Irina’s POV

The door opened.

And he was there.

I’d been sitting on the edge of the bed for an hour. Maybe more. The vial was in my pocket—not on the nightstand, not in my hand, just in my pocket, which was the only decision I’d managed to make in the last hour. The liquid on my fingers had dried. I’d wiped my hand on my jeans three times. Couldn’t stop feeling it.

He stepped into the room.

Closed the door behind him.

The light was low. He’d turned the hall light off, or someone had. Just the lamp by the window, throwing everything in soft yellow and shadow. His face was harder to read in this light. The lines of him clearer, somehow. The set of his jaw.

He looked at me.

I looked at the floor.

Neither of us said anything.

I could hear my own breathing. Could hear the distant, ordinary sounds of the palace through the walls—somewhere a door closing, somewhere a voice, the hum of the place going about its business like nothing had happened.

He took a step toward the bed.

I stood up.

I don’t know why. Some automatic thing. The body deciding before the brain caught up. One second I was sitting, and then I was standing, and then my feet were moving and I was crossing the room toward him and I wasn’t thinking about anything—not the vial, not Katerina, not four days of ceiling and Sofia’s voice in my ear—none of it.

Just him.

He went still.

I could see it—the way his whole body registered surprise before his face did. The slight tension in his shoulders. The way his hands didn’t know where to go.

I walked up to him and put my arms around his waist.

Just that.

Pressed my face against his chest and held on.

He didn’t move.

For a second he just—didn’t. Like I’d done something he needed to recalculate. Like the variables had changed and he was running new math.

Then his arms came up. 𝒇𝙧𝙚𝓮𝙬𝙚𝓫𝒏𝓸𝓿𝓮𝒍.𝓬𝙤𝓶

Slow. Like he was deciding each inch of it. And then they were around me, solid and warm and real, and I pressed my face harder into his chest and felt something in my throat start to give way.

I didn’t cry. I wasn’t going to cry.

But it was close.

His hand came up to the back of my head. Stayed there. Not pressing. Just—present.

He exhaled.

"I knew you had a reason," he said. Low. Right above my head.

I didn’t answer.

"For running." His voice had that particular quality—the one where he was being careful but not performing care. Where the careful was real. "You had a reason. Something you heard. Something you saw." His hand moved slightly against my hair. "Tell me what it was."

I shook my head.

"Irina—"

"No." The word came out muffled against his jacket. "Not right now."

Silence.

"Then when?"

"Later." I tightened my grip on his jacket. "Later. Not now."

He didn’t push.

That was the thing about him. The thing I kept forgetting and then remembering again at the worst possible moments. He didn’t push when you expected him to. He pulled back and waited and somehow that was more terrifying than the pushing.

I lifted my face.

He looked down at me.

Those eyes. That green. The dark at the edges that I’d learned to track but still couldn’t always read.

Right now they weren’t dark.

Right now they were just—*him.* Whatever that meant. Whatever it looked like when all the calculation and anger and king of forty-two packs stripped back for thirty seconds and left just the man underneath.

I kissed him.

I didn’t plan it.

My hands were already on his jacket and it was right there and I just—*moved.* Pushed up onto my toes and pressed my mouth against his and for one second neither of us knew what to do with that.

Then he made a sound.

Something low. Something that started in his chest and didn’t quite make it all the way out. His hands, which had been so careful, so deliberate—they stopped being careful. Both of them, pulling me closer, and I made a small, surprised sound against his mouth and his grip tightened in response, like the sound was something he needed more of.

He kissed back.

God, he kissed back.

Not careful. Not controlled. Like something that had been waiting a long time to stop waiting. His mouth was demanding and thorough and the room had gotten very small and very warm and I couldn’t think about anything except this, right here, his hands and his mouth and the solid warmth of him.

My hands had found his shoulders somewhere in there. I didn’t remember moving them.

He pulled back just far enough to breathe.

We stared at each other.

His chest was moving faster than usual. I could feel it under my hands. I probably didn’t look much better—my face was hot, my knees were unreliable, my grip on his shoulders was the only thing that felt like a fact.

"Come here," he said. Like I wasn’t already there.

His mouth found mine again. Slower this time. More deliberate. The kind of kiss that meant something other than *I lost control for thirty seconds.* The kind that meant *I’m choosing this.*

I leaned into him.

My head tipped back and he followed, one hand sliding up my back, and then his mouth moved—jaw, cheek, the corner of my mouth, the line of my throat—and I felt his lips find the mark.

My whole body shuddered.

I couldn’t help it. Couldn’t stop it. It moved through me like current, from that spot outward, and my fingers curled into his jacket and the sound I made was embarrassing and I didn’t care.

He did it again. Slower.

"*Nicolas—*"

His name came out broken.

He lifted his head. Looked at my face.

There was something different in his expression. Not the calculating, careful version. Something that was just—watching. The way he watched things when he actually wanted to see them.

I was still shaking slightly. I could feel it in my hands.

"You’re trembling," he said.

"I know."

"Does it hurt?"

"No." The word came out fast. True.

Something shifted in his face.

He brought his hand up. His thumb traced the edge of the mark, just below his mouth had been, and the shudder happened again and this time I let it. Let my eyes close for one second.

"I noticed something," he said.

His voice had gone different. Lower. Quieter in a way that wasn’t the dangerous quiet. The other quiet. The one I was still learning to tell apart.

I opened my eyes.

He was looking at me with that close, specific attention he usually pointed at things he was trying to take apart and understand.

"Your scent," he said.

I went still.

His eyes tracked across my face. The small furrow between his brows.

"It’s different today."

My heart rate jumped.

The vial.

The liquid on my fingers that I’d pressed to my neck.

I hadn’t thought—I’d just—I hadn’t actually thought about what that would do to how I smelled to him. I hadn’t thought about the mark, and what touching something to the mark might—

"Different how?" The words came out steadier than I expected.

He was still looking.

"I don’t know yet," he said. "Something off." He tilted his head. His gaze dropped to my throat. "What have you been doing today?"

Nothing. Sitting here. Being talked into something by someone who knew exactly where to push.

Almost doing the worst thing I’d ever done.

Almost.

My jaw felt tight. I made myself breathe.

He was still watching me. His hand was still at my jaw. Patient. Waiting.

I looked up at him.

The green of his eyes. The marks she’d put on his jaw four days ago, almost faded now. The set of his mouth, which was somewhere between suspicion and something softer, and I still couldn’t read it completely, and maybe I never would, and somehow that had stopped feeling like a threat.

I bit my lip.

Looked at him.

"I missed you."