Everything about it feels like it belongs buried—carved from stone, shaped by something old and deliberate, all winding passages and cavernous rooms—but it sits above ground, plonked unceremoniously on the planet’s surface next to the side of a rise like the world tried to swallow it and failed.
From the outside, it looks like nothing. Just rock. Just cliff.
Inside?
It’s a maze.
Tunnels curve instead of running straight, like they were grown rather than carved. Some walls are smooth, worn down by years—centuries—of movement. Other edges are jagged, raw—like whoever made them didn’t care about comfort, only function.
The air is cooler here. Cleaner. Carries that faint mineral tang I remember too well.
And that glow.
Always that glow.
It runs through everything. In the ceilings, the walls, sometimes even the floors—bioluminescent veins that hum with quiet energy. Not bright enough to blind. Just enough to see. Enough to feel watched if you’re the kind of person who lets your brain wander in that direction.
I don’t. Mostly.
I shift again, more carefully this time, adjusting against the bedding. It’s better than anything I’ve slept on in years—thick, layered furs and woven fabric instead of the usual scratchy crap I make do with. It traps heat, softens the stone beneath, makes it far too easy to stay exactly where I am.
It smells like him.
Smoke. Metal. That clean, sharp edge that clings to him no matter where he is. It’s stronger here, soaked into everything—into the fabric, the furs, the air itself. This is his space. Not borrowed. Not temporary.
His.
And fuck me… I don’t hate that. The realisation forms quieter than I expect. There’s no spike of panic, no immediate instinct to shove it away and pretend it doesn’t matter. Just a slow, uncomfortable awareness settling into place.
I scrub a hand over my face. “Right.”
I think about the sweet kiss he gave me a few hours ago when he left me.
The bond hums under my skin. It’s steady and present.
It doesn’t feel like a hook anymore. Not exactly. More like… a thread. Something constant, woven through me whether I like it or not. I still don’t trust it. Don’t trust what it means, what it could become if I stop fighting it entirely.
But I’m not fighting it the same way anymore either.
That’s the problem.
I exhale slowly, staring at the ceiling as the glow pulses faintly above me.
Aelith and his golden retriever human, who I have vague memories of, flash through my mind anyway. Them and that bloody trade.
The prince of this entire bloody world walked back into that palace—back to his mother, back into the lion’s den—with his human mate at his side… so I could walk out.
I harden my jaw. “Yeah,” I mutter. “Not touching that one either.”
Because what the hell do you even do with that?
Gratitude sits wrong. Guilt sits worse.
I don’t know Aelith. Not really. I’ve seen him, heard stories, felt the weight of what he is in the way people talk about him—but that’s not the same asknowingsomeone. It doesn’t change the fact that he made that call. Nor does it change the fact that Varek let him.
For me.
I grip the fur beside me.
