Claimed by the Summer King

CHAPTER 2

Kael POV

He said nothing. If she felt it too, her face gave away nothing at all.

"I have very little faith in my ability to keep these wings dry," she muttered as he pulled her toward the water's edge, where the rest of the court was growing louder and messier by the minute.

"Then don't follow the crowd." He veered left instead, away from the noise, toward a jagged wall of boulders half-hidden by shadow.

"Where are we going?" Liora demanded, clutching his arm for balance as the ground turned treacherous beneath her thin slippers.

"Somewhere better." He grinned back at her, entirely too pleased with himself, and did not miss the way her eyes narrowed at the sight of it.

"This would go faster if we could simply fly."

"Ah but no one flies in the presence of royalty unless royalty flies first, and my wings are still half a lake's worth of soaked." He glanced sideways at her, delighted. "Also, I doubt you could carry me. I outweigh you three times over."

She laughed a real one, bright and surprised out of her clearly picturing exactly how disastrous that rescue attempt would look. "You may have a point."

They came down the far side of the rockfall together, and the noise of the party fell away behind them like a door swinging shut. What opened up instead was a cove Kael had found years ago and told no one about a scoop of quiet shoreline walled in by soft mud cliffs, thick with moonflowers that, tonight, were already wide open and glowing faintly silver, as though they'd been waiting.

Liora stopped dead at the top of the last boulder. "What is this place?"

"Mine," he said simply. "My own slice of something like peace."

A narrow stream broke off from the lake and pooled at the cove's center, its surface flawless and dark, mirroring the moon back at itself. He held his hand out again.

"Do you think you could manage this without soaking those precious wings of yours?"

She considered the water for a long moment longer than the question warranted before kicking off her slippers and placing her hand back in his.

He waded in first, guiding her behind him, silken shorts already half-soaked, and watched the water climb her calves, her knees, dragging the hem of her lilac dress dark and heavy despite her attempts to hold it clear.

"It'll dry," he said, before she could protest, and pulled her further in.

She gasped as the water reached her thighs but didn't pull away and then her bare foot found a stone she hadn't expected, and she pitched forward directly into his chest.

"Ow." She reeled back, rubbing her nose, glaring up at him with real accusation. "You're built like the rocks we just climbed over."

He laughed and couldn't help it and caught her chin gently before she could retreat further. "Let me see."

Barely a mark. A faint blush of red across the bridge of her nose, nothing more. And still he found himself leaning in, pressing his mouth softly against the injury before either of them had decided whether that was allowed.

He heard her breath catch. Felt it more than heard it, really, the way the whole cove seemed to hold still around them, the moonflowers along the walls straining another fraction of an inch wider open, as though they too were waiting to see what he'd do next.

He should have stopped there. He'd stopped there a hundred times before, in a hundred smaller moments, always talking himself back from the edge of exactly this. But the cove was theirs alone tonight, private in a way nothing at court had ever been, and something in him simply refused to pull back a second time.

He kissed her.

The spark that tore through him wasn't like the one from her hand. That had been a shiver. This detonated white-hot and total, locking every muscle in his body rigid at once, and behind his closed eyes a burst of blue light flared so bright he felt it rather than saw it, searing straight through to the backs of his eyelids.

They broke apart at the same instant, both stumbling, both grabbing for the other's arms just to stay upright in water that suddenly felt like it was trying to pull them under. Kael's eyes flew open first, and what he found in Liora's face wasn't the wonder he'd half-expected.

It was terrifying.

"You felt that." It wasn't a question, not really, but he needed her to answer it anyway.

Instead her expression cracked wide open shock giving way, with frightening speed, to something far colder. She wrenched her hand from his and put three full strides of water between them before he could reach for her again.

"Is this some kind of joke to you?" Her voice shook, but it didn't waver. "I'm not some maid you can convince she's your fated match just so you've got a new story to tell your brothers."

"Liora, I would never"

"Don't." She raised a palm between them, and this close, in the moonflower light, he could see something else beneath the anger, something raw and old and far too frightened for a girl who'd simply been kissed by a prince. "Please. Don't touch me."

She wrapped both arms around herself as though warding off cold that wasn't there and began wading for the bank, faster with every step. Kael saw her rise onto her toes and knew, half a breath too late, exactly what she meant to do.

"Liora don't fly, not like this"

She was already airborne, wings snapping open and catching wind before he could finish the sentence, flying with a recklessness that broke a dozen unspoken rules about royal presence and clearly didn't care.