Chapter 16: Ghostly visits and Hot Chocolate
The tension from the envoys dissipated like smoke the moment Aria took her first bite of cold pizza. They left with stiff bows and hollow promises to report to Oren, the unresolved questions about Firegard and bloodlines hanging thick in their wake. Nobody in the room much cared.
The heavy front door of the penthouse clicked shut, and a collective, silent exhale moved through the space. The performative energy bled away, leaving behind the raw, tired edges of what had actually happened. Hunt went back to his beer. Ruhn poured himself another drink, this one looked stronger. Juno made a note on her datapad with a final, decisive tap.
Aria chewed slowly, her movements small and careful around the ache in her side. She was perched on a stool at the island, Dae a solid, silent presence leaning against the counter beside her, his shoulder brushing hers. Ithan had moved to the other side, his posture looser but his eyes still tracking every slight wince on his sister’s face.
Bryce slid into the stool opposite Aria, propping her chin on her hands. The athame was gone. Her expression was soft, open. “How’s the crust? Soggy or perfect?”
“Perfect,” Aria mumbled around the food, managing a ghost of a smile. It was the first real one anyone had seen since the banquet hall. It was fragile, but it existed.
The quiet that settled then was different. It was the kind that comes after survival, saturated with unspoken things.
Aria put the rest of the slice down, her appetite fleeting. She stared at the greasy paper plate, her fingers tracing the raised edge. The living room, with its modern art and stunning view, felt miles away. She was back in a sterile white room, feeling the cold slide of metal, hearing the wet sound of her own flesh parting.
“I…” she started, then stopped, her voice a threadbare whisper. She didn’t look up. “I talked to Conner. After I got stabbed.”
The statement dropped into the kitchen. It wasn’t dramatic. It was stated with the flat, matter-of-fact tone of someone reporting a weather event.
Ithan, who had been swirling water in a glass, went utterly still for a second. Then he gave a single, slow nod.Not surprised. Not disbelieving. Just accepting. “Yeah?”
Bryce’s smile softened further, tinged with a deep, understanding sadness. She’d walked that road herself. Hunt’s wings gave a subtle rustle, a sign he was listening intently.
Aria’s lips quirked, a shaky, almost-laugh escaping. “He wasn’t too happy that I got myself stabbed.”
Ithan let out a breath that was half a choked laugh. The sound was rusty, unused. “Of course he wasn’t.”
The normalcy of the exchange was the most surreal part. In this world of shifting politics and ancient swords, the grief of a little sister still functioned on its own stubborn, personal logic.
Aria finally looked up, her green eyes glistening but clear. She glanced at Ithan, then at Dae, as if gauging their readiness. She imitated a voice, lower, rougher, laced with a familiar, affectionate irritation that punched Ithan straight in the chest. “He said, and I quote, ‘Gods, I leave you and Ithan alone for two fucking seconds and he goes and becomes Prime, and you manage to show up on death’s front doorstep ringing the godsdamned doorbell.’”
The kitchen erupted.
Ithan threw his head back and laughed, a real, full-bodied sound that seemed to startle even him. It was laced with pain, but it was real. Bryce clapped a hand over her mouth, her shoulders shaking with silent mirth, her eyes bright. Ruhn snorted into his glass. Hunt’s stern face cracked into a grin.
Even Dae, a stranger to this particular history, felt the corners of his mouth tug upward. He could picture it—the ghost of a protective older brother, pissed off and worried in equal measure.
Aria watched them laugh, and a little more of the terrible tightness in her own chest unraveled. Saying it out loud made it less of a haunting and more of a… memory. A shared, painful inside joke.
“Sounds like him,” Ithan said, wiping at his eye. “Always had a way of cutting to the point.”
“He asked about you,” Aria said, her voice dropping again, turning solemn. She looked directly at Ithan. “He said… he said you’re doing better than he thought you would. But that you’re still carrying it all like it’s your fault. He said to stop being a stubborn ass and let the pack help.”
Ithan’s smile vanished. The laughter died in his throat, replaced by something raw and exposed. He looked down at his hands, the powerful hands of a Prime that felt utterly useless in the face of a ghost’s forgiveness. He couldn’t speak.
“He also said,” Aria continued, shifting her gaze to the polished concrete floor, “that the fae prince…” she gestured weakly toward Dae, “…needs to get his shit together faster, because I deserve someone who doesn’t have one foot in a nightmare.”
The residual humor evaporated. The air went sharp. Dae straightened, every muscle locking. He felt seen, judged, by a dead man whose opinion mattered more to Aria than any living king’s.
“Aria,” Ithan started, a warning in his tone.
“It’s what he said,” she whispered, defensively. She wrapped her arms around herself, a self-soothing gesture that pulled at her healing injury. She winced.
