His mouth found hers slowly, like a question he already suspected the answer to, and Rhea kissed him back before she’d fully processed that it was happening at all.
It wasn’t like anything she remembered from before Frostholm, from the version of herself who’d stood at an altar in Ironpeak and mistaken obligation for love. This was soft, careful, unhurried in a way that made her chest ache with how unfamiliar gentleness still felt on her skin. Caden’s hand cradled her jaw the same way it had on the training mat, thumb moving along her cheekbone, and when he finally pulled back just far enough to look at her, his silver eyes had gone dark and unguarded in a way she’d never seen from him before.
“Rhea,” he said, and her name in his mouth sounded like something he’d been holding onto for mo
