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The back door creaked open and slammed shut. As they waited to ensure neither enemy returned, the rain came down more heavily. It dripped from the tip of Emery’s nose and hair. He shivered, still tucked against Ambrose like a stray cat seeking shelter, one hand wrapped around Ambrose’s arm.

His grip loosened, the touch changing in quality.

Did Ambrose imagine that Emery’s heartbeat followed the rhythm of his? Was that color in his cheeks from the cold, or something else? Did the rain taste fresher when it was kissed from the lips of a man holding on to him like Ambrose was the only sanctuary after years of storm?

It’s only a side effect of the adrenaline , he thought desperately.

He was lying to himself.

Infidel.

The witch king’s voice sounded unusually far away. It wasn’t the time for kissing, but for the past week Ambrose could think of little else.

Emery’s wet lashes dipped as he took a bold glance at Ambrose’s lips. It seemed to take effort for him to say, “You can. If you want to.”

Ambrose’s blood buzzed in his ears. “I can—what?”

“You know.” Emery squeezed his bicep. He searched Ambrose’s gaze, found all that apprehension and mistook the cause for something else. “How did this go for you? In your time.”

“It didn’t,” Ambrose said.

Emery’s breathing was deliberately even. “Never?”

Ambrose hummed an affirmative, remembering the way the witch king had sealed a compulsion charm to his neck with a kiss to his nape, and decided it hardly counted.

There was nothing even to the cadence of Emery’s breaths now. “Would you like me to be the first?”

Yes , Ambrose thought.

At the same time, the witch king snarled, No!

Guilt formed a garrote around Ambrose’s throat, silencing the thing he most wanted to say.

He hoped his feelings were plain on his face, because he couldn’t voice them.

He had spent a lifetime promised to one man, a man who still lived even if he didn’t breathe or inhabit a body, a man he was trying to save.

A man who had helped and hurt him in equal measure.

Despite it, Ambrose forever clung to one thing: He was loyal.

He was true. He couldn’t willingly turn his back on the man who’d rescued him, trained him, put a sword in his hand and his soul inside a body that fit perfectly.

That he had such complicated feelings failed to diminish the strength of his yearning for Emery.

When he couldn’t speak, the candle of hope in Emery’s eyes guttered. “Ah.” He started to pull away.

“Command me,” Ambrose said.

Emery froze. He looked incredulous. “What?”

“Use the collar. Command me.”

Ambrose couldn’t articulate the reason he asked.

It took several logical leaps, and it made little sense, but it was the only way that absolved him of this guilt.

If Emery forced his hand, he didn’t have to live with the stain of treachery.

He’d been ordered, compelled, he couldn’t resist. He could enjoy the touch of a man he’d found himself so enchanted by without consciously betraying his king.

He didn’t expect Emery to understand. Half of him anticipated disgust, rejection, and he’d deserve it. Being torn between a desire he shouldn’t have and the responsibility he’d long upheld was not a conundrum he’d found himself in before.

Would Emery understand intuitively what he was really asking?

Emery’s expression softened. He shifted an inch closer.

Tentatively, as if reaching toward an animal with a history of biting, he touched the inky marks circling Ambrose’s neck, leaving a trail of sensitivity.

There was a moment where he seemed to contemplate the power beneath his fingertips, how easily the magic could make Ambrose do as he wished.

He looked into Ambrose’s eyes and didn’t move from that pose for as long as it took their breaths to sync.

Then he whispered, “Kiss me.”

Don’t.

Ambrose had already bent his head. At first it was the barest graze of lips. The numbing cold should have made it intangible, but that gentle touch made him burn . He melted into it, heart rabbiting in his chest. It was too much to take and too little after an era spent starved of affection.

Then Emery tipped forward as if in a trance, their bodies pressed flush against one another, and the tether in Emery’s pocket burned against Ambrose’s hip.

Kill him.

Ambrose’s throat closed in the collar’s squeeze, and his hands rose, itching for Emery’s neck.

No , he thought forcefully.

He wrenched away, and Emery’s eyes startled open.

Treacherous ingrate. If only I’d known your heart could be so callow.