That small sound of pain acted like a trigger. Dae pushed off the counter. The movement was abrupt. He didn’t look at Ithan or Bryce. His focus narrowed entirely to Aria. “You need to lie down. The meds are wearing off.”
It was an order, but his voice was strained. He was retreating, not from her, but from the phantom scrutiny of Conner Holstrom.
“I’m okay,” she said, but the protest was weak. The adrenaline of the conversation was fading, leaving the bone-deep fatigue and throbbing pain in its wake.
“You’re not.” Dae’s hand hovered near her elbow, not touching. “Please.”
The ‘please’ did it. It was so unlike him. She nodded, sliding gingerly off the stool. Ithan moved to help, but Dae was already there, his arm slipping around her back with a careful, practiced caution that spoke of his recent vigil in the infirmary cot. He took her weight, which was slight against him.
“I’ll be right here,” Ithan said, his voice gruff.
Dae just nodded, leading her back toward the hallway and the quiet of her borrowed room.
Once inside, with the door shut against the low murmur of voices from the kitchen, the silence felt dense. The room was shadows and soft, filtered city light. Dae helped her sit on the edge of the bed, then knelt—actually knelt—in front of her. He untied the borrowed sneakers Hunt had dug up for her, slipping them off her feet with a strange, solemn tenderness.
“He’s right, you know,” Dae said, his voice low. He didn’t look up, concentrating on placing her shoes side by side on the floor.
“Who?”
“Conner.” The name felt foreign in his mouth. “About me. About the nightmare.”
Aria watched the top of his sandy-blond head. The proud crown prince of Avallen was on his knees, undone by a dead wolf’s words. “It’s not your fault. The nightmare, I mean.”
“Isn’t it?” He finally looked up, his hazel eyes stripped bare in the dim light. “I was raised in it. I learned its rules. I’m made from it. That dagger… my mother… that’s the world I come from, Aria. That’s the blood in the sword that cut you.” He reached out, his fingers stopping just short of the bandages beneath her sweater. “You’re tied to that now.To me. To all of it.”
She saw it then, the true burden he carried. It wasn’t just the crown. It was the fear that he was a poison, that his very nature would corrupt the one good, fragile thing he’d stumbled into.
“Conner also said something else,” she whispered.
Dae froze, waiting.
“He said… he said he’s glad it’s you.” She saw the confusion in his eyes and pushed on, the words spilling out. “He said he watched. From wherever he is. He saw you on the Cutter ship, holding me in the infirmary. He saw you get the hoodie. He said…” She took a shaky breath, repeating the phantom words as faithfully as she could. “He said, ‘The pretty-boy prince looks at her like she’s the only fire in a frozen kingdom. Tell him to stop being a self-pitying prick and just tend the flame.’”
Dae’s breath left him in a rush. He dropped his forehead against her knees, his shoulders bowing. The contact was shocking in its vulnerability. She felt the tremble that went through him.
For a long minute, he just stayed there, his head resting against her, his hands now gripping the blanket on either side of her legs. The weight of him was anchoring.
When he spoke, his voice was muffled by the fabric of her borrowed sweatpants. “I don’t know how.”
“Yes, you do,” Aria said softly. Her hand came down, her fingers threading tentatively into his hair. It was softer than she’d imagined. “You brought me his hoodie. You stayed. You’re here now.”
He lifted his head. His eyes were red-rimmed, but dry. The harsh, handsome planes of his face were softened by a wonder that looked entirely new on him. He searched her face, as if trying to memorize the truth he found there.
Slowly, he rose. Not to his full, intimidating height, but to sit beside her on the bed. He didn’t kiss her. He didn’t make a grand declaration. He simply pulled her into him, arranging her carefully against his side, her head tucked under his chin, her injured side protected. He pulled the blanket over them both.
“Okay,” he whispered into her hair, the word a surrender and a promise. “I’ll tend the flame.”
Outside the door, Ithan stood in the shadowed hallway, having come to check on them. He’d heard the last part. He leaned his head back against the cool wall, closing his eyes. The ghost of his older brother’s approval, relayed through his little sister, was a bittersweet absolution he hadn’t known he needed. And the raw, broken sound in Dae’s voice when Aria had spoken Conner’s words… it was the sound of a monster trying, desperately, to become a man.
He left them there, a silent sentry stepping back. The war outside—with Oren, with the Avallen court, with the legacy of Firegard—would still be there at dawn. But in this quiet room, a different kind of battle was being won. One fragile heartbeat at a time.
One fragile heartbeat at a time.
Ithan listened to the profound quiet from the other side of the door for another minute. His own heart thudded a slower, steadier rhythm against his ribs. He pushed off the wall and walked back toward the kitchen, the ghost of Conner’s voice a quieter, kinder echo in his mind.
