Page 44 of The Panther's Price

But Evryn needed safety—and he needed distance from everything else long enough tonotrun from what was clawing through his chest.

The Lost Gardens lay tucked beyond a rise of blackroot and bone-pines, hidden by old glamour sigils only those with Shadowline blood could pass through without being torn apart. It was a place of memory. Of mourning. And magic.

No one had tended it in over a century. But the shadows still remembered.

Lucien guided her through the last of the mist, their boots crunching over ancient petals turned to dust. The silver-glow vines curled from the stone walls, pulsing faintly with life, and the trees grew in winding, impossible spirals, their trunks inked in twilight bloom.

Evryn stared, breath caught between awe and reverence. “What is this place?”

Lucien stopped at the heart of the garden, beneath an arching veil-tree whose leaves shimmered like moonstone.

“It was where my great-grandmother courted her mate,” he said quietly. “And where my mother buried his bones.”

Evryn blinked. “It’s beautiful. And sad.”

“Like most things born from love in this realm.”

She didn’t speak. Just stepped further into the clearing, brushing her hand along the curling vines.

Lucien watched her.

Watched the way the gardenrespondedto her, flowers unfurling slightly as she passed, the shadows bendingtowardher, not in threat but in recognition.

She didn’t know what she was. But the world did. And maybe that was why he struggled with who he was when he looked at her.

Not because she was terrifying. Because she wasbecoming. And it made him want things he’d buried long ago.

They sat beneath the tree, the moon a broken coin overhead, casting their silhouettes in violet and silver.

Evryn leaned her back against the trunk, her head tilted toward him.

“You never talk about her,” she said.

Lucien blinked. “Who?”

“Your mother. Not really.”

Lucien exhaled. “What is there to say? She taught me to kill before I could read. Told me mercy was weakness. Made me a weapon sharp enough to carve her enemies in half and silent enough to pretend it didn’t cost me anything.”

Evryn was quiet. Then she whispered, “But it did.”

Lucien’s throat closed.

She reached for his hand.

He let her.

“Do you ever wish you could be someone else?” she asked.

Lucien met her eyes. He scoffed. “Every damn day.”

She leaned forward then and he let himself fall into it.

Their lips brushed, soft at first. Then again, deeper. More certain.

Lucien’s hand slid to Evryn’s jaw, the other anchoring against her waist. Her breath hitched as he pulled her close, their bodies aligning like they’d been made in tandem and only just remembered it. The air between them hummed—not with the jagged heat of survival, but the slow burn of something older. Deeper. Her fingers tangled in his shirt, not tearing butunravelingit, as if the fabric itself had forgotten how to cling to him.

He let her. Let the night breeze kiss his skin as she peeled the layers away, her palms skimming the scars he’d never explained.

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