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My fingers hovered over the glass spikes, remembering catching Vanya in the woods, not knowing what to think of her but wanting her all the same. She looked at me with such fire. And how Alexei teased me that first night. He had been right—I had been knocked down so far I no longer saw how to get up, but that was changing. Happiness hovered just outside my grasp. After the Day of the Dead, everything would settle.
I drew the curtains and fell into bed with my princess’s face dancing before my eyes, imagining repeating this morning’s activities in my own bed, the sounds she had not seemed aware of, her half-lidded eyes afterward. It had been the start of something I had not even dared to dream of after what happened with Eki.
I longed to see Vanya again, to kiss her and trace her wild smile with my fingertips. Wanted it to last forever. Something hardened inside me—not ice but a fierce protectiveness. A wish to become the shield instead of the blade.
She’d said she stayed in Tal to help, not for me. I had sworn to Mariska I would protect her. My princess. The tempest Iwanted to keep until she swept away all that I was, hopefully revealing the good person I could have been.
It was selfish. She had tricked me, but no one volunteered for the kind of curse she was under. The need to protect her and keep her close fought the rational part of me which said to let her go—far, far away.
She’d shown me how hard her life had been, and I had refused to see. I’d dragged her around Tal and into my lap, using her for my own ends. Would I ever be able to claim her openly?
Could I really offer her a life or was I that naïve Tower boy again? The same young man who believed marrying Eki in secret would solve everything?
She deserves better, a voice inside me whispered.
I would go to the meeting tonight, but I would not risk her. She might hate me when I keep her back, but perhaps that was for the best. Was my happiness worth tying her to Tal? I had already rushed her unconscious to the healers too many times. How many times would the Goddess turn away?
Chapter fourteen
Vanya
Ispent the morning stalking Popova’s without seeing a hair of my sister, but used the opportunity to purchase a potion against conception. No need to repeat the past. Then I splurged on a new shirt, napped in the sun, and visited the public baths in Midtown before settling on the theater steps to wait.
At third bell, this part of the city was mostly abandoned, especially in summer when the heat pressed us into the ground. Sweat gathered at my lower back. I wished I could roll up the sleeves of the purple shirt without exposing the fake sigil on my arm.
My eyes locked on Dimitri as the other pedestrians divided before him as if sensing a power I was realizing had nothing to do with magic or status. It was all him, that quiet intensity, a potential for violence others subconsciously perceived. He was solid where I was flighty. He called me Tempest like the wind, and it was not a coincidence the obsidian walls surrounded his mind.
He looked past all others, as if ignorant of the effect he had on the world, until our eyes locked. That smile I’d sought in the Drunken Dead each night turned into a smirk that I returned, doing nothing to hide my own reaction to him—especially not when he was dressed like that.
With the light leather armor I had seen hanging on the wall in his chambers molded to his body, there was a roughness to him normally hidden behind court black and coats. It felt like a lifetime ago I’d first wondered how a prince smelled of leather—how many would I live before this was over? I wished to stay in this one, where we were in love, our eyes sparkled as they met, and my stomach clenched around butterflies instead of fear.
The armor and knee-high boots enhanced his broad shoulders and long legs. Black metal clasps, matching his loose black hair, kept it all in place. Tiny bones hung like epaulets from the shoulders, clinking when he moved. Even those who hated the monarchy could not have helped admiring him like this—he looked as dangerous as when he first rode into Tal. This time, I did not mind at all.
Behind the grief from what happened with Eki and his child, there was an older wound, an emptiness from growing up separate. For a mother who sought nothing outside the Women’s Tower and hated his father, perhaps saw traces of her husband in her son. From being ejected from all he knew into the cold embrace of the king. People did not see Dimitri Ivanov; they saw the Crown Prince of Tal—a man to be feared and used and admired. Hated and resented. Judged.
Had I been any different, wanting to kiss him and imagine myself a princess, as if his royalty could rub off? Had I seen anything more than my own fantasy?
He had not wanted the marriage, but he wanted to be wanted. We all did.
Determined to start anew, I smiled as he stopped before me.
“Tempest—you’re here,” Dimitri said, as if part of him still doubted I would always be. But his lips twitched in answer to mine. “I brought you something. Do you have a place to change?” His eyes roamed my body, as he would rather have embraced me than hand other the bag he carried.
My cheeks heated. I’d already replayed this morning enough times, so was not surprised at the first place my mind went. “You wish to see me naked already? I thought we had a date.”
The twitch transformed into a grin. The dimple returned. “You wouldn’t offer if you knew how often I’d wish that. I might forget propriety entirely.”
Then somehow, I was in his arms, lips fighting, neither surrendering, as it had been from the start. His hand slipped under the light shirt while I had to settle for burying my fingers in his silky hair, trailing my nails down his neck.
As I kissed his jaw, he spoke between swallowed groans. “Cherny will get impatient. Brought you riding leathers.”
That shifted my attention from him to the bag. I had feared the bone soldiers my whole life, but the chance to ride in the sky and wear armor that made me nearly untouchable in Tal… It was not the dresses and dancing I had dreamt of, but it sent a thrill through me nonetheless.
The bag contained leather chaps to buckle on and a hooded, fur-lined vest long enough to cover my knees. Decorated armguards and leather epaulets with tiny clanking bones, these ones without the sigils Dimitri wore. High clasp-on boots, gloves, a wool cowl, and riding goggles finished the look.
As I did not have to remove anything besides my shoes, Dimitri helped me put it on in the alley next to the theater.
He tightened the straps until the armor lay flush against my body, his fingers teasing until my knees threatened to fold, my lips inevitablyfalling on his again. I still wore his compass-clock around my neck. He tucked it into my shirt with a soft smile, as if he enjoyed seeing me wearing his initials—the onyx “DAI” inlaid in the watch face.
