Page 56 of Enchanted Shadows (The Enchanted Kingdom #6)

A ll of my senses were dialed in. I was trained in numerous ways to kill a man, and I had used all of them at one time or another.

I was built to attack, always ready for a fight.

But in this exact moment, all of my focus was locked in on my wife.

A fire could have been raging around us, and I wouldn’t have noticed nor cared.

I would’ve gladly been burned. In this moment, she was everything .

As breathing became more difficult, as thinking became more difficult, as doing anything other than feeling became difficult, our hands more frantic, I felt myself get covered in shadows and then had the sensation of being moved.

One moment we were in the middle of the training ring, the next she opened the door to my cabin.

I looked to her, my eyebrows reaching for my hair.

“The castle was too far.”

“You need to be spending time with Artem today,” I reminded her, even as I let her walk me backward toward the bed as the door shut behind us .

She kissed me. “I will.” And again as her nails dug into the skin on my shoulders. “Can you just shut up and let me love you?”

I grinned. I sometimes liked to think I was a complex man, but in this moment, I found I really wasn’t. “Yeah.”

And as we fell onto the bed, her thighs straddling my own, it was at that exact moment I realized that I was the luckiest damn man alive.

A few hours and a shower later, our footsteps followed the path back over to the castle. Kessara’s hand was entwined with mine, and I felt like I was walking in an alternate reality.

This woman loved me.

Yeah, she was a princess, but to sum her up as just that was to water her down.

It was too succinct for who she was. This was a woman who was wildly courageous, courageous enough to even cozy up to her brother Damek and play a part only so that she could better protect Artem.

A woman who never knew her real father. A woman who had been torn at and judged for being different, for holding two powers, something she’d never asked for.

And yet, this was a woman strong enough to throw herself into training, make friends, and find love.

Though life was jagged, Kessara didn’t allow life to cut her any more deeply than was necessary.

“I left your sword at the training ring,” Kessara said, knocking me out of my thoughts.

I snorted a laugh. “Stealing my weapons, Princess?”

The way I said it this time held less mockery though. And she knew it. “A princess has to make do when trying to get a point across.”

“I think you got the point across, all right.”

“I did,” she confirmed. “But only because I borrowed your weapon. ”

“Stole,” I amended.

“Semantics.”

I laughed. “I love you so damn much, Kess.” Her banter, her wit. The fact that she hadn’t let the dark parts of her past keep her from the moments like this one right here.

“And I love you, Owen.”

As our footsteps neared The Dead Lake, I detoured us closer.

“Feeling like another stone throwing challenge?” she asked, picking one up and tossing it. But instead of it skipping across the water beautifully like she’d done in the past, it instead just clunked into the water. Laughing, she added, “Dammit.”

I pulled her close to me. The purple hydrangea tree was off in the distance behind me, another towering oak above us.

“Owen,” she warned.

A thought came to me. A thought I had no intention of letting go, not with the day’s turn in events. I wasn’t ready to quit touching her and get back to business at the castle just yet. “Toss us in shadows.”

“What?”

“Humor me, Kess.”

She did, the coolness all around me a welcomed light weight along my skin. I moved to kiss her, moving us backward until her back hit the trunk of the tree. “What—” she gasped, “are you doing?”

“Taking a detour to the place where I first thought I’d like a woman to look at me the way you looked at the sunset.”

She laughed as I moved downward, trailing kisses in my wake. “I was waiting for the shadows.”

“I know that now,” I laughed with her.

“Owen,” she groaned as her hands gripped my abdominal muscles. “You can’t even see right now.”

“No, but you can. And I can still feel . ”

“We’re going to be late getting back to the castle, aren’t we?” she whispered.

“Yeah.”

We absolutely were.

By the time we finally made it back, I was feeling a deep contentment the likes of which I hadn’t felt since the days we’d taken down the dead king. And alongside that contentment? Utter exhaustion.

“Hey, Kess?”

“Yeah?”

“Were you planning on going to Artem’s room or having him come to ours?”

“His.”

I fought off a yawn. “Thank goodness.”

“Why?”

It was early afternoon. The day was not even close to over, and yet I couldn’t hang. “I barely slept last night. I’m going to nap.”

“We could’ve spent last night much like we did today, but you were too busy avoiding me to actually let me speak.”

“I promise to give you my full attention after you see your brother, but woman, you have got to let me get some sleep!”

She snorted a laugh. “Fine.”

“How’d you even know where to find me this morning?”

She grinned. “A princess never reveals all her secrets.”

I glared at her. “So, Jorah.”

“Maybe. But the sword was my added touch.”

“Of that I have no doubt. You’ve been wanting to stab me for a while now.”

“A princess never reveals all her secrets,” she repeated.

I dropped her off at Artem’s room and headed back to my own.

I was sure there were things I ought to be doing with the morning bringing another trip to Agria that I was leading.

Meetings to be had. Security measures to consider and reconsider, but for once, I allowed myself to be unavailable, to rest.

Tomorrow I’d have to peel myself away from Kessara to deliver her brother, the new heir apparent of Agria, home.

Tomorrow I’d have to be back in commander mode.

I was used to rather reliably looking ahead and doing what needed done, one after the other, after the other.

This time, I found I was rather stuck on the present.

Tomorrow was just going to have to wait.