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Orin closes the book with a snap that echoes.
I glance at him. His face is carved from calm. But his jaw ticks, his eyes—so often distant—are locked on Branwen like she’s an infection he can’t scrub from the bones of his past.
Because she took something from him too.
He loved once.
And it wasn’t her.
And now she knows it.
Branwen leans forward, chin resting on her hand, watching Orin with the expression of a cat deciding which bird to pluck next.
“I prefer something lighter next time, Orin,” she says smoothly, “Unless grief is all you’ve got left to offer me.”
His smile is a slash of something bitter.
“Grief,” he says, voice steady, “is all you’ve earned.”
She says nothing to that. Just tilts her head and stares at him like she’s memorizing where to cut next time.
And I sit there, quiet. Useless.
"Lucien, come."
The words slither from her mouth like they were born in the dark—command dressed as invitation, sweetness soaked in power. I rise because I have to, not because I want to. Every movement is betrayal stitched into my limbs, muscle locking against bone in futile resistance. I can’t even sneer. Not when she’s carved obedience into my blood.
Her posture says everything. She stretches languidly, arms over the back of her throne like a goddess grown drunk on her own power. She’s basking in it. Feeding off of mine.
She tilts her head. "Kiss me."
It’s not a suggestion. The compulsion crashes through me with the weight of stone—thick and immediate, scraping down my spine as if someone’s yanked a thread straight from my soul. My body stutters forward, once, twice. I don’t want this. I don’t want her mouth or her hands or the scent she’s doused herself in to convince us she’s soft. She’s not. She’s blade and blood beneath it all. And I’ve cut myself on her before.
Every part of me coils in silent revolt, and she watches it—every flicker of hesitation, every drop of loathing rising behind my eyes. Shelikesit. My resistance is part of the ritual for her. My disgust is just another affirmation that she has me under her thumb. I could kill her for it. If I were free.
But then Caspian moves.
He steps forward with the same grace he always wears, fluid and unassuming. No warning. No glance. Just bends at the waist, leans in, and presses his mouth to hers. He’s smooth assin, fingers grazing her jaw, and he kisses her like it’s nothing. Like it costs him nothing.
But I see it. Ifeelit. It costs him everything.
The spell fractures. My limbs jolt like strings cut from a marionette, and suddenly the command in my marrow has nowhere to go. I reel with it—cloaked in invisible shame and savage relief. I didn’t have to do it. She didn’t getme. Not this time.
Caspian draws back, too composed, too quick to cover the depth of the sacrifice. His face is blank, a mask that only someone who’s bled beside him would recognize for what it is. Pain, worn quiet. Duty, stitched into the hollow behind his eyes. He turns to her with that same old smirk, that lilt in his voice that makes women drop their morals and men drop their guards.
“Why don’t we go back to your room, hmm?” he murmurs, like it’s his idea. Like he’s dying to be alone with her.
Branwen beams, utterly predictable. She always was shallow enough to mistake seduction for submission. She slips her hand into his, lets herself be pulled to her feet with a satisfied little sigh, and preens like she’s won some prize.
She hasn’t won. Not even close.
I don’t follow their exit. I don’t track the way her red dress flares as they vanish down the corridor. I look at him. Only him.
Caspian doesn’t turn until the last second, but when he does, his gaze hits me square in the chest. No words. Just one look.
And it wrecks me.
Because I see it all—the ache, the apology, the weight of what he just did to protect me. To protectus. He’ll distract her. He’ll endure her. He’ll lie there with her mouth on his neck and her hands on his skin and he’ll do it forus.