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“You’re doing it wrong,” she says behind me.
Her voice is a balm and a blade.
I glance down.
The tie’s a disaster. I’ve folded it in half like a napkin, not knotted it. Figures.
I don’t say anything. Just drop my hands and step back.
She steps forward.
And suddenly she’s there. In my space. In my breath. Her fingers brush my collar as she adjusts the tie. Her movements are efficient, practiced—but not impersonal. She touches like sheknowsme. Like she remembers what my blood tastes like and still chooses to thread silk around my throat instead of fire.
I hold still, jaw locked. If I breathe too deep, I’ll do something reckless.
Like touch her.
Like say something I won’t be able to take back.
“You always this bad at dressing yourself?” she murmurs, eyes focused on the knot, fingers working fast and unbothered.
“I usually don’t bother,” I mutter.
She hums like that tracks.
But she doesn’t back away when she’s done.
She stays.
My eyes flick up to meet hers, and it hits me all over again—how goddamnunfairshe is. Dressed in that black, blade-cut gown that turns her into something otherworldly. Her hair twisted up, her lips painted like a sin I want to unmake. And yet she looks at me like I’m something that matters.
Like I’mhers.
And I am.
I’ve been hers since the moment we met. Since the bond wrapped itself around my bones and made me furious with wanting.
So I do the next best thing.
“You look—” I stop. Swallow hard. Try again. “You look like they should be afraid of you.”
Her mouth curves.
“And you like that?”
I don’t answer.
Becauseyes.Gods, yes. Because power on her is beautiful. Because if they’re afraid of her, they won’t try to take her. Because if they’re smart, they won’t even look too long.
Because I need them to know she’s alreadyclaimed.
“You good?” she asks, softer now.
No challenge. No snark. Just a question that reaches into the part of me I try to ignore—the part that misses Orin, that doesn’t know how to laugh without Caspian, that wakes in the middle of the night and aches for Lucien’s steady voice telling us how we’ll survive this.
“No,” I say honestly. “But I will be.”
She nods.