Claimed by the Summer King

Kael POV The moonflowers bloomed three hours early. Kael noticed it before he noticed anything else that night before the shrieking laughter carried up from the lake, before his brothers started daring each other to dive from the higher rocks, before he even set foot on the sand. The white petals along the cove wall, the ones that never opened until the moon crested the willows, were already spread wide and trembling, as if something unseen had brushed past them and left them startled open. He told himself it meant nothing. Flowers didn't keep court etiquette. But some old, unspoken part of him, the part that still remRivened his grandmother's stories about petals turning traitor to warn a prince of his own fate, refused to let it go, and he carried that small unease with him all the way down to the water like a stone tucked into his pocket. "Kael! Where in the stars are you going?" He lifted a hand without turning around, too winded to shape an answer. Half the court was still splashing in the shallows behind him, wings slicked flat to bare backs, and he'd had quite enough of pretending to enjoy it. He hauled himself up onto the sand instead, shook the water from his silver-tipped wings until they caught the moonlight like a flint, and started for the line of willows that hid their private clearing from the palace windows a stone's throw beyond. That was where he found her, exactly as he expected to, and exactly as he'd secretly hoped. She was sitting dead center of their scattered picnic blankets, spine straight, knees tucked beneath her pale lilac skirts, guarding a fortress of wine bottles and half-eaten fruit as though someone might storm it. Mousy brown hair. A single plait, thick as rope, draped over one shoulder. A nose too round to be elegant and a face too honest to belong at court. Liora. He'd tried, more than once, to describe her to his brothers the way she held her chin when she disapproved of something, the particular brown of her eyes that turned gold at the edges when she laughed, which was rare and therefore precious. Every single time, his brothers' faces went politely blank, as if he'd described a stranger. As if she simply didn't imprint on anyone's memory but his. He dropped onto the blanket beside her without asking. "Your Grace." She inclined her head not a bow, never quite a bow, just enough respect to satisfy propriety and not a hair more. She was the only woman at court who had never once thrown herself in his direction, and he had decided months ago that this, of all things, was what he found unbearably attractive about her. "Must you always play nursemaid to the wine?" He meant it lightly. It came out sharper than he intended, edged with something closer to frustration. She didn't flinch. She never did. "Wet wings dry slowly. Mine is slower than most. I'd rather not be the one soldier who can't fly if the alarm bells ring." A small shrug, as though she were discussing the weather and not the private architecture of her own fear. "You think the alarm bells are going to ring at a summer picnic." "I think the world doesn't ask permission before it goes wrong." She turned back toward the lake, where the rest of the party had dissolved into shrieking chaos, silver spray catching moonlight with every dive. Kael followed her gaze and found, without difficulty, the one figure the entire lake seemed to orbit around. Lady Seraphine is betrothed, though the word always sat wrong in his mouth, like a stone he kept forgetting to spit out moved through the shallows with her white shift dress gone transparent, clinging to every curve the water touched. Even from this distance he could see the pink of her, catching light, and felt the predictable, useless heat low in his stomach that any warm-blooded man would feel. He looked away first. He always looked away first. "You could join her," he said, nodding toward the water. "Lady companions are allowed a little joy now and then. You're not on duty every hour of every day." Something flickered behind Liora's eyes, quick, hungry, gone before he could name it. Longing, maybe. Or something closer to grief. "Shouldn't you be entertaining your betrothed?" she asked instead, and there was an edge in it now, sharper than the polite distance she usually kept. The question landed exactly where she'd aimed it. Six years his parents had been arranging this marriage, six years of ceremony and correspondence and careful diplomatic smiling and still, some nights, Kael lay awake convinced the wedding would never actually happen. Seraphine was radiant. Clever. Every inch a queen already, moving through water like she'd been born knowing how to be watched. And still, something about the whole arrangement sat in his chest like a swallowed stone that refused to go down. "She seems to be managing without me." He tipped his chin toward the lake, where his brothers were falling over themselves to applaud whatever dance she'd begun in the shallows. Liora, beside him, had gone faintly pink and was very determined not to look. Maybe that's the trouble, he thought. She never needs anyone to look away first. He climbed to his feet, wings half-dried and stiff, and held out his hand. "Come with me." "I don't want to get wet." Arms folded. Chin up. A wall built out of pure stubbornness. "I'll make you a promise." He crouched slightly, hand still extended, refusing to withdraw it. "Not one drop touches your wings. You'll be able to fly the second you want to. I give you my word as your future king." She exhaled long, put-upon, entirely for his benefit and set her palm in his. He had touched a hundred women in his life. Danced with them, held their hands through formal processions, done considerably more than that with a fair number of them in private. None of it had ever felt like this, a jolt of something electric racing up through his palm and into his ribs, sudden and bright, lingering long after her skin left his.