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“You’re not going?” I asked.

“My brother can humble the practice targets without my help,” he said. “I have been parted from you for far too long to hand you over to an empty terrace the moment I have you back.” His warm gaze found mine. “The kingdom has had years of me. It can spare me a single morning.”

Something in my chest went soft and entirely too traitorous.

So, we lingered. Longer than either of us should have, the sun climbing higher while the banter ran easily, and his hand found mine on the table between bites. For a little while, I let myself pretend this was all there was. No war. No Demetrios. No vow hanging unspoken over my head. Just a girl, and a king, and a table full of pastries in the morning light.

It couldn’t last, of course.

“There is something you should know,” Atlas said at last, and the slight shift in his tone had me bracing on instinct. “Tonight, the court holds a banquet. In celebration of the kingdom’s survival.” A pause. “And, I suspect, to get their first proper look at the mortal who ended the war.”

“A banquet?”

“A banquet.” He repeated, with a barely suppressed grin, no doubt born of the panic in my voice.

“With your people. All of them?” I swear the question sounded more like a choked squeal of pain than anything that could be classed as normal.

“A great many of them, yes.” The corner of his mouth twitched, the wretched man enjoying every second of this. “In your honor.”

“In… my… honor.” I repeated yet again, this time swallowing hard.

I then looked down at the crimson silk, which I still wasn’t entirely convinced I knew how to sit down in, and tried to picture an entire hall of immortal strangers studying me in something even grander.

And as the dread curled cold and certain in my stomach, I arrived at a truly startling conclusion. I genuinely could not decide which was more terrifying.

The battle I had somehow survived…

Or facing the whole of Theïkós in yet another killer dress.

Oh yeah…

This was going to be a disaster

For a man with a kingdom to rebuild and a war only half won, Atlas spent a truly remarkable amount of the day refusing to do either.

Instead, he showed me his world.

True to his word, he didn’t go to the training grounds. Instead, he rose from the breakfast table, held out his hand, and informed me that since I had crossed worlds to reach him, the very least he could do was let me see what I’d crossed them for. And so, the morning developed into something I had no name for, because peace had been a stranger to me for so long that I’d half forgotten what it felt like.

He took me through the heart of the castle, and the castle, it turned out, went on forever.

There were galleries hung with portraits of long-dead kings who all shared the same proud, infuriating jawline as the man beside me. There were corridors of pale stone that opened without warning onto courtyards full of fountains and climbing roses. Onto balconies that looked out over a city slowly stitching itself back together beneath the morning sun. Everywhere we went, people stopped and bowed, and their eyes slid to me. The small mortal walking at their king’s side, with a curiosity they were all far too polite to voice.

But it was the library that undid me.

I actually stopped in the doorway and forgot how to speak.

It rose at least three storeys, a vast circular chamber ringed with shelves that climbed clean up into a domed ceiling painted with constellations I didn’t recognize. Ladders on silver rails. Reading nooks tucked into alcoves. More books than I had seen in my entire life gathered into one impossible, golden-lit room. Oh, and the smell of them, old paper and leather and dust, made something ache pleasantly in my chest.

“You like it,” Atlas observed, watching me rather than the room.

“Like it, I love it!” I breathed. “I could live in here. I could genuinely just move in and never leave, and you would never see me again.”

“Then I would simply move in with you,” he said it so easily, so matter-of-factly, that I had to look away before my face did something embarrassing. “I am told I am excellent company, and I read aloud beautifully.”

I chuckled at that. “You are not excellent company. You’re insufferable,” I lied teasingly.

“And yet,” the words had barely left him before he moved. One moment, he stood a careless arm’s length away, then the next, his hands framed my hips from behind. He tugged me back flush against the hard line of his body. His mouth came to rest against the shell of my ear, and his voice dropped to something low and dark and devastating. “… you crossed an entire world to find your way back to me.” Then came a pause, his lips grazing the sensitive skin just beneath my ear, sending a shiver racing along my spine. “Insufferable, am I? And still you came all this way, little bird. I think you like me a great deal more than you will ever admit.”