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Sleep wouldn’t come.

Truthfully, Taly hadn’t had much hope. There were more people in the house—in Ryme—than she was used to. More than she’d been around since the day her magic had come out screaming.

She could feel the Weave shifting, strained beneath the weight of so many souls moving through it. Threads tangling. Stretching. Pulling tight in places that used to lie flat. It tickled her brain.

Beside her, Skye’s breathing was soft and even. He had one arm slung over her. The weight of it was warm, solid, comforting.

She closed her eyes and tried to stop thinking. Stop feeling. Stop noticing the steady rhythm of warm breath against her neck.

Just drift off, she told herself. Drift—

Damn it, she needed to pee.

Taly sighed and opened her eyes. She glanced over her shoulder at Skye.

With Calcifer, she could shove him off, and he’d grumble but roll right back over. Skye, though? He was too damn heavy to budge—not without waking him. And that was the last thing she wanted to do. He’d been running on fumes for days.

Carefully, she shifted her hips, testing how much give there was. Not much. Something hard and warm was wedged against her back. She arched instinctively—

Then stopped when her brain caught up.

Oh. Right. That .

Skye stirred, his arm tightening as a soft sound rumbled in his chest. She froze, her pulse jumping. After a moment, his breathing evened again.

Step one: get the arm off. Slowly, she tried to lift it, using her free hand to nudge it away. It was like trying to move a boulder.

“This would be so much easier if you weren’t made of rocks,” she whispered.

Step two: wiggle free. Feeling with her toes for the edge of the bed, she attempted to slide herself closer. The movement pulled his arm lower, and she almost squeaked when his hand brushed her hip.

She froze again, waiting. Skye shifted, just enough.

That was it—her window.

She slipped out from under him, easing sideways until gravity did the rest. Her feet hit the floor first. Then her hip. Then the rest of her as she slid off the mattress.

Silent. Graceful. Mostly.

She tiptoed across the room, a victorious spin marking her exit as she swept through the door.

Getting back into bed was easier. With her bladder pacified, Taly slid under the covers.

Skye was on his back now. Still not ready for sleep, she reached for the book on the nightstand, curious to see what she’d been reading the last time she was here.

In the soft firelight, the title glowed in delicate calligraphy.

Guardian of the Shards

If not for Skye still asleep beside her, she might’ve thrown it straight into the fire. Instead, she settled for gently setting it back down with a quiet shudder.

It was her favorite book. She’d read it so many times, the pages had become part of her.

And now she needed to forget every single word.

Because as it turned out, it wasn’t just any love story. It was their love story.

Every heated glance, every stolen moment, every sigh-inducing confession—it had all been about… her parents.

Taly pressed the heels of her palms to her eyes, as if that could scrub away the memory.

This was fine. She was fine. After all, who didn’t grow up idolizing a sweeping, star-crossed romance written in beautiful, aching prose?

This one just happened to document the events leading up to her conception.

She growled a sigh. She didn’t want to think about her parents. Not in any context, horrifying or otherwise.

She didn’t want to think about that name—Corinna Venwraith.

A name like that wasn’t just a name. It was a responsibility. It carried weight, expectations, legacy.

A name like that belonged in history books. It didn’t leave space for Taly, who was already so much less than she’d been, chipped away by every new revelation into a brand-new shape.

Turning onto her side, she found Skye.

A name like that matched a name like his.

In another life, she wondered if Corinna Venwraith and Skylen Emrys would’ve crossed paths. Would she have danced with him at court? Exchanged pleasantries? Debated politics over cups of spiced wine beneath gilded chandeliers?

That girl—the one she barely remembered, who belonged to a different name, a different family—would she have looked at him the same way? Or would she have just seen another prince, another player in a world of titles and duty?

Would that have been the truer picture?

Taly used to think the world had him wrong. That she was the only one who saw the real him—the smug idiot buried beneath the title, the power, the myth wrapped around his name.

But now… now she wasn’t so sure.

Because lying there in the firelight, all sharp lines and quiet strength, he looked every bit the man people whispered about. The man she’d never let herself see until he stole a kiss in a darkened library.

It was like coming home and finding the furniture rearranged. Same walls, same foundation—but now it had abs that she sometimes fantasized about licking.

Shadows flickered over his skin, highlighting the flex of muscle, the sharp vee leading down beneath the waistband riding low on his hips. Her eyes followed like they had a mind of their own.

