The palace still hums with the celebration's warmth. Lanterns gutter low, the scent of winter roses and wine lingering in the corridors.
I spent hours thinking of that mysterious figure in the hall, who was that person, if he was a person at all, and what shall we do with it next? By the end of the evening, I feel more exhausted than happy for my brother.
The twins are asleep under guard. For the first time in weeks, the weight on my chest eases. Malik closes our chamber door and turns the lock.
"I drew you a bath," he says, unfastening his formal jacket. "The water should still be warm."
"You did… what?"
"Water, heat, soap — the concept shouldn't be this surprising."
"Forgive me if I need a moment to reconcile the man who dismantled Seraphine's intelligence network and the man who just prepared bathwater for his mate."
The corner of his scarred mouth lifts. "I contain multitudes. Are you getting in, or should I draft a formal invitation with the royal seal?"
"Keep talking like that and I'll make you Commander of Bathwater. Very prestigious title."
"I'd still outrank every lord in that council chamber."
The bath is steaming, fragrant with pine oil. I sink in with a sound that borders on indecent, and the heat seeps into muscles I've been clenching for days.
Malik sits on the stone edge, rolls his sleeves to his elbows, and cups water over my hair.
His fingers work through the wet strands slowly, carefully, tracing my scalp with the same focused attention he gives battlefield strategy. Except here, the only thing he's dismantling is me.
"You're trembling," he says, his thumb finding the curve behind my ear.
He pours another palmful of warm water over my crown, and it runs down my temples, my jaw, the column of my throat. His eyes follow the path of every drop. "When was the last time you let someone take care of you?"
"You do that every day, Malik."
"That's not what I'm asking." His hands still in my hair. "When was the last time you let yourself be soft without guilt?"
I can't answer. He nods as if that silence confirms something he already suspected.
"So tonight, you let me. No queenly protests and no insisting you're fine."
"Are you giving your queen an order, Commander?"
"I'm asking the woman I love to let me carry her for one evening."
He finishes with my hair, his fingers trailing down the nape of my neck, following my spine beneath the water until my breath catches.
He wraps me in linen warmed by the fire and lifts me against his chest — effortless, the kind of strength that has become simply part of him.
He lays me on the bed and kneels over me, and the look on his face makes something in my chest crack open.
No walls. No calculation. Just hunger tempered by tenderness so fierce it makes my eyes sting.
"Tell me if you want me to stop," he says, his mouth against the hollow of my throat, and I can feel the vibration of his voice against my pulse.
"If you stop, I'll have you court-martialed."
"Noted. Any other orders, Your Majesty?"
"Take your time. We don't have a crisis to interrupt us for once, and I refuse to waste it."
His laugh is low and warm against my skin. "As my queen commands."
He starts at my collarbone — slow, deliberate kisses pressed into the ridge of bone, moving downward with the patience of a man who has decided that time no longer applies.
His hands trace the curve of my waist, the dip above my hip, the soft skin of my inner thigh, and every touch carries weight — as if he's writing something permanent on my body, a language only the two of us speak.
I arch into him, my fingers tangling in his hair, pulling him closer, trying to match his devastating patience with my own need.
He catches my wrists and pins them gently above my head, his grip firm enough to hold but soft enough to break if I wanted to.
I don't want to.
"Let me have this," he murmurs, and his mouth finds the mating mark on my shoulder. The bond between us ignites — a frequency deeper than words, older than language — and the mark burns warm where his lips press against it.
I feel him through every fiber of the connection, his desire woven through with something so tender it takes my breath away.
He maps every inch of me — the swell of my breasts beneath his palms, the shiver that runs through me when his teeth graze my hip, the gasp I can't contain when his mouth travels lower and his hands grip my thighs with possessive gentleness.
"Malik—" His name comes out broken, desperate.
When he finally moves over me, settling between my thighs with the full weight of his body, the contact is so complete it feels like every fractured part of me fuses back together.
He enters me slowly, watching my face with those dark, unguarded eyes, and the sound I make is something between a sob and a prayer.
We move together in the firelight — unhurried, devastating, his forehead pressed to mine.
The bond hums between us like a living thing, amplifying every sensation until I feel his heartbeat inside my own chest, his pleasure layered over mine until the boundaries dissolve.
Afterward, tangled in the dark, I trace the scars on his chest.
"Stay awake with me," I whisper. "Just a little longer."
"I'm not sleeping until you do."
"I'm afraid, Malik." The words surface from the place where I keep things too heavy for daylight.
"Of being the mother who couldn't keep them safe. Castiel's power erupting before he can walk, the Broken Crown inside our walls — I hold those babies and I feel this terror that loving them won't be enough to shield them from what's coming."
His hand moves through my hair. His breathing shifts — the way it does when he's choosing between comfort and truth.
"I need to tell you something. I kept it from you tonight because I wanted to give you at least one evening without the world crashing in. But you've never wanted comfort at the cost of honesty."
"What happened?"
"Varek. My best intelligence contact tracking the Broken Crown cells at the southern border. Found dead this morning. His body was arranged deliberately — arms crossed over his chest, the Crown's symbol painted on his skin in his own blood."
The cold floods through me. "They knew he was yours."
"They neutralized him and turned his corpse into a message. That takes discipline, resources, and counter-intelligence."
"How long have you known?"
"The report came at midday. I buried it until tonight because you deserved the wedding, and Damon deserved his sister being present instead of spiraling."
"Don't protect me from information, Malik. Not about anything that threatens our children! The Order isn't dissolving…"
"They are hunting back, and they've made it clear they consider our children the objective worth killing for."
I press my forehead against his chest. The warmth he spent all evening building inside me is still there — buried deeper now, beneath the cold, but unextinguished.
"We stop waiting," I say, and my voice sounds hard in the dark. "We find whoever is holding them together, and we end them before they reach our children."
His arms tighten, pulling me against him until there's no space left between his skin and mine. "Starting tomorrow, I rebuild the network from scratch. But tonight, I’m holding my mate, and it’s just you and me."
Outside, the palace sleeps in the afterglow of a wedding. Inside this room, two persons hold each other in the dark, memorizing the warmth before the cold rushes in.