I step forward. I close the distance between ritual and want and press my mouth to hers.
The kiss isn’t the neat theft of the whirlpool or the lusty exchange that happened after.
It’s softer, testing.
Her breath catches.
When I lift my head, she is flushed, eyes bright and bewildered—an expression that should unmake me for good and yet only hardens my resolve.
For a terrible, honest second, I feel like a conqueror who has taken treasure and not counted the cost. For an equally terrible,honest second, I feel like a man who would trade half a kingdom to see the freckle at the corner of her lip again.
I turn, hand in hers, and stride down the aisle.
The crowd parts like waves parting for a boat’s prow, feet falling away from the path we make.
They cheer and sing and call out blessings, all of it like noise beneath the roar in my head.
The moon sits heavy in my chest.
I know the vow needs sealing, in blood and sex and sleep.
The priest intones the old calls. The ritual demands the consummation of law as much as of flesh.
I have sworn not to force her. That oath sits in my throat like a second crown.
Still, there is a fierce, urgent hunger in me that has nothing to do with saving coasts, and everything to do with the way her hand feels in mine.
“Where are you taking me now?” she asks, voice small.
“To our bedchamber, milady,” I say, words that feel both intimate and official.
“Our vow isn’t sealed until I claim you in every way.”
She blanches, a flush of panic that is more honest than any words she could put on paper.
“What? You’re not serious.”
“I am very serious,” I answer.
The truth is an undertow.
Honor whispers I must protect her.
Duty demands the boon for my people.
Desire—savage and stupid and very human—insists I have her wholly and memorably.
The priest’s words hang behind us like the last echo of a bell.
I am the Demon Lord of Water, a steward of tides, a man who bargains with prophecies.
I am also a creature possessed by longing that isn’t in any book or written in any law.
Tonight I’ll try to be both.
Merciful enough to ask, patient enough to woo, desperate enough to take what must be taken—but careful enough to remember, in the quiet when the Aqua Moon washes the bedchamber in light, that there is a life here that isn’t mine to ruin lightly.
“Kael—” she hesitates at the door.
