Reiyell's POV (Chapter 83)
The streets were alive with chatter and scents of food, but Reiyell's focus rested only on the man a few steps ahead. Wads walked as though the town itself were a puzzle to be solved, his eyes cast downward, his thoughts tangled somewhere beyond the cobblestones. He always looked that way—lost in his own current, drifting away from reach.
Her lips curved faintly. He didn't even notice how exposed he was.
"Is the ground really that worth looking at, Waxzi?" she asked, voice laced with light humor.
He jolted, his head snapping up, surprise flashing across his face before his composure closed like a door. A reaction she had grown oddly fond of.
"I was—"
"Thinking," she finished, stepping into his space with ease. Her eyes softened. "I know. Are you free right now?"
The hesitation in his nod only made her chest stir. She slipped her hand into the crook of his arm, fingers tightening slightly. The gesture was deliberate, though she masked it with calm.
His eyes widened. "Your High—Rei?"
"Just follow me." Her smile was steady, but inside, something flickered—strangely familiar, like déjà vu. The first time she had seen him, standing in the academy garden, half-hidden in shadow with books under his arm, the same flicker had stirred. Longing. For what, she hadn't known then. She still didn't.
The boutique greeted them with silks, smiles, and mistaken assumptions.
"What a lovely couple!"
She didn't correct them. Instead, she let the words hang, watching how his neck reddened, how he fought for composure. How rare it was, to see his carefully built walls bend under something so simple. She tucked that image away, her smile curling inward.
They sat, tea scent wrapping the air around them. Dresses spilled forward—colors rich, fabrics gleaming. But her test was not for the gowns. It was for him.
At the sapphire dress, she tilted her head, eyes glinting. "What do you think, darling?"
The word landed between them deliberately. Darling.
And just as she hoped, he froze. His lips parted, closed, opened again. She could see his mind scrambling for footing. When at last he muttered something vague, ears reddening, she allowed herself a quiet laugh under her breath. That sound—that reaction—was worth all the gowns combined.
"I'll take them all," she told the staff without pause.
Because she had already gotten what she came for.
He leaned closer, questions pressing from his lips, suspicion tinting his eyes. Always sharp, always calculating. Before he could unravel her play, she slipped a half-bitten cookie into his mouth. His expression—wide-eyed, caught between outrage and disbelief—was priceless.
But before amusement could bloom further, she felt it. The air shifted, heavy and sharp, pressing against her skin like the tide of a storm.
Kreivel.
The shopkeeper's voice confirmed it, but she didn't need the name. His aura alone was suffocating. Diety. Intense. The kind of weight that turned the air into iron. Her pulse quickened, sharp, unbidden.
And Wads, fool that he was, almost turned to look.
Her hand pressed against his mouth, guiding his eyes back to hers, firm, commanding. "Don't stare at him," she whispered, steady despite the storm roaring in her veins.
His gaze locked on hers, and something inside her clicked again. That same flicker she had felt in the garden, the one she could never name, swelled now into something sharper, warmer. His heartbeat thundered against the silence, but she couldn't tell—was it his racing? Or hers?
Her finger traced lightly along his lips to his cheek, under the guise of holding him still. But the truth was harder to swallow: she needed the touch to anchor herself.
Kreivel moved past, the air loosening only when the VIP doors closed. She pulled her hand away slowly, carefully, as if nothing had happened. She sipped her tea, her voice cool. "We'll talk later."
Later, when she wasn't battling her own pulse. Later, when she could admit to herself that something long buried had begun to awaken—something weird that she had never thought to find in him.