He’d managed to break the compulsion, but the strength of it frightened him. If he’d held it in his bare hand, would he have been incapable of breaking the hold? Did Emery’s possession of it not protect him over the one who’d made it?

Then Ambrose came to an altogether new realization.

He’d felt the tug of the arcane collar just now. He hadn’t before the kiss.

Emery hadn’t compelled him. He’d asked.

And Ambrose’s answer had been yes.

“Ambrose?” Emery looked wide-eyed and worried.

“We should get out of here,” Ambrose said.

Emery looked confused, trying to catch up. “Wait, I shouldn’t have—If you weren’t ready. If I moved too fast, I’m sorry.”

Ambrose shook his head adamantly; he had been more than ready.

Emery waited for more, and when he didn’t get it, put together a fractured version of the mask he normally wore, with cracks so wide it was easy to see through.

“Ambrose, I can’t pretend to know your mind, and I suspect the witch king wasn’t always good to you.

I don’t know what hold he still has over you to make you think that a forced kiss is the only kind you can have, but I thought it was—I thought we were—”

He broke off, looking lost and leaving Ambrose to fill in the blanks of those broken off sentiments.

I thought it was … real.

I thought we were … falling for each other.

But how could either be true? When a third voice intruded to say, If he knew your heart, he’d hate you for it.

Ambrose didn’t know how to explain the muddy labyrinth of his thoughts.

He’d sworn an oath.

He’d broken it.

He loved the witch king.

And … hated him.

He wanted to be free. He wanted to fall in love. He was fairly sure that was happening regardless.

He wasn’t so sure a wretch like him deserved to have those feelings returned. Especially not by a boy he’d nearly been compelled to kill twice.

“You did nothing wrong,” Ambrose said, voice rough. “It is I who erred. In any case, we shouldn’t linger here.”

“Okay.” Emery shored up the cracks in his broken mask, and this time, managed something serviceable. “We have to get Professor Valenti first. We can’t let them keep him.”

Ambrose tried to reorient himself by looking away from Emery altogether. “If we do, they’ll know we were here.”

“He could help us. Plus, what can they do to me that they haven’t already tried? At least I have—” He cut himself short.

“You have me,” Ambrose confirmed. This he could not leave in doubt. “I’ll protect you.”

Emery took a shaky breath, rainwater spraying from his lips. “You can’t just say tha—Never mind, come on.”

They went to the shed and examined the lock.

It was copper colored, lighter than the one from the mausoleum or Emery’s cellar.

Emery took a tithe from his belt and swiped it across the padlock to undo Hellebore’s spell, but it failed to crack open the lock.

Ambrose called upon his magic, but withdrew his hand with a hiss when the enchantment burned him.

It had clearly been designed to reject any magical interference.

“Shit. Should have known they’d use something more secure. We need the key,” Emery said.

Ambrose glanced back at the house. “We aren’t going in there.”

“Then we need something more powerful to open it. Maybe old magic could work. I remember Morcant talking about it. Something about how telling a secret could release something locked away.”

“A secret?”

“Something you’ve never told anyone before.” Emery looked at Ambrose with a sardonic twist to his mouth. “So if you’ve been hiding anything from me, now would be the time.”

A conniption of anxiety seized Ambrose at the very thought.

How many things was he hiding? The fact he heard the voice of his dead master in his head, or that the search for the grimoire and those intimate moments Emery spent teaching him to read had been in service of Ambrose’s ultimate goal of resurrecting the witch king?

Or the other secrets. The ones Ambrose could hardly admit to himself. Like the fact he didn’t want anything as much as he wanted to kiss Emery again.

The very thought of admitting it out loud had him searching the garden until his gaze landed on the pile of firewood against the shed and a log with an axe embedded in it.

He hefted the axe, marched over to the door, wound up, and swung its blade into the chains securing the lock. They broke in one go, slinking to the ground in coils, mercifully muffled by the pouring rain.

“Oh.” Emery was staring. Not at the broken chains, but at Ambrose’s arms. “That’s … that’s effective, too.”

Ambrose flushed.

He would have to decide what to do about his hoard of secrets eventually, but for now, he could only nurse the glowing embers of affection in private, where reality couldn’t dampen them.