The chamber door shut with a heavy clang, and for a heartbeat, I thought it sounded like a tomb sealing.

Mine.

Kaelith Veyrion my enemy, my husband, the prince whose soldiers had reduced my kingdom to ash was stripping off the last piece of his black armor, laying it on a stand as if he had all the time in the world. Firelight licked over his shoulders, turning the scars across his body into molten silver lines. His hair, long and dark as a raven’s wing, slid loose over his chest.

He was terrifying. He was beautiful. And I hated myself for noticing.

I gripped the dagger still hidden in my skirts, the hilt warm against my palm, my heart drumming. He had dared me to strike him earlier, dared me to prove I was more than a shattered princess in a red gown. I should have done it.

But here I stood, paralyzed, caught in the storm of his grey eyes.

“You’re quiet, Princess,” Kael said, his voice low and edged like a blade. “Plotting my death already?”

“If I were plotting,” I spat, “you’d be bleeding on the floor.”

He smirked, and the scar at his mouth deepened. “Then why am I still breathing?”

Because I hated that I wanted to look at him. Because every time I pictured plunging the dagger into his chest, some traitorous part of me whispered not yet.

Kael crossed the room in slow, deliberate strides. My body stiffened, but I didn’t retreat. I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction. His hand reached out not to strike, not to seize but to curl beneath my chin. Rough fingers tilted my face upward, forcing me to meet his gaze.

“You burn,” he murmured. “Fury, grief, desire. It’s all the same fire.”

“Do not,” I hissed, “confuse my hatred for desire.”

His eyes gleamed, storm and ice in the firelight. “Hatred can be the most intoxicating kind of desire.”

Before I could snarl a reply, his thumb brushed against my lower lip, lingering with a dangerous tenderness that made my skin hum. My breath caught against my will. He felt it of course he did. His smirk returned, sharper this time, as if my weakness was a secret he now owned.

“Let go of me,” I snapped, shoving his hand away.

He allowed it, though the flicker in his eyes said he’d chosen to, not because I’d forced him. He stepped back a fraction, but the heat of him lingered.

I hated how my pulse raced.

The gown weighed on me like a chain, suffocating. I turned toward the mirror carved into the stone wall, clawing at the laces that crisscrossed down my back. The bodice refused to loosen. My breath shortened. My pride screamed not to ask for help.

But the sound of boots against the floor came anyway.

Kael’s reflection appeared behind mine, his tall frame looming over me, his storm-grey eyes glinting with something unreadable. He reached for the ties at my back without asking, his fingers brushing the bare skin of my spine as he tugged the laces loose one by one.

Each graze was fire.

“Don’t touch me,” I whispered, but it lacked venom.

His voice was close, almost at my ear. “Then undress yourself, Princess. But you’re trembling too much to manage it.”

My cheeks burned, though rage and shame tangled with something else I refused to name. When the last lace came free, the bodice loosened, and I pulled away, clutching the fabric to my chest.

He didn’t press. He simply turned, walking toward the table where wine and fruit had been laid out, as if the world hadn’t just tilted beneath me.

The silence stretched, broken only by the crackle of the fire.

I finally dropped the gown, letting it slide to the floor. My chemise clung to me, thin, nearly transparent in the firelight. I told myself it didn’t matter. He was my enemy, not my lover. His gaze meant nothing.

But when I looked up, Kael was watching me.

Not hungrily. Not tenderly. Intensely.

The kind of look that pinned me in place, that made my skin flush as if his stare alone could touch me.

“You’re not afraid,” he said finally, his tone unreadable.

I swallowed hard. “I told you already. I don’t fear you.”

His smirk softened into something darker, something that made my stomach twist. “Good. Because fear is fleeting. But hatred… hatred lingers. It keeps you awake at night. It sinks into your bones. And when it consumes you ” He stepped closer, his presence overwhelming, the scent of steel and smoke enveloping me. “ you will realize it feels a lot like desire.”

I opened my mouth to curse him, to deny him, but the words tangled in my throat. His hand lifted again, brushing a stray lock of my silver-streaked hair behind my ear. His fingers lingered at the nape of my neck, sending shivers racing down my spine.

This time, I didn’t push him away.

And gods help me, I leaned in. Just a fraction. Just enough for his lips to hover over mine, for his breath to ghost against my mouth.

The world stilled.

But then Kael pulled back, his storm-grey eyes burning with triumph.

“Not yet, Princess,” he murmured, voice silk and steel. “You’ll come to me on your knees. When you do, it won’t be hatred driving you.”

My breath hitched, fury flooding in to replace the aching void he left. “You arrogant bastard.”

He smirked, sipping from his goblet of wine as if I’d amused him. “You’ll call me worse before this marriage is done.”

That night, I didn’t sleep. I lay awake on the massive bed, a gulf of space between us, the fire burning low. Kael had taken his place beside me with infuriating calm, stretching out as if he had every right to the bed, to the room, to me.

Every time I closed my eyes, I felt the phantom heat of his touch, the ghost of his lips so close to mine. My dagger lay beneath my pillow, but it was not the blade that kept me awake.

It was the storm.

It was him.

And gods, I hated him all the more for it.