Semua Bab Bound to the Alpha Twins: Bab 21 - Bab 30

"He kissed you.""Yes.""In the corridor.""Yes.""In the palace." Pilar sat back in her chair and looked at me like I had just told her the sky was green. "Kaelan...kissed you.""Pilar," I whined."I am processing.""You have been processing for five minutes.""It is a lot to process." She pressed both hands flat on the table and looked at them. Then at me. "And you kissed him back.""The bond—""I know about the bond, Ophelia. I am asking about you. Did you kiss him back?"My gaze fell to the table. "Yes."She exhaled slowly, the breath of someone absorbing something significant and making room for it. "And then you stopped.""Yes.""Because of Lucian."I did not answer.The kitchen was warm. My mother had gone to the market, leaving us alone with so much to catch up on.Pilar waited."I stopped because I thought of his face," I said."Whose face?""Lucian's."Pilar nodded, not understanding but still not pushing."He laughed at me," I said. "In the library. He leaned in like he was

Pilar left when the sky turned dark.She did not want to go. I could see it in the way she lingered at the door, her hand on the frame, her boots not quite stepping out."You should stay," I said."You should sleep.""I cannot sleep.""Then read." She nodded at the book on the table. "Read until your eyes close. That is what I would do.""You would fall asleep on the pages and wake up with ink on your face."She almost smiled. "Probably.""I am sorry about earlier. I should not have raised my voice.""It does not matter. You are going through a lot, Ophelia, so I understand there are emotions you are holding in." Her eyes were sincere. "I should be the one apologising for pressuring you, okay?"Her gaze caught something behind me. "I will leave you to it then."Then she was gone. The door closed. Her footsteps faded down the path.I sat alone in the kitchen.The fire had burned low and the room was cold, autumn having settled in. I pulled my mother's shawl from the back of the chair an

The cold did not care about etiquette.It came in from the north the way it always did in autumn, finding every gap in my coat and every patch of exposed skin. My breath fogged in front of me. My fingers were numb around the spine of the book.Pilar did not seem to notice the cold. She stood in the middle of my mother's garden with the book open in her hands and the expression of a woman who had found her calling entirely too late in life."Again," she said."Pilar-""Again. You dropped your eyes too early. The curtsy requires a count of three, and you came up at two.""It is freezing out here.""The Council will not care if you are cold. The Queen will not care if your fingers are numb. Again."I pressed my lips together and repositioned my feet. The frost crunched under my boots. The garden was dead, the flowers long gone, the herbs brown and brittle along the fence. My mother had tried to cover them before the first frost. She had not been fast enough.I bent to curtsy.One. Eyes do

It came before dawn and pulled me under completely. When it let me go, I was somewhere else entirely.I was small.I didn’t realize it at first until I saw my short-fingered, soft hands. Everything around me felt oversized and strange, and a helpless weight settled deep in my chest.I was sitting on a woman’s lap. I could only see the dark blue fabric of her dress and feel her arms wrapped around me, her heartbeat steady and strong against my back. The cloth smelled faintly of wildflowers and sun-warmed linen. The carriage jolted over uneven ground, sending blurred shapes of trees and hills drifting past the window.A broad-shouldered man sat across from us, his hands resting on his knees, face turned toward the passing world.“They will not follow this far,” the woman said quietly.“They always follow,” he answered, voice low and tired. “We both know that.”“Then we keep moving.”“There is nowhere left to go.”Her arms tightened around me, protectively.“There is always somewhere,” sh

The fire had burned in the hearth, its dying embers casting a weak reddish glow across the large stone chamber.Shadows stretched long and unsteady over the wooden furniture and thick fur rugs. The air hung heavy with the mingled scents of spent passion; sweat, candle wax and something sweeter: sex.A single candle flickered on the bedside table, its wax dripping slowly onto the dark wood.Niverna lay completely naked on the tangled silk sheets, her skin still flushed and damp from their rigorous exertions. Her red hair spilled wildly across the white pillows.She watched through half-lidded eyes as Lucian rolled out of bed, his powerful, scarred body moving with that familiar grace that had clung to him ever since she knew him.He did not glance back at her for a second.He reached down for his discarded clothes scattered across the floor, muscles flexing under his skin.She stretched languidly, arching her back like a cat, then pushed herself up on one elbow. A small, knowing smirk p