Things We Pretend Not to Feel
I avoided him for three days.
Not because I wanted to, but because if I didn't, I was fairly certain I'd do something reckless, humiliating, and possibly life-ruining.
The palace made avoidance easy. It was built for it—endless corridors that twisted back on themselves, secret staircases that led to forgotten wings, carefully timed schedules that kept royalty and commoners in their separate orbits. Caelan disappeared behind duty and protocol, and I disappeared behind stubbornness and a rapidly deteriorating sense of self-control.
The bond didn't appreciate it.
It simmered low and constant, a quiet irritation that lived under my skin. It flared every time I sensed him nearby and didn't move toward him, like an itch I couldn't scratch. By the second day, my hands had developed a tremor I couldn't quite control. By the third, I'd started taking the long way to everywhere, just to avoid the corridors where his presence felt strongest.
I felt his moods the way some people felt weather changes. Subtle shifts that made my chest tighten for no logical reason. Irritation that tasted like copper on my tongue. Fatigue that settled into my bones even after a full night's sleep. A sharp, biting frustration that felt like restraint stretched too thin, ready to snap.
Once, while passing a guard post near the west wing, the bond flared so violently I had to stop and brace myself against the wall. My vision blurred at the edges. My breath came short and sharp.
Anger.
Hot, unfiltered, volcanic anger that wasn't mine but might as well have been, the way it scorched through my veins.
Not directed at me, but close enough that it rattled my bones and made my teeth ache.
Someone had challenged him. Someone always did. The court was full of men who thought they could push a young prince, test his resolve, find the weak spots in his armor.
I hated how much that bothered me. Hated the way my hands had curled into fists without my permission, the way I'd wanted to march into whatever room he was in and stand between him and whoever had dared.
The guard at the post had given me a strange look. "Miss? Are you alright?"
"Fine," I'd managed, pushing off the wall. "Just... low blood sugar."
He hadn't looked convinced, but he'd let me go.
I'd made it halfway down the corridor before I had to stop again, pressing my forehead against the cool stone and waiting for the anger to fade, for the bond to settle back into its usual background hum.
It took longer than it should have.
On the fourth day, the bond snapped.
Not loudly. Not dramatically. It didn't double me over or steal my breath.
It simply pulled.
Hard.
I was in the library, tucked into a window seat with a book I'd been pretending to read for the better part of an hour. The words kept sliding off the page, refusing to stick in my mind. I'd reread the same paragraph seven times when the pull came, settling deep in my chest like a hook had caught beneath my sternum.
Unyielding. Deliberate. Insistent.
This wasn't panic. It wasn't instinct or accident.
It was intent.
He was calling me.
I dropped the book without marking my place and sucked in a breath that didn't quite fill my lungs.
"Dammit," I muttered.
I could ignore it. Should ignore it, probably. Let him stew in whatever princely crisis had prompted this. Serve him right for three days of radio silence.
But even as I thought it, I was already standing, already moving toward the door. The bond pulled harder, impatient now, and my feet followed like they'd never really had a choice.
Fine.
I followed it through the palace, down corridors I'd only half-memorized, past startled servants and curious guards. The pull led me away from the polished, public wings and into the older sections, where the stone was rougher and the tapestries were faded and the air smelled like dust and weapon oil.
I found him in the training hall.
The space was larger than I'd expected, high-ceilinged and austere. Weapons lined the walls—swords and spears and things I didn't have names for. The floor was scuffed stone, marked with years of boot prints and blade strikes. Light filtered through narrow windows set high in the walls, cutting the room into bars of gold and shadow.
He was in one of the shadows.
Stripped of courtly elegance and royal restraint. No crown. No silk. No careful mask of princely composure. Just steel and sweat and controlled violence.
He was sparring with one of the palace guards, a broad-shouldered man who looked like he'd been born holding a sword. But Caelan moved like water, like smoke, every strike precise and brutal and powered by something darker than discipline.
I stopped just inside the doorway, suddenly very aware of my pulse. Of the way the bond reacted to the sight of him like it had been starved.
His opponent barely stood a chance.
Caelan's movements were economy itself—no wasted motion, no flourish. Just devastating efficiency. He drove the guard back three steps, then five, then disarmed him with a twist of his wrist that looked almost casual.
The guard stumbled, breathing hard, and Caelan didn't press the advantage. He just stood there, chest rising and falling with measured breaths, sweat darkening the hair at his temples.
"Again," the guard said, retrieving his practice sword.
Caelan shook his head. "We're done."
It wasn't a suggestion.
When it ended, Caelan dismissed the guard with a sharp nod and turned toward me like he'd known I was there all along.
Of course he had.
The bond had probably announced my arrival the moment I'd crossed the threshold.
"You've been avoiding me," he said.
No greeting. No pleasantries. No pretense that this was a chance encounter.
