I follow Abel out of the council’s tent, my body still buzzing with the newfound weight of my role. Distract the Prince. Keep him and the High Guard in the ballroom at all times. I can do it. One way or another. Even if I have to humiliate myself, even if I have to cause a scene. I can do it. I will. Anything to give Farnell a shot at freedom. Then this whole mess will finally be over.

  Abel blows out a breath. “I should take you back. It’s already late.”

  The intensity of my stomach’s dive takes my breath away. The last thing I want is to leave. Not yet. I’ve had so little of this. I want more, to soak it all up. The music, the people. The forest and the peace. The freedom of it all. “Not yet,” I whisper.

  Abel turns to face me. His hard, angular features soften. “There is one thing I’d like to show you, before we go.”

  I straighten. “What is it?”

  His forest green eyes alight with contagious, mischievous energy. “Do you trust me?”

  The time for mistrusting him came and went a long time ago. I’ve already dived in, head first. Might as well drown. “Now and then.”

  His fingers close around my hand and weave between mine. He tugs me away from the bonfire, away from Chip dancing alone, away from Red, laughing and passing around a flask with two other rebels. Towards the forest.

  Towards the wild.

  I draw in a deep breath of the mossy humidity, the scents of freedom, of a future. For a fleeting moment, I let myself imagine we’re escaping this world together. Venturing off and leaving the rest of our lives behind. Society. The threat of war, the rebellion, the obligations, the responsibilities. Ahead lies new trees, new freedoms, new beasts, new everything.

  Ray’s face sparks in my mind. His smile, that last day, as we too embarked on an adventure—our last. His memory is one thing I can’t leave behind, can’t let go. I haven’t seen a single guard with only four fingers on one hand. It hurts to think he might not have lived, that Maurus had him killed. That he’d died without me, without his friends. It almost makes me want to stay behind, to find him, to not give up hope.

  “You’re so difficult to read,” Abel says, squeezing my hand.

  I glance up at him. “What?”

  He chuckles and holds a branch aside for me to pass under. “I can never quite tell what you’re thinking. I… consider myself an excellent judge of character, of intentions. Able to read anyone. But you… You’re like a blank slate for me. Unless you say it, I’m never quite sure what you’re thinking.”

  I duck under the branch. Strange, I’ve always felt exposed with him, like he can see every emotion playing across my face.

  “It’s your biggest criticism,” he goes on. “When people talk about you, that’s what they say: ‘Does she even feel? Have you ever seen her show any emotion at all?’ Some, like your stepmother and others of the older generation, praise it. That’s how a woman should be: cold and unreadable, always presentable.” He glances at me and raises a brow.

  I don’t like any part of this. I want to direct our conversation back to running away. I want to confess how I want to join the rebels. To beg him to not only save Farnell, but me too. “Yes, Clara has often said that.”

  “See.” Abel drops my hand to point at my face. “Nothing. I say something like that, and you give me nothing. It’s...” He shakes his head.

  I flinch and he doesn’t catch it. My stepmother would have. I open and close my mouth, trying to make words come out, but they won’t.

  Abel pushes aside another branch to reveal a clearing. We’re somewhere deep in the forest and when I look up…

  The stars.

  I’ve never seen so many, or seen them so bright. I wander into the clearing and gaze up at the powerful expanse of it. Oh, how I long to be up there. To fly like the birds, to soar through that open space. To be a wyvern must be an incredible thing. To have the power to defend themselves and have access to that sky—the freedom of it all. I’d trade my soul for that.

  “It’s as if you don’t feel at all,” Abel says from the edge of the clearing, watching me. “I see less and less of your expressions every time I see you. As if you’re shutting down before my very eyes.”

  The world that felt so large mere seconds ago now shrinks to the space between us. I don’t know the words to make him understand. “I feel,” I insist. “I feel… intensely. To show it…?” To show it is to allow him power over me. How can he not see that? To show anything makes me vulnerable; exposes my belly to him for the slaughter. I’m not that brave.

  Moments like this, I wish I were.

  He takes a step towards me. The stealthy predator I’ve always known he is. The tension in the sultry summer air tightens between us.

  I don’t back away.

  He reaches out his hand and draws up short, just shy of my face. “I want to know you,” he whispers. “I want to understand you.”

  I close my eyes against his words. I want to let him in. I want to have him understand me. But I also want freedom. “I want to join you. This. The rebellion.”

  His brows rise. Not the vulnerability he’d expected, apparently. “People like you don’t simply disappear. What of your family? The Gallant estate?”

  I want to shrink away, back inside myself, but I make myself stay. I meet his gaze, hold it with all my might. “People like me are bought and sold, kidnapped, killed, and taken by wyverns. There are a thousand explanations if I disappear.”

  He touches the gold at my temple, the first time he’s sought out my markings directly. “And what of this? Are you really willing to give up all the power this holds? All the insider information you could gain? All the influence you could have?”

  He, too, mistakes these golden marks for power.

  Gold gives no power. I am a prize to be won and then put in a case to look at. That is not power. But maybe here, I can be more than that. Maybe here I can help.

