at me. He leaned over, bracing one hand on the mattress near my hip. He didn’t kiss me. He just held my gaze, his own eyes blazing with a cold, clear fire.
“Stay here,” he said, each word a deliberate chip of ice. “Lock the door after I leave. Do not open it for anyone but me.”
He waited for my nod. Then he straightened and left, closing the door softly behind him.
I heard the decisive click of the key turning in the lock from the outside.
He had locked me in.
I lay in the sudden, absolute quiet, the imprint of his father’s icy stare layered over the memory of Eris’s worshipful touch in the dark. The sanctuary of velvet and shadow had just been invaded. The future, a fragile, secret hope, now felt like a target painted on my skin.
And from down the hall, in the direction of the study, I heard the first, muffled shout.