Page 98 of Sworn to the Shadow Throne

Dream Owain was carrying me. I tried to open my eyes, but they felt stitched shut. My limbs were leaden and unresponsive. I couldn’t wake up. I lost myself in the gentle sway of his stride, in the controlled strength I knew wouldn’t falter.

Work-roughened fingers caught briefly on the coarse fabric of my dress as his thumb brushed over my arm where he held me. The faint scrape of a signet ring pressed into my upper arm.

“You’re not supposed to be here,” I muttered, the words slurring together. I was shaking from the chill left behind from draining myself.

“I’ve lived here since the day I was born, with one notable exception,” he said quietly.

My dreaming mind had also conjured the warmth of his magic seeping into my skin.

What little remained of my own reacted to its invasion without my permission. It leaned toward him, tempting me to follow.

This was exhaustion painting me a fantasy. Had to be. And yet…

What did it matter? I was dreaming, so I could accept anything I wanted—even from overbearing princes.

Defeat came easily. I let myself sink into his warmth, pressing my face closer to his chest, breathing him in like a starving creature. “You smell nice.”

There go the last shreds of my dignity.

“So do you.” His chuckle was a low, intimate sound. His arms tightened reflexively like he remembered exactly how I fit against him.

“I shouldn’t have let you do that without me,” he murmured, voice held low. A quiet exhalation, somewhere between a laugh and a sigh, rumbled out of him. “I’m sorry, Luna.”

Each word pierced the armor formed by my righteous anger to settle deep within my chest. I shifted faintly, and he moved me into a more comfortable position in his arms.

“I deserve it,” he added. “But I’ll fix it if it’s the last thing I do.”

Cruel of my dream to make him sound so convincing.

The swaying stopped, and his grip tightened before he lowered me so slowly it felt like drifting down on a soft summer breeze. His hands slid from beneath my knees and shoulders with infuriating gentleness. I tried to lift my arms to grab him back—he was my dream, I could have what I wanted—but they wouldn’t budge.

Then, those same warm, callused fingers gently swept the damp strands of hair away from my forehead. Weak as a newborn kitten, I leaned into the touch. But it disappeared as something heavy settled over me instead—blankets, I thought distantly.

This was the sort of tenderness born of exhaustion. Too good to be true. The kind my heart would invent after too many nights convincing myself I no longer wanted him.

Then I felt the air near my face warm, and his scent deepened. A thumb grazed my cheek.

“You shouldn’t have been brought here like this,” he said, softer still. “But now that you are…let me make it right.”

“You can try,” I whispered, trying but failing to fill the sound with venom.

“Trying isn’t enough,” he said at last. “I had power, and I used it. I told myself a lot of things that were all true to justify what I did. None of it changes the fact that I took your choice.”

The words felt too…big and lucid to be part of a dream.

“I’ve already proven I’m not above begging, Luna.”

He had, on his knees, looking for all the world like I’d ripped out his heart. I tried to muster enough anger to clear the bitter regret away, but it was like trying to hold water with a net. Affection remained stubbornly difficult to kill.

Featherlight warmth brushed my forehead again then stopped, as if he’d remembered he hadn’t earned even that.

His lips lingered above my skin—an apology, a promise, all wrapped up in one act so painfully sweet I wanted to wrap my arms around him. My magic calmed and settled into my body as if it had finally connected with the thing it had been straining toward. Even as I reveled in it, some furious part of me wanted to tear the feeling out by its roots because it hurt even as it healed.

“When you wake,” he said, voice roughening, “I won’t ask you to absolve me. But I will give you every reason to trust me again. That’s a promise, moonlight.”

As sleep claimed me, my final conscious thought was of the gentle lift of the mattress as he rose and how much my traitorous heart wanted him to stay—even if the rest of me still wanted to remember why that was a terrible idea.

Chapter 29