Page 161 of Destiny of a King

Instead, she kissed him.

Dravic hesitated only an instant before returning the kiss.

Adira wrapped her arms around his neck, wanting him closer. Wanting to forget everything she had learned today. Wanting only him.

Dravic swept her into his arms, and her startled smile made him grin.

“There is that smile again.”

She touched his cheek.

His expression softened. “I love you.”

Adira’s smile faded beneath the weight of those three words. She touched her hand to her heart and then pressed it to his.

“And you love me,” he said as he carried her to the bed.

For a while there were no questions waiting to be answered, no truths to understand, no kingdom demanding anything of either of them.

There was only the love they shared.

Much later, Adira lay curled against Dravic, his arm heavy around her waist and his breathing lighter in sleep.

She had not slept. She didn’t want to. She wanted to remember: the warmth of his body beside hers, the feel of his arm around her, and the way he always reached for her in sleep as though even then he needed to know she was there.

She would miss that most of all.

Nay. That wasn’t true. She would miss everything. Their time beside the hearth. The way he ordered her about and then looked annoyed when she ignored him. The rare smiles he had shared with her. The way he had spoken to her when she could not hear a single word. The way he had never once made her feel that silence made her less.

Her eyes burned and she pressed her lips together and fought the tears.

She loved him with her whole heart, with every part of her being. That was what made this so difficult. If she did not love him, leaving would be easy.

But she loved him enough to know she could not become his queen while she did not even know who she was. And now there was something else she had never considered.

Power.

Her father believed she possessed more power than the King of Scotara. What did that mean for Dravic, his crown, his kingdom… for them?

She had spent her entire life having others decide what was best for her. Her mother had decided silence would protect her. Her father had given her mother the magic to make it possible.

Now everyone told her she was the healer who could defy death. Dravic told her she would be his queen. They all loved her. She knew that now. But love did not answer the question that would not leave her.

Who was Adira?

She looked at Dravic sleeping beside her and her heart broke a little more.

She needed to find the answer herself.

And she knew that if she stayed until morning, she never would.

Chapter Thirty-Seven

A Winter Apart

A Glimmer of Hope

Winter had settled hard over Caerith.