Taly chewed her lip, heart thudding a little too loud in the quiet room. A bold, ridiculous thought crossed her mind—a kiss, right there, on the lower plane of his abdomen… The kind that would make his eyes flutter open, heavy-lidded with surprise.

It would get this night back to where she was hoping it would go. Not that she was brave enough. Someone brave would’ve taken the chance when he put her to bed—said what she wanted, reached for what she needed, made it clear that sleep wasn’t at the top of her list.

She sank deeper into the blankets. She’d hoped a bath, a bed, and a little control would be enough to settle her nerves.

But nerves would’ve faded by now.

Nerves wouldn’t make her feel like one wrong move could wreck the only thing still holding.

Skye had always been her constant. Unshakeable. But now even he didn’t feel solid beneath her feet.

She could deal with everything else falling apart. But not him.

She swallowed hard and let herself whisper, just once.

“What if we’re making a big mistake?”

“Wow,” came a low, graveled voice. “Way to hit me with the heaviest question possible in the middle of the night.”

Taly blinked. “Wait, you’re still awake?”

A hint of a smile played at Skye’s lips as he cracked one eye open. “Of course, I’m still awake. Big feelings, remember? You’re a flight risk.” He stretched—shoulders flexing, abs tightening, smugness radiating. “By the way, stealth isn’t really your strong suit, but I didn’t mind the effort.”

Her cheeks burned at the memory of the solid warmth she’d brushed against in her apparently not-so-daring escape. “Oh, my Shards, you ass.” She reached behind her, grabbing a pillow and whacking him in the face.

He laughed from beneath it. “Just so you know, in my version of this, you woke me with a kiss… or whatever it was you were thinking about that had your heart racing a minute ago.”

Taly’s cheeks blazed even hotter. She hit him again. Then again when he kept laughing.

“Why is violence always your first choice?!” he cried from beneath the assault.

She punctuated each word with a swing. “Because! You! Make! Everything! Difficult!”

“Really?! Because it kind of seems like you just enjoy beating me.” He deflected the next strike with a smirk, wrestling the pillow away and tossing it into a shadowy corner of the room. “Lucky for you, I like a little pain with my pleasure.”

Her thoughts shorted out in eight directions at once—mouth opening, then closing when nothing came out.

Fantastic. She was fish now.

She growled like that would erase the heat crawling up her neck. “Not everything has to be a joke, Skye.”

He raised an eyebrow, the corner of his mouth lifting as he said, low and wicked, “Who says I’m joking?”

Something low in her stomach clenched. He made it too easy to want him—too easy to forget why that terrified her.

“I’m serious.” She sat up, brushing her hair back with a quick, frustrated swipe. “I mean, sure, this feels good right now”—his eyes simmered their agreement—“but what if we wreck everything? What if we do this, and it doesn’t work out, and we end up hating each other?”

A crease formed between his brows. “Then we just hate each other and move on. I don’t see the problem.”

Thankfully, there was no shortage of pillows. She grabbed one and smacked that stupid, smirking face.

“Ow! What was that for?”

“Great to see this friendship is just as important to you as it is to me.”

“What the hell does that even mean?”

“You just said you would be okay hating me, Skye. That you’d just… give up and leave.”

He caught the next pillow she lobbed at him, tossing it out of reach. “That’s not what I said.”

Taly gave him a long, blank look. “So, you really haven’t thought about this? You’re not at all worried about what might happen if we don’t work out?”

He shook his head. “No.”

“How is that possible?”

A shrug. “Because I love you.”

Her pulse skipped at the simple honesty of those words. “But what if that’s not enough? What if that goes away?”

“It won’t.”

“But what if it does?” Taly searched his eyes, trying to summon even a fraction of the certainty she saw staring back at her.

With a sigh, Skye sat up. She forced herself to look away. He was even more beautiful in motion, and no amount of sculpted muscle or easy confidence was going to distract from what she already knew deep down.

Love was volatile, unpredictable, a force that remade everything it touched.

What if it remade them into strangers?

“Taly,” he said.

“Yes.”

“Are you going to look at me?”

“No.”

“Alright then.” Blankets rustled as he moved closer. “I hate to break it to you, but we already hate each other half the time. At least. And that was before I started strategizing ways to get you out of your clothes.”

He gave her a lazy grin—she couldn’t see it, but she could feel it aimed at the back of her head.