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"And I regret leaving your office without taking formal leave," he replied, the careful phrasing doing nothing to hide the undercurrent of emotion in his voice. "It was disrespectful to your position."

Their eyes met, and an entire unspoken conversation passed between them in that gaze.I'm sorry. I was afraid. I believe you. I need you.

K’Nar glanced between them, something suspiciously like a suppressed smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. "Shall we?" he suggested, gesturing toward the market square.

He took the lead again, guiding them back through the maze of streets with the same confident efficiency. This time, she noticed how he kept to the less crowded paths, how his eyes constantly scanned their surroundings, how he positioned himself to shield her identity from curious onlookers. Like Zexx, there was more to her adjunct than she had ever bothered to see.

She and Zexx followed side by side, close enough that their arms occasionally brushed, sending jitters of awareness through her with each contact. When his fingers accidentally—or perhaps not so accidentally—brushed against hers, she felt a pulse of emotion that wasn't her own: affection tinged with desire, overlaid with a protective fury that took her breath away.

The sensation was so startling that she nearly stumbled. It should have frightened her, this connection to her innermost self. Instead, it felt like coming home after a long journey.

"Are you well, Chancellor?" K’Nar asked, noting her misstep and glancing over his shoulder.

"Yes," she lied with a smile to her adjunct. "Just eager to return to the tower."

He nodded but flicked his gaze to Zexx before turning around again.

As they approached the tower, its stone facade gleaming in the late afternoon sun, she felt a knot of tension she hadn't even been aware of begin to unwind. He was safe. Whatever had happened in the alley, whatever strangers he had been speaking with when they found him, Zexx was unharmed.

Then curiosity unwillingly tickled the back of her brain. But who had he been talking to, and why had they slunk away so quickly?

ChapterThirty

Zexx walked beside Linnea through the thinning market crowd, their shoulders occasionally brushing despite the careful distance they tried to maintain. He was torn between his growing desire to trust her completely and the instinct, honed through generations of conflict, that cautioned against trusting any Crestek too much. Even her.

A fruit vendor called out his final prices of the day, the sweet scent of overripe berries wafting toward them as they passed. The smell triggered an unexpected wave of homesickness—not for the scent itself, which they rarely encountered in the desert, but for the clean, pure aromas of his home. The smoky tang of the communal fire at dusk. The rich aroma of sizzling flatbread. The pungent musk of jebel fur after a day's travel.

What would it be like to take Linnea back there? To the towering palms that provided swaying shade from the twin suns, the crystal-clear pool that reflected the brilliant night sky? She would be safe there, protected by the entire clan. No treacherous advisors, no plotting council members, no need to hide what they felt for each other.

The fantasy was so vivid he could almost feel the warm sand beneath his feet instead of the cold stone of the Crestek city. Almost smell the night-blooming flowers that ringed the oasis instead of the mingled odors of too many bodies pressed together.

But such thoughts were as fleeting as sunrise dew. Linnea was chancellor of the Cresteks, bound to her city and her people by duty as surely as he was bound to his.

"We're almost there," K’Nar murmured, breaking his reverie as the tower's imposing silhouette loomed before them. Guards stood at attention on either side of the massive entrance, their expressions carefully neutral as they approached.

He could sense Linnea gathering herself beside him, straightening her shoulders and lifting her chin as she prepared to resume the mantle of chancellor. The transformation fascinated him—how she could shift from the woman who had frantically searched the city for him to the composed leader of an entire people in the space of a heartbeat.

"Chancellor," one of the guards acknowledged with a bow as they passed, his eyes flicking curiously to him and then away.

The relative quiet of the tower's interior was a relief after the noise of the market, the stone walls muffling the sounds from outside and creating a pocket of stillness. He drew a deep breath, preparing to finally speak openly with Linnea about everything—the plotters within her council, the resistance members in the alley, the growing danger to them both.

But they had barely crossed the entrance hall when two figures hurried toward them from the direction of the spiraling ramp. He recognized them immediately—Vellen and Taal, the very advisors he had overheard plotting against Linnea.

"Chancellor," Vellen called, his face a mask of concern that might have fooled him had he not known better. "Thank the stars you've returned. There's an urgent matter requiring your immediate attention."

Taal's gaze settled on him, his eyes narrowing slightly. "A matter of internal security," he added pointedly.

Linnea glanced between her advisors and Zexx, a flicker of unease passing across her features before she composed them once more. "Of course," she said, her voice steady. "Ambassador, if you'll excuse us?"

He wanted to refuse, to insist on staying by her side, to expose these traitors for what they were. But the pleading look she gave him—a brief, desperate glance that begged him to understand—stayed his tongue. They were playing a dangerous game, and confronting her advisors directly would only expose their hand.

"Chancellor," he replied formally, inclining his head in acknowledgment. The distance between them felt like miles rather than the mere feet that separated them physically.

"We'll confer later," she assured him, though whether she was addressing the ambassador or the man she took to her bed each night was impossible to tell.

He watched her walk away with the two men he now knew to be her enemies, every instinct screaming at him to stop her, to protect her. But he remained where he stood, a silent observer as she disappeared up the spiraling ramp with Vellen and Taal flanking her like executioners escorting a prisoner.

K’Nar lingered behind, glancing at his departing chancellor before turning to Zexx. His unremarkable face, which he had always dismissed as bland and servile, now held a shrewd intelligence he had failed to notice before.