  “The high nobility are monsters. All of them. I can’t—” My voice cracks, breaks.

  He flinches.

  “You said once you took in whoever would swear their fealty to you. You once said you offered the peasants you liberated a safe place to go, that those willing and able joined your army. I want that.”

  His hand cups my cheek. “But you’re not just a nameless peasant, Aubrey. You’re a gold-marked. Gold, especially gold like yours, is hard to hide. Recall I also said dead peasants won’t be hunted. You will be.”

  “You say you want to understand me? I have been trained, starved, dressed up. I am a pretty doll, Abel. I am overwhelmed with revulsion when Prince Emory looks at me, and when he touches me I am… I am… I want to crawl out of my skin. I want to peel this off.” I claw open the neck of my dress, exposing the spread of gold there. “If I could carve or burn it off my body, I would. My gold is not a strength, it is not an asset. It is a curse that makes me an object of use and consumption. I don’t want to be anyone’s trophy. I don’t want to be bartered and bid on.”

  He opens his mouth.

  I raise a hand. “I know all the great things I could be. I’ve been told it all my life. What a life I could have, what a life I could give to my family, my father’s honor, my stepsister, every servant at my father’s manor. Don’t tell me what’s at stake, what can be gained. I know—I’ve known since I was a little girl. I cannot do it. I cannot live it. I cannot bear it. I won’t. I don’t care if I starve to death or am taken by a wyvern. After the ball, I will run, whether you help me or not.”

  My chest heaves. Tears sting my eyes. My hands shake. And yet I feel more alive than I have since… since before Father died. Since before my dream of being something else—someone that mattered—was squashed by pretty dresses and the gnawing ache of hunger.

  Abel’s gaze bores into me. Promises are made with eyes like those. This will be his final word, I know it. He takes another step. The heat of his body leaps across the narrow space between us. The back of his knuckles brush the angle of my jaw. “If you want to escape after the Summer Solstice Ball, I will help you.”

  The air whisks from my lungs. Words I’ve waited so long to hear. Words I’ve dreamt of. The weight lifts away.

  His mouth descends upon mine and I forget everything.

  His arms encircle me, draw me against him. His mouth a fire on mine. Strong, hot fingers press into my hips, drawing me ever closer, as if he can’t get enough. As if I am something he desperately wants. I’ve never felt so powerful, so needed.

  I thread my hands into his hair, desperate to have something no one can take from me. This moment, for a lifetime.

  Maybe he senses what I want, because he draws back, cups a hand to my face and uses it to hold me back, to break our connection. His breath comes in ragged drags.

  “I’m not the hero, Aubrey,” he says, his voice hoarse and raw. “I’m not… good. I will dethrone the monarchy, by any means necessary. And I… I can’t explain this draw I have for you. Believe me when I say that I have tried to leave you be.” His fingers tuck a strand of hair behind my ear.

  That tuck feels final. Like he wants to put me back together. But I’m not together. He’s undone me somewhere along the way, like a split seam finally allowing me a full breath. I don’t know how to make my face show how desperate I ache for him. “I’ve lived my whole life around ‘should’ and ‘must’ and ‘can’t’. Tonight I want my own choices. I want you.”

  His brows furrow and raise in a tiny twitch. His throat bobs. He doesn’t back away, doesn’t break my gaze, doesn’t shake his head. His lips part, as if to argue, but no sound comes out.

  I close the distance he’s made. Lay my hands on his chest against the heartbeat that leaps against my palm—as frantic as mine. I rise onto my tiptoes. Press my lips against his.

  It’s enough. His mouth opens against mine, his breath hot and ragged. Arms snake around my waist again, down to cup around my backside, and he hauls me off the ground. I slam up against his body’s hard frame and wrap my arms around his neck, dig my fingers into his hair—the tie has come loose somewhere along the way, like a beast freed from its cage.

  He drops to his knees and lays me back onto the dewy grass. Never breaking his lips from mine, his weight presses me into the ground. His hands scour down my body, setting me on fire.

  This, my head keeps repeating. It’s supposed to feel like this. This is want, lust… Love? I want more of it, all of it, every second. My hands shake in a mix of anticipation and terror and overwhelm as I slide my hands up under his shirt, over the muscles that bunch and ripple and shudder under my fingertips.

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  He draws one hand around my waist and up over my ribs, over my breast, to the laces at the front of my dress. I suck in a breath, startled by the sharp contraction of my stomach in response to the graze of his hand and wrist across my nipple, even through layers of fabric.

  “Mm, I felt that,” he rumbles against my collarbone.

  The scratch of his stubble as he kisses down my throat leaves a riot of sensations in its wake. He undoes the tie of laces and pulls them loose in one fluid drag of his hand down my chest, between my breasts, all the way down to my navel.

  He draws back and his gaze flicks over me. “Skies, your gold…”

  The twist in my chest comes sudden and brutal. My hand involuntarily moves to shield myself.

  Abel catches my wrist and brings it to his lips. Then kisses down the inside of my arm, down to my shoulder, across my collarbone.

  My heart pounds and I open my mouth to ask him to pause, to let me catch my breath—then the stubble of his chin grazes over my nipple. My back arches and a small mewing sound escapes instead.