Bryce was scrolling through her phone at the island. Hunt was washing their few glasses in the sink. They both looked up as Ithan entered.
“Everything… stable?” Hunt asked, the question implying more than just Aria’s physical state.
“For now,” Ithan said, sliding onto a stool. He ran a hand over his face. “He’s in there. Just… holding her.”
Bryce’s phone screen darkened. “Good,” she said, simple and final. “That’s what she needs. Someone who won’t let go.”
“Even if that someone is a fae prince with the emotional range of a concussed badger?” Ruhn mused, padding back into the room from the balcony, the night air cool on his skin.
“Especially then,” Bryce countered, a faint smile touching her lips. “Badgers are tenacious. They hold on.”
In the dim bedroom, the city’s ambient light painted soft stripes across the blanket. Dae’s thumb traced slow, absent circles on Aria’s shoulder. Her breathing had evened out, deep and full, the pain meds pulling her toward true sleep. The weight of Conner’s hoodie was a comforting lump between them.
She stirred, nuzzling closer into the solid warmth of his chest. His scent—night-blooming flowers and cold starlight—had become the anchor she didn’t know she’d been searching for. It grounded her in the now, not the memory of cold steel.
Her voice was a muffled whisper against the cotton of his shirt, so soft he felt it more than heard it. “I love you, you know?”
The words didn’t feel grand or dramatic. They felt inevitable. Like the final, quiet click of a lock sliding home.
Dae went perfectly still for a single, suspended second. Then a shuddering breath moved through him, and he bent his head, pressing his lips into her hair. He held them there, breathing her in. He kissed her head once, softly.
“I love you too,” he whispered into the crown of her hair, the admission leaving him feeling scoured and new. “Please don’t go getting stabbed again.”
A faint, sleepy huff of laughter warmed his skin. “I’ll try,” she mumbled, the words slurring. Her fingers curled tighter into his side.
He didn’t say anything else. He just held her, listening as her breaths grew deeper, slower. The world outside this room was a chaos of politics and power. Firegard waited in the next room, a silent, demanding promise. His mother was in containment. His father was calculating. None of it touched this.
Here, he was just a boy holding a girl who loved him. It was the most terrifying and powerful thing he had ever been.
In the kitchen, Bryce slid a fresh beer across the island to Ithan. “He’s not going to break her,” she said, as if reading the last of his tension.
Ithan caught the bottle, the cool glass soothing against his palm. “He might break himself trying not to.”
“Maybe that’s the point,” Hunt said, turning from the sink and leaning against the countertop. His wings settled against his back with a soft rustle. “Some things are worth the breaking and remaking.”
Ruhn lifted his glass in a silent toast to that. Ithan took a long pull of his beer, the bitterness a grounding taste. He thought of Conner’s phantom laugh, his gruff approval. He thought of the shattered look on Dae’s face when he’d knelt before Aria.
“Yeah,” Ithan said finally, the word an exhale. “Maybe they are.”
He was learning to trust the breaking.
The darkness behind her eyelids was warm, velvety, and safe. In it, sensations swam without context—the firm pressure of a hand on her belly, the hot slide of a tongue along her inner thigh, a deep, buzzing pleasure that built in her core like a gathering storm. She was floating in a perfect, weightless sea of it, her body arching into phantom touches, a low moan trapped in her throat.
The pleasure crested, sharp and sweet, and she gasped into her pillow. Consciousness returned not as a jarring awakening, but as a slow, delicious tide receding to reveal the shore of reality. The wet heat between her legs wasn't a dream's echo. It was persistent, focused, and very, very real.
Aria's eyes fluttered open to the gray dawn light seeping through the curtains. The wet dream hadn't stopped. It was happening. A ragged gasp tore from her lips as she registered the weight of the blankets lifted off her legs, the cool air on her skin, and the unmistakable feeling of Dae's mouth already working on her.
He was between her thighs, his broad shoulders nudging them apart. His sandy hair was messy against her skin. She could feel the flat of his tongue dragging a slow, deliberate path through her soaked folds, followed by the soft, sucking pressure of his lips.
"Morning, sweet girl," he murmured, the vibration against her most sensitive flesh making her hips jerk. He didn't stop. His voice was a low, husky purr soaked in her own arousal.
"Dae," she moaned, her hands flying down to tangle in his hair, not to push him away, but to anchor herself. Her back arched off the mattress, a sharp pull on her healing side that she barely felt through the haze of building sensation. The evidence of her dream was slick all over his chin, her own musk thick in the air.
He hummed against her, the sound approving, greedy. "Can't really fuck you right now with you still healing," he said, his words muffled by her flesh. He pulled back just enough to look up the length of her body, his hazel eyes dark and glittering. He swiped his thumb through her wetness, gathering it, then slowly pushed it into his mouth, never breaking eye contact. "But I can do this."
