[Amber’s POV]
The horse they give me is grey and indifferent, which makes two of us. I ride it the way Desmond's handlers taught me—spine straight, chin level, hands soft on the reins—a brooch with a pulse, displayed for the court as the hunting party enters the forest.
Desmond rides beside me on a black stallion that cost more than my life is currently valued at. Arthur is ten yards behind us, his presence registering the way barometric pressure does—a shift in the weight of the air I have stopped pretending I don't notice.
"You ride well," Desmond says as the branches close overhead like the ribs of something swallowed. "Someone taught you."
"Isolde's stable master let me exercise the horses nobody wanted." I keep my eyes on the path. "Turns out the ones nobody wants are usually the steadiest."
His mouth shifts—not a full smile thing I’m gradually getting used to. "Careful. That sounded almost like commentary."
The hunting party fans east toward the ridge, hounds' baying thinning into distance. Our horses carry us north along a narrower trail until the trees press close enough to scrape my stirrups, and then it is just the three of us—prince, consort, bodyguard.
I don't know what makes me do it. The recklessness that blooms when you've been performing so long you forget, for one dangerous second, what it costs.
"Was it like this when you were a boy?" The question escapes before my brain can tackle it. "These woods. Did you ride these paths?"
Desmond's chin turns. His eyes find mine, and something shifts—a door opening onto a room I wasn't supposed to know existed. The silver dims to pewter. Almost warm.
"The eastern trail," he says, his voice stripped of a layer of varnish. "Arthur and I used to race from the stone marker to the river. He always—"
He stops. The sentence dies in cold air, and I watch the mask slide back with mechanical precision—whatever door opened bricked over in the space of a breath.
He dismounts in one fluid motion, walks forward fifteen paces, and drops his riding glove on the frozen path. "Pick that up."
My fingers tighten on the reins. The grey horse shifts beneath me, reading the tension through my thighs. "What?"
"My glove, Amber." He turns to face me, wearing the expression the court sees—polished, pleasant, merciless. "It's on the ground. Pick it up."
Behind me, Arthur's horse has stopped. Leather creaks as his hands adjust on the reins. The forest holds its breath.
I dismount. Cold shoots through my boot soles. The glove lies between us—dark leather on pale frost—and the distance I have to cross is approximately four feet and one entire degradation.
My fingers close on the leather. His boot comes down on my hand—not crushing, just holding. Patient, calibrated, the force of a man who has done this math before.
He crouches. Fingers find my chin and tilt it upward. This close, I can see the darker flecks in his irises, the architecture of a face built for cruelty and unfairly beautiful at every angle.
"You're getting comfortable," he says. Conversational, like we're discussing weather. "Asking questions. Testing which doors are unlocked. Comfort is not something you've earned, little wolf."
My knees ache. My hand throbs under his boot. My throat works around three answers, all defiant, none smart. "Yes."
He holds me there—one breath, two—long enough for the lesson to settle into bone. Then the pressure lifts. He takes the glove, mounts, and rides ahead without looking back.
Arthur is silent. When I mount and glance back, his knuckles are white on the reins—tendons standing like cables, every finger locked as if it's the only thing keeping him in his saddle.
That evening, Desmond enters my chambers without knocking. Knocking would imply I have a door he needs permission to cross, and today he reminded me that I don’t.
"Undress," he says from the doorframe, still in hunting leathers. His eyes track me the way they tracked the forest—owning every inch.
I pull the laces with fingers that aren't steady. The gown pools at my feet. "You enjoy the performance," I say, standing bare in cold air, refusing to cover myself because covering would be flinching. "The glove. The kneeling. Does it ever bore you?"
"Not yet." He crosses the room in three strides, spins me, and my back hits the bedpost hard enough to empty my lungs. His mouth lands on my throat—teeth on the tendon, tongue tracing the hollow where my pulse hammers.
"You were brave today," he breathes against my collarbone. "That little question. Almost made me forget what you are."
"And what's that?" My chin lifts. Even now—bare, pinned, his teeth still warm on my skin—my mouth won't stop making trouble.
"Mine." He lifts me onto the bed and pins both wrists above my head in one hand—not bruising, not gentle, occupying the exact territory between that makes my spine arch without permission. The echo hits immediately: his boot on my knuckles, the frozen ground, the pressure that said I own this too.
"Tell me you hate me," he says, settling between my thighs, the heat of his skin against mine blurring my vision.
"I hate you." My voice fractures as he enters me—one slow, deliberate stroke, thick and stretching, filling me until breath becomes something I have to remember how to do. He holds there, buried completely, forehead pressed to mine.
"Again." He pulls back agonizingly slow, then drives forward hard enough that my wrists jerk against his grip and the headboard cracks against stone. The angle sends white heat from my core to the base of my spine.
"I hate you." It sounds less like defiance now. He sets a rhythm that is punishment and worship—deep, relentless, his free hand gripping my hip hard enough to leave prints, tilting me so each thrust turns my thoughts to static.
"You're shaking," he observes against my throat. Conversational—like he isn't taking me apart. "Your body has better manners than your mouth."
My fury sharpens every nerve until I'm burning from the inside, and the worst part—the unforgivable part—is that the fury makes everything land harder, every stroke a lit match dragged across raw skin.
He notices. His pace turns savage—hips snapping against mine, thighs locked around him, the obscene sound of skin on skin filling the room like a confession I can't take back.
I come apart with his name between my teeth—torn, not given—a sound I will deny until I die. He follows with his face in my neck, grip finally tightening past controlled, body rigid as he groans something that sounds like surrender.
I wait for him to leave, like he usually does. Instead, he pulls me against his chest—arm locked around my waist, possessive, heavy—and his breathing slows against my hair. My wrists throb. Beneath the ache sits a warmth I refuse to examine.
I sleep. My body decides without consulting me, surrendering to the steady drum of his heartbeat against my spine.
Paper. The sound drags me up—thin, precise, a note sliding under the door and catching on the rug's edge. Grey light. Dawn barely committed.
Desmond is already moving. He reaches the door in two strides, picks up the folded square, scans it once. Every degree of whatever kept him in my bed drains from his face like water through cracked glass.
"Get dressed," he says. His expression is a closed fist—not anger, something colder, something with arithmetic behind it. He walks out with the note and does not look back.
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