The roar of the crowd—the very force behind this indignity—rose to a fever pitch.

  It brought Sullivan back to the Great Hall with the gentleness of getting drenched in ice water. His lips still burned with the ghost of her breath, even as the crowd’s roar swallowed everything else.

  He pressed the Princess flush against him, his hand cradling that silver head of hair to his chest—unyielding, and needy. He wanted to shield her and pretend this hadn’t happened under their leering eyes.

  But it had.

  He drowned his fangs in spit, trying to swallow the very taste of her. He exhaled through his nose, sharp and measured, a poor attempt to smother the heat coiling in his gut.

  Magnus’s smug face was a blight on Sullivan’s peace of mind, but a thought teased at his better sensibilities. Slow and insidious. For once, the Vampire Lord let his restraint slip. A rare, intoxicating indulgence spread willingly onto his face.

  The indignity was all of a sudden a pleasure to enjoy instead of endure.

  Unaccustomed to this side of Sullivan, Magnus assessed him in a flicker of a moment, and instinct betrayed him.

  His foot slid back.

  Just a fraction, but enough.

  His perfect smirk wavered, the faintest crease forming between his brows. Then—smooth as glass—the mask was back in place.

  But Sullivan caught it.

  And that was enough.

  That small misstep was Sullivan’s cue to lift his blushing bride into his arms. He allowed the insipid hive mind to predictably react.

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  He relished Magnus’s confusion, watching the pieces scramble behind his eyes. The rare, satisfying slip in that man’s self-control lingered pleasantly on Sullivan’s face.

  The Vampire Lord’s delight was the Eternal King’s bane.

  Aleiya, on the other hand, was utterly mortified—her racing heart refusing to calm, no matter how tightly she clung to her husband.

  ‘Unsee me! Unknow me!’

  But the world only looked harder.

  Sullivan pressed her closer as she buried her face into his shoulder. The weight of a hundred stares pressed down on her—each one a pin, a needle, a firebrand against her skin.

  “If you will excuse me!” Her husband’s voice boomed, startling her. It quieted the room. Sullivan was not known to shout.

  “I believe I have…”

  A beat of silence.

  “Duties to perform.” He smiled.

  The lewd implication was not lost to a single person in the room.

  They treasured this moment—some laughing like they’d witnessed something precious, others keeling over in drunken, childish amusement.

  Half scandal. Half delight.

  Sullivan, that Sullivan, did not just let himself be carried by the crowd’s whimsy—he indulged in it, let it swell around him like a tide he had no need to resist. And he knew that bastard hated him for it.

  Before he turned away, wife securely in his arms, he deigned a cursory glance of indifference to the King before he carried his newlywed bride out of the Great Hall.

  And just like that, Magnus was left alone.

  His own insipid hive mind faded into white noise around him. They were all insignificant—paltry—to what had just been stolen from him.

  What was supposed to be an easy victory—a show of force. A reminder that the Eternal King was welcomed wherever he pleased whenever the thought pleased him—was now an unbearable loss.

  Petty vengeance.

  Harsher sanctions.

  Greater surveillance.

  All raced through his mind—then stilled.

  The perfectly immaculate lily was still gently cradled between his fingers. So fair and delicate in his hold. He brought it to his nose, allowing the scent to caress his senses with its gentle, timid embrace. His smile curled like a collector admiring his latest acquisition.

  “Aleiya.”

  He rolled the syllables over his tongue as if savoring every letter, before it dissolved like the fairy floss sweet she was. Even now, the ghost of that arcane flicker hummed beneath his skin. Wept at his feet. Called upon the universe to bear witness to their union.

  Power that subtle never bloomed by accident. And if she could bend the world without knowing, what might she do if she belonged to him instead?

  He traced the edges of the petals, slow and reverent, committing their softness to memory. That whimper of sound—like a siren’s call—lingered as she left him adrift, lost in the tide of what could have been.

  No.

  What will be.

  Because she wouldn’t be Sullivan’s for long.