Love never ends

Chapter Six

The palace library smelled of dust and ink, a scent so thick and comforting that Cleo often felt it settle into her lungs like a secret she wasn’t supposed to know. The shelves towered high above her, carved from dark cedar and worn smooth by generations of hands—scholars, kings, queens, and curious children who had been much better behaved than she ever could be. Scrolls were stacked in organized chaos along every surface, each one containing histories, strategies, spells, and stories that made her imagination swirl. The sun filtered in through thin alabaster windows, casting warm, honey-colored lines across the marble floor where tiny motes of dust danced like living stars. It was the one place in the palace where the world seemed to pause. But even here, she moved carefully. She slipped inside with the practiced stealth of someone who had already learned that too much curiosity invited too much trouble. Tutors frowned when they saw her here alone—princesses were meant to study pre-approved lessons, not wander freely among forbidden knowledge. So Cleo pushed the door closed behind her with silent fingertips and breathed in the air like it was freedom. Ammon was already there, leaning over a table that looked like it had been claimed by him for years. Scrolls and parchments lay spread across the surface in a soft golden mess of ink and papyrus, as though he had opened them all at once in a burst of enthusiasm. He looked up the instant he sensed her presence, not startled but softened, his amber eyes glowing with a warmth that always made something shift inside her chest. “You came early,” he said, his voice low and almost shy. He didn’t smile widely—he never did—but the curve of his lips was enough to make her pulse speed up. “I didn’t want to be caught,” she whispered back, grinning as she moved to join him. Her fingers grazed the edge of a scroll he had been studying, and he nudged it toward her as though sharing a precious secret. Being near him always felt like stepping into sunlight after too long in the dark. His calmness grounded her, steadied her, balanced her in a world that constantly tilted under expectations she didn’t ask for. And the way he looked at her—soft, thoughtful, protective without ever being controlling—made her feel seen in a way nothing else in the palace ever had. They bent over the maps first, tracing the slow, winding curves of the Nile with their fingertips. Ammon explained how the river gave life to the land, how controlling its floods shaped the rise and fall of kingdoms. He talked with his hands, gently guiding hers when he spoke of strategy or terrain or ancient wars fought along the riverbanks. When her fingertips brushed his, a small electric shock raced up her arm. She didn’t pull away. She didn’t want to. Together, they whispered about battles and treaties and the secrets buried beneath the sand. They moved next to wooden practice daggers he had smuggled in, their edges dulled but their weight real. Ammon walked her through stances, balance, and form—nothing like the stiff, rigid lessons her official tutors forced upon her. With Ammon, she learned without fear of failure. She laughed when she misstepped, and he laughed with her. Every shared moment felt like stepping through an invisible doorway into a world where she wasn’t a princess bound by duty, but simply a girl discovering possibilities. Every brush of their hands, every moment their shoulders pressed together as they leaned over a scroll, every whispered conversation that might get them both scolded—it was a thrill. A spark. A risk that tasted sweeter precisely because it was forbidden. And to Cleo, all of this felt like the closest thing to freedom she had ever known. But while she lived inside this safe, stolen bubble, Kamen was beginning to notice the cracks in her routine—and he noticed everything. From the shadows of the arena, where the clang of steel echoed like thunder, he watched her disappear from sight more often. He paced the corridors with a tension that seemed carved into him, arms crossed over his chest, jaw tight enough to crack stone. Kamen had always been intense, but lately that intensity had sharpened into something restless and furious. He saw Cleo’s absence before anyone else did. He felt the shift in her steps, the lightness in her laughter, the way her eyes lingered on Ammon more than they used to. It was a knife twisting slowly inside him. Ammon was everything he wasn’t—gentle, patient, soft-spoken, comfortable in the world of scrolls and logic. Kamen understood swords and sweat and discipline, not subtle smiles exchanged over maps. He could win any fight in the arena, but he didn’t know how to win her heart. He loved her—had loved her for years, with a loyalty so fierce it frightened him—but he had no idea how to express that love without sounding harsh or demanding or angry. He didn’t know the language of tenderness. So instead, he tried to protect her the only way he knew how: through rules and warnings and unspoken boundaries. But she never saw the love inside his anger. She only saw the anger. Every time Cleo laughed with Ammon, it hit him like a blow to the stomach. Every time her eyes softened toward the boy in the library, it felt like another crack running through his chest. He loved her with every fiber of his being, but his love came out wrong—too sharp, too loud, too full of fear. And he knew, deep down, that if he revealed everything he felt, he might lose her completely. So he stayed silent, watching from the shadows, caught between longing and rage, between devotion and jealousy, between wanting to protect her and wanting to pull her away from Ammon entirely. He could not show his love. Not yet. Maybe not ever. Not in a way she would understand. And that truth burned him more deeply than any blade ever had.