His voice was rough, abraded by exertion and something else. Frustration, maybe. Or exhaustion that went deeper than the physical.
"Good observation," I replied, leaning against the doorframe with more casualness than I felt. "Very princely of you to notice."
His mouth tightened into a line that might have been a smile on someone else. On him, it looked like barely contained irritation.
"That wasn't a request for commentary."
"I didn't say it was."
We stood there, tension thick enough to taste, sharp and metallic like blood or lightning. The training hall felt too small suddenly, despite its size. Or maybe we were just too much—too much feeling, too much history, too much everything crammed into the space between us.
Sweat darkened his hair, made his training clothes cling to his shoulders and chest. His breathing was controlled now, but I felt the residue of everything he'd worked out on the training floor.
Anger. Frustration. Want.
Yes. That too.
God help me, that too.
"You embarrassed me," he said quietly.
I blinked, genuinely thrown. "Excuse me?"
"You walked into a council meeting uninvited and triggered the bond in front of people who already doubt my authority." His voice was level, controlled, but I felt the hurt beneath it. The wound to his pride. "Do you have any idea what that looked like?"
I felt the sting of that, sharp and unfair. "You were drowning."
"I was handling it."
"No," I snapped, pushing off the doorframe. "You were suffocating politely. There's a difference."
The bond surged between us, nasty and conflicted, pulling two directions at once.
He took a step closer, close enough that I could see the flecks of gold in his eyes, the way his jaw worked like he was chewing on words he didn't want to say.
"You don't get to decide when I need saving."
"I didn't save you," I shot back, my voice rising despite my best efforts. "I stood there. The bond did the rest. Maybe you should ask yourself why it felt the need to."
His eyes darkened, something ugly and honest flickering behind them. Something that looked almost like shame.
"Because you're a complication," he said, each word deliberate and cutting. "A variable I didn't plan for. A weakness I can't afford."
The words hit like a physical blow.
"Funny," I said, and my voice came out bitter, raw. "That's exactly how the court sees me too. Nice to know you're on the same page."
That hit harder than I expected.
The bond softened immediately, regret bleeding through before he could stop it. I felt it like a flood, overwhelming and unwelcome.
His expression shifted, something cracking in the careful control. "Seraphina—"
"No," I said, lifting a hand between us like a barrier. "Don't do that thing where you sound reasonable after saying something cruel. Don't try to take it back just because the bond made you feel how much it hurt."
Silence fell between us, heavy and unresolved.
I could feel him wrestling with himself. Duty pulling one way, dragging him back toward the palace and protocol and the crown that was always waiting. The bond pulling another, inexorable and stubborn. And somewhere in between, something dangerous and unwanted growing stronger by the day, roots digging deeper no matter how hard we tried to pull them up.
"You make this harder," he admitted finally, and his voice was so quiet I almost didn't hear it. "Everything is harder with you here."
I swallowed past the tightness in my throat. "So do you."
Our gazes locked.
The bond flared between us, not hungry this time, not desperate or demanding. Just raw. Exposed. Like we'd peeled away every excuse and defense and pretty lie, and were left staring at the truth neither of us wanted.
"This isn't just magic anymore," I said softly.
He exhaled through his nose, a sound that might have been agreement or resignation. "No."
"It's choice."
That scared him.
I felt it immediately, clear as day. Fear like ice water down my spine, sharp and clarifying.
Because magic could be studied. Controlled. Understood. Eventually broken, maybe.
But choice meant responsibility.
And consequences.
And admitting that we were doing this to ourselves.
"If we keep doing this," he said, his voice low and rough and almost pleading, "someone will get hurt."
"Someone already has," I replied.
His jaw clenched, a muscle jumping beneath the skin.
We stood there longer than was wise, neither moving, neither touching, both acutely aware of how thin the line between restraint and disaster had become. The space between us felt charged, volatile, like the air before a storm breaks.
I could cross it. Three steps, maybe four, and I could close the distance.
I didn't.
Finally, he stepped back. Away from me, away from whatever precipice we'd been standing on.
"Leave," he said, and his voice was hoarse. "Before I forget why I should let you."
The bond pulsed in protest, a physical ache that made my chest tight.
I wanted to argue. Wanted to demand he stop pushing me away with one hand while the bond pulled me closer with the other. Wanted to ask what he was so afraid of.
I didn't.
As I turned toward the door, my chest tight and my thoughts too loud, I realized something that made my stomach twist.
This wasn't building toward a moment—some grand resolution where everything would make sense.
It was building toward a collapse.
And when it happened, it wouldn't be quiet or clean or easy to walk away from.
It would be the kind of destruction you felt in your bones long after the dust settled.
I was halfway down the corridor when I heard him, so quiet I might have imagined it:
"I'm sorry."
I didn't turn back.