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“I win.”

“Do you?” His voice goes rough, deeper than before, but there’s something broken in it now.

The question hangs between us, loaded with meaning I don’t understand. His skin burns cold beneath my palms, but instead of numbing my fingers, the sensation spreads up my arms like liquid fire.

The thorn patterns flare brighter, visible through my shirt. They pulse in rhythm with his heartbeat—a rhythm I can somehow feel despite the layers between us.

“What’s happening?”

“Ancient magic recognizing its counterpart,” his voice cracks like breaking ice. “Your power knows mine as intimately aslovers know heartbeats. As predators know prey. As weapons know their intended targets.”

His shadows rise around us without conscious direction, wrapping my calves, my waist, twining up my arms. But they don’t feel constraining. They feel like... completion.

And that’s when vines explode from my wrists without permission. Living ropes that lash around his forearms and tighten like they’re claiming him. The ivy pulses with my heartbeat, roots digging deeper with each breath.

We both freeze, staring at the impossible connection.

His face goes completely white.

“What the hell?—”

“Ancient magic,” he finishes, voice gone hollow with something between awe and absolute despair. “Older than court divisions. Older than the Academy. Older than anything I believed still existed in this realm.”

The ivy pulses with warm light that contrasts sharply with his cold shadows. Where they meet, silver sparks dance across our skin—beautiful and damning.

He breaks my hold with desperate strength, surging upright as shadows whip around us like living things. His hands tear at the vines binding our wrists, but the ivy only tightens in response, roots digging deeper. His momentum carries us both to our feet before he slams me back against the arena wall, his body caging me in.

“This should not be possible,” I breathe.

“Nothing about you should be possible,” his thumb traces my jawline with devastating gentleness, but his eyes hold the grief of a man watching something precious die. “Yet here you stand, confirming every suspicion I prayed would prove false.”

“Kieran...” His name comes out breathier than intended.

“Say it again,” his forehead drops to mine, ice-blue eyes burning with intensity, and something that looks like farewell. “Speak my name in precisely that manner once more.”

“Kieran.”

The sound breaks something inside him. He devours my mouth like a starving man claiming his last meal. Tongue sweeping in to taste every corner, memorizing the flavor of me like he’ll never get another chance.

But there’s desperation in it too—like he’s memorizing this moment, storing it against some approaching darkness.

The kiss sets my nervous system ablaze. Our magic doesn’t just combine—it wars. Ice and fire, shadow and growth, claiming and conquering until the crystal windows scream with harmonic resonance. The training room responds, moonlight brightening until everything goes silver-white.

My eyes snap open, and I know without looking that they’re blazing green. Wild magic courses through me, reshaping reality around us. The ivy at our wrists blooms with impossible flowers that smell like midnight and promises.

He pulls back just enough to meet my gaze, breathing hard. His perfectly controlled mask has shattered completely, revealing raw want and something deeper. Something that looks dangerously close to reverence—and absolute heartbreak.

“Three centuries,” he whispers against my lips, shadows caressing my throat like possessive fingers. “Three centuries of existence, and I have never encountered magic like yours.”

The ivy tightens around our joined wrists, pulsing with power that makes us both gasp. Final, undeniable proof of what I am.

“Tell me you remain human,” he whispers against my mouth, voice breaking completely. “Please. Tell me I am mistaken about what you represent.”

I can’t answer. Can’t lie to save us both when my body is literally sprouting royal Wild Court magic.

He doesn’t step back. Doesn’t give me space to recover or think or remember why this is impossible.

Instead, he presses closer, his body against mine while ivy and shadow bind us together. His eyes hold mine with terrifying intensity, searching for something he won’t find.