Chapter 726: A Very Protective Royal Relocation

"It manifested on the field. I felt you pull it from me." Lucian kept his eyes on the harbor. "I’d spent years believing I didn’t have it. The academy certainly believed it. And then you reached into my chest in the middle of a battle and proved everyone wrong."

"Why didn’t you tell me? I had no idea it was your magic that I pulled that day."

"I’m telling you now." He glanced at her. "I haven’t been able to call it since, so I wasn’t sure if it was a one time thing."

River studied him, and whatever she decided about the gap in his answer, she chose to leave it alone, and instead she looked out at the water with a small smile warming the edge of her mouth.

"It’s very pretty," she offered.

Lucian’s hand went to his chest, flat over his heart, and he turned to her with an expression of wounded theatrical horror so total that three passing citizens slowed down to witness it.

"Pretty." He tested the word. "My magic. The gold power gifted to me by a goddess, the force that turned a dark general into weather, you’ve looked upon it, and the word you’ve selected, the one you’ve landed on, is pretty."

"And strong," River added, biting back a laugh.

"She says, as an afterthought. As a correction. As a tip left on the table." He started walking again, shaking his head with enormous dignity. "I rebuild a civilization. I command the most feared kingdom on the continent. And the Crown Princess of Aelindris reviews my goddess-blessed magic like a floral arrangement."

The laugh escaped her then, full and surprised and bright, the sound breaking out of her chest the way sunlight breaks over a terrace, and Lucian heard it and his whole face went quietly, catastrophically soft, and Fin, watching the man win that laugh and then pretend he hadn’t been playing for it the entire time, had to look away toward the sea.

"There it is," Fin murmured. "That’s the drug right there. Make her laugh and act like you didn’t need it. I know the move. I invented the move. Watching you run it first is going to haunt every life I’ve got left."

???

That evening River took the chamber across from his, the one with the harbor window and the anemones gone soft on the sill.

Lucian lay in his own chamber across the sunlit span of floor with the door closed between them.

Just as sleep took him, terror detonated through the matebond like a door blown off its hinges, hitting Lucian’s chest so hard his lungs forgot their job.

River. One door away. Drowning in a nightmare his matebond was forcing him to experience in real time without the ability to stop it.

With zero hesitation, he was out of his bed and moving to her chambers.

The door gave under his hand.

She was fighting the sheets like they were hands. Her breath was wrecked, coming in gasps that sounded like her lungs were being rationed, and tears were running sideways into her hair.

Fin stood in the doorway and felt his stomach drop through the floor.

Lucian reached her and pulled her back against his chest.

"It’s alright," he whispered into her hair. "I’m here."

He held her through the shaking, absorbing the force of it without moving, letting her body register the warmth and the weight and the steady heavy drum of a heart that had never once, in any life, intended to let her fall.

Her breathing resisted him for a long moment before it began to lose.

Then she startled awake with a gasp.

"Hey, it’s just me," Lucian said softly, not letting her go.

Her body went rigid against him for two full seconds. Then his voice registered, and his warmth found her, and the combination unlocked something in her spine that released all at once, and the releasing was so complete it was almost a second collapse.

Her hands found his arms that were holding her.

She was too exhausted to interrogate the answer, and too warm, and too held, and she let her head settle back against his chest with a trust that undid him, and he shifted them both down against the pillows and kept her there, his arm a bar across her back, his chest the wall between her and the dark.

She slept.

???

THE NEXT DAY

River woke to sunlight and an empty space beside her gone cool.

She didn’t return to her chambers until that afternoon. When she did, she stood in the doorway and stared because every item had been removed.

A small servant with steady hands and steadier nerves was sweeping the floor.

"Excuse me, would you happen to know where my things went?" River asked gently.

The servant glanced up. "Yes. Your things were moved to the Alpha’s chambers this morning, Your Highness."

"On whose authority?"

"The Alpha’s." The omega paused. "He mentioned the harbor window lets in too much cold at night."

It was the middle of summer. The harbor window was warm enough to sleep beside without a blanket.

"Too much cold," River repeated.

"Yes. The Alpha was very insistent about the cold."

She found Lucian in his study, out on the balcony.

"Lucian, my things are in your chambers."

"Are they?" He didn’t turn around.

"Yes."

"How strange." He examined the horizon with deep scholarly interest. "The staff here can be very enthusiastic."

"The staff."

"Overzealous, really. Impossible to control." He finally turned, and his gold eyes were performing a sincerity so transparent it was its own confession.

She gave him a flat look.

He lifted both hands in a gesture of total surrender. "What? I’m innocent."

The laugh came out of her before she could stop it, bright and helpless, the sound filling the chamber the way light fills a courtyard at midday, and Lucian stood there wearing the expression of a man who had rigged an entire outcome and wanted full credit for the accident.

"You moved my things into your chambers," she accused through the laugh, "and your defense is that you have no idea how it happened."

"My defense is that you slept better here." The humor stayed in his voice, but something underneath it went quiet and honest. "And I’d rather you slept better here every night than well once by coincidence. The staff agrees with me. I checked."

Fin, leaning in the doorway with his arms crossed and a grin fighting the ache on his face, let out a low whistle.