Then his mouth was on her again, but with a new, determined fervor. This wasn't gentle exploration. It was a claiming. He used the tip of his tongue to circle her clit with blunt, precise pressure, then sealed his lips around the swollen bud and sucked. Hard.
Aria cried out, her head thrashing against the pillows. One of his hands came up to pin her hip to the mattress, holding her still for his feast. The other hand slid under her ass, lifting her slightly to his mouth. The angle intensified everything. His tongue plunged inside her, fucking her with shallow, ruthless thrusts that made her see stars. He lapped at her, drank from her, his nose buried against her.
"Oh, gods, Dae, right there," she babbled, her fingers tightening in his hair. She was already so close, the dream and the reality colliding into one unbearable peak. He seemed to know. He shifted, focusing all that relentless attention on her clit again, flicking it rapidly with his tongue while applying a firm, circling pressure with his thumb.
Her orgasm hit her like a train, a violent, shocking wave of pleasure that ripped through the last vestiges of her sleepiness and her pain. She shattered around his tongue, her thighs clamping against his head as she choked on his name, her body convulsing under his hold. He rode it out with her, his mouth never leaving her, swallowing every pulse and shudder until she was limp, gasping, and oversensitive.
He finally eased back, kissing his way up her trembling belly. He paused to lave a nipple through the thin fabric of her sleep shirt, sucking it into a stiff peak before continuing upward. His face was glistening, his lips swollen and wet. He reached her mouth and kissed her deeply, letting her taste herself on his tongue.
She kissed him back, lazy and satiated, her hands coming up to frame his stubbled jaw. He was hard against her thigh, the rigid length of him pressing insistently through his sleep pants. He rocked his hips once, a groan rumbling in his chest as the friction teased him.
"Want you," she whispered against his lips, her body still singing.
"I know," he breathed, his voice ragged with his own need. He kissed her again, slower this time. "And I want to bury myself so deep in you we forget our own names." He rolled onto his side, pulling her gently against him so her back was to his chest, her ass nestled against his erection. He wrapped an arm around her waist, his hand splaying possessively over her belly, careful of her bandages. "But you need to heal. This," he nuzzled her neck, "was for you. Because I woke up and you were making these soft little sounds, and you were so wet for me in your sleep... I couldn't help myself."
His honesty, stripped of all prince-like pretense, undid her more than the orgasm had. She shivered, pressing back into him. "It felt amazing."
"Good." He kissed her shoulder. "You'll have more. Whenever you want. However you want." His hand slid lower, his fingers tracing through the damp curls between her legs, not entering, just stroking lazily. "My mouth on you. My fingers inside you. My cock, when you're ready." He nipped her earlobe. "I'm going to learn every way you like to come, Aria. It's going to be my new favorite subject."
A flush of heat that had nothing to do with embarrassment spread through her. Her earlier shyness was being systematically dismantled by his filthy, earnest promises. She reached behind her, her hand finding the hard line of him through his pants. She squeezed, enjoying his sharp intake of breath.
"What about you?" she asked, her voice still throaty.
"I'll take care of it later," he said, but his hips stuttered forward into her grip.
"Let me," she whispered, turning in his arms. She pushed him onto his back and slid down the bed before he could protest. She looked up the line of his body, seeing the stunned, hungry expression on his face. Her own boldness thrilled her. With clumsy but determined fingers, she tugged at the waistband of his sleep pants, freeing his erection.
He was thick and heavy in her hand, the head already damp. She leaned down, her light brown hair curtaining them both, and took him into her mouth. The taste of him, salt and skin and something uniquely Dae, was intoxicating. He hissed her name, his hand coming to rest gently on her head.
She used her tongue, explored the sensitive underside, sucked him deep until he was cursing softly, his abs taut. She loved the power of it, the way his control frayed with every stroke of her lips. She worked him until his thighs trembled, until his breaths were short, sharp pants.
"Fuck, Aria, I'm close," he warned, his voice strained.
She took him deeper, urging him on, and with a guttural groan he came, his release hot and bitter on her tongue. She swallowed, slowly releasing him, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand as she crawled back up to lie beside him.
He was breathing hard, one arm thrown over his eyes. After a moment, he reached out blindly, pulling her into a crushing embrace. He didn't speak. He just held her, his face buried in her hair, his body still trembling with aftershocks.
The dawn light grew stronger, painting the room in pale gold. The world outside—the sword, the throne, the threats—was still there. But here, in this bed, they were just two people, learning the language of each other's bodies, finding solace in skin and salt and breath. It was a different kind of healing. Deeper, perhaps, than any magic could provide.