Page 125 of A Pact of Blood

The tenth bell can’t be far off. When Raul glances over at me, I signal to him.Aurelia’s room, eleventh bell, all of us.

He tips his head in a hint of a nod. I can count on him to pass the message on to Bastien.

I wait a few more minutes before wandering out into the hall myself. My route takes me in the opposite direction from where Aurelia—and her escort of guards—will have gone… at least at first.

Instead of heading into my chambers, I slip into the abandoned bedroom that we use as an access point to the palace’s hidden passages. It doesn’t take long to stride through the stuffy wooden corridors in the walls and up a cramped flight of stairs to the section outside the empress’s apartment.

I lean close to the panel, listening as hard as I can for any sign that she has company. After a moment, a meow reaches my ears, followed by a soft laugh. A smile touches my lips.

In an abundance of caution, I propel my illusionary voice toward her with my gift, keeping it focused entirely on her.“Is it safe for me to come in?”

There’s a rustle of fabric as Aurelia stands. Rather than answering with words, she opens the panel for me.

Her unbound hair tumbles down over her tanned shoulders like it always did when I first met her, but her deep blue eyes are shadowed with the worries she couldn’t show in public.

Seeing her beautiful face right there in front of me, I can’t hold myself back. I step out of the passage and pull her into my embrace.

Aurelia hugs me back, ducking her head against my shoulder. A tremor runs through her breath.

I press the spot on the wall to slide the panel back into place and guide her over to the bed. She sprawls out on the covers next to me, cuddling so close my heart swells with joy.

It should be like this every night.

“The others will be coming later,”I say, keeping my illusionary voice at a murmur even though no one could overhear it anyway.“I wanted to see you by myself first. What’s bothering you?”

Aurelia doesn’t ask how I know, just presses her face deeper into the crook of my neck. “Everything’s a mess. I don’t know how I’m going to do… anything.” She lets out a short laugh that’s too raw to reassure me. “Toppling a five-hundred-year-old empire is fucking hard—who would have thought?”

My arms tighten around her.“You’re trying to do something incredible. Of course it’ll take time to figure it all out. I know you’re strong enough to.”

“But what if I’m not? What if I’ve reached so far and now I’m going to stumble and fall in a way that ruins everything?”

I brush my fingers over her hair and pull back just far enough to see her expression.“What happened?”

Her mouth tenses. “I’ll explain when you’re all here. But I don’t see how there’s any getting out of it.”

“We’ll find a way. We always have so far.”

Aurelia makes a noncommittal sound that wrenches at me even more, but then she nudges me onto my back. “I don’t want to talk about it now. I don’t want to think about it. I don’t want to feel anything but you.”

She nestles onto my taller frame, letting me support her completely.

The feel of her weight on me sets off all sorts of other sensations it’s hard to rein in, especially with the wild, sweet scent of her filling my lungs at the same time. I brush my lips against her forehead and stroke my hand down her back.

“I’m here. Whatever you need.”

A sigh slips out of her. “I wonder what it would have been like if none of us had been sent here. If we’d met under different circumstances, like regular royals rather than hostages.”

The corner of my mouth curves upward.“I’d have had no reason to distrust you, so I’d obviously have fallen for you that much faster. And then Bastien and I would have had to fight it out with Raul for your hand, and that would have gone badly for me.”

“Hmm. Maybe I wouldn’t have wanted whoever was best in a fight. Maybe I wouldn’t have been willing to choose even then.”

She scoots a little higher on me, the friction sending a pulse of need through my groin, and angles her head for a kiss. There’s nothing in the world I can do except kiss her back.

The press of her lips is all sweetness and heat, but there’s something unnervingly tender in the way her mouth lingersagainst mine. As if she’s drawing out the moment, afraid that it might be the last time we do this.

As if she’s saying goodbye.

My heart skips a beat, but Aurelia eases herself a little higher so she can meld her mouth to mine more deeply. Her legs splay to either side of my thighs. The gasp she emits when her sex presses against my straining erection through our clothes only makes me harder.

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