  His stubble scrapes my skin like sandpaper to tender flesh, yet it claws not pain from me, but a shaking, quivering heat. He peels the dress open, exposing my skin to the midnight summer breeze.

  My breath comes in erratic, tight gasps as I pull my arms from the sleeves. With my torso lifted, he catches my mouth again. His lips, hot and demanding, drive out all fear, reputation, consequences as he presses me back onto the open dress laid in the grass.

  There I lay naked before him, and his heavy-lidded eyes and wild hair hover over me, framed by the thousands, millions of stars beyond. It’s a magical sight.

  He tears his shirt over his head in one smooth movement and tosses it aside. A fine layer of sweat across his chest and abs sparkles in the full moon’s light, highlighting every tightly defined bunch of muscle. Hair shadows his stomach and narrows into a line that disappears into his trousers.

  My body shakes. My heart hammers. And still I want more. More of him, of his touch pushing me higher.

  I reach a hand to his chest and weave my fingers through the fine mat of hair there, feel the pounding of his heart.

  A low groan reverberates beneath my hand and he fumbles with his belt. For the first time, I notice the tremor of his hands, the slip of his always-so-sure fingers over the buckle. He’s nervous, too. Excited. Affected.

  He sheds his trousers and my throat runs dry. I’ve, of course, caught glimpses of the male figure before. Seen the diagrams in anatomy books. It doesn’t hang down, but stands long, wide, erect. Far larger than I’d expected.

  My breath catches and panic crawls up my spine as I become aware again of my nakedness. My vulnerability. Some books mentioned pain the first time, that many women don’t enjoy this. But everything so far has been… so much more than I expected. So much more enthralling, pleasurable, wonderful. Yet anticipation and fear coils low in my belly.

  “Aubrey,” Abel breathes, moving over me again to cup his fingers around my face. The long, hot shaft of him presses hard against my thigh. His lips meet mine again, gentle, warm, kind.

  I slip my hand down, find the long, hot, surprisingly smooth length of him.

  He sucks in a breath against my mouth.

  I jerk my hand back. “Did I hurt you?”

  He catches my wrist and shakes his head. “No, it’s just… very sensitive. Good sensitive.” His voice comes out low and raspy. “You needn’t bother”—his voice hitches and his lids shutter closed as I curl my fingers around the length of him—“with me.”

  His hand releases my wrist to slide up the inside of my thigh, up to the delicate folds of my body. A pulse of pleasure tears a gasp from me. Rough, calloused fingers ignite a throbbing ache as they move over me. One finger slides along the slick moisture of my opening, while his thumb finds a little knot of intense sensation. He strokes it in little circles and I gasp and twitch, as if that spot of sensitivity connects way up into my core, my spine, jerking and contracting my body in blazing pulses.

  His mouth closes over mine again and he slips one finger inside me. My hips jerk and my body stiffens in anticipation of pain. Instead, his finger curls and a deep, core-rattling wave of pleasure washes over me. Between that and the circling of his thumb, my body begins to move of its own accord. My back arches, my thighs clamp on his hips and arm, my own hips jerk in little erratic movements against him.

  A moan crawls up my throat to mingle with the tangle of our lips, tongues, and the gentle bite of his teeth. I can’t think, can’t process. I still have his long shaft in my hand and his hips move in small strokes against me, easing ever closer.

  Something hot and wild builds inside me, like the gathering of storm clouds. As if from some deep core I haven’t even known I had. Just as I’m certain I might explode, Abel stills and withdraws his hand.

  “Tell me what you want,” he murmurs against my mouth.

  “You.” I hardly recognize the thin, raspy sound of my voice. “I want you.”

  He moves over me, huge and heavy even with most of his weight supported on one elbow. He takes that long, thick part of him in his own hand and moves his hips towards mine. I feel the brush of his fingers, the press of something both hard and silky smooth against me. And then he’s sliding inside and all the air whisks from me.

  He groans and presses his forehead to mine. Too tight, too full…

  He draws back. His hand slides around to my hip to hold me in place—I didn’t even realize I’d arched away. He presses into me again, sliding slick and full, and keeps pressing, keeps sliding, deeper and deeper. I expect him to meet some end, to run out of space, for him to never fit. Yet, instead it’s like a filling up, a oneness, a unity of two parts meant for one another. Yet... so much more.

  A little cry erupts from my throat and I clutch at his shoulders.

  He stills, kisses along my jaw and back to my mouth. “You alright?”

  I’ve forgotten we can speak. That words even exist. I try to say something, but my throat is dry, nonfunctional.

  He strokes my hair and takes my mouth again. I wrap my arms around his neck, and slide one hand up into his hair, the other down his back.

  He moves against me in long, rocking strokes and it isn’t just the size of him, the filling up, but the movement, the friction that touches the fiery core within me again, sparking, igniting, flaming in a wild blaze. Time escapes, the world vanishes.

  Only Abel. Only the steadily growing blaze inside me.

  Then the explosion.

  It rocks over me in wave after wave of fire and inexplicable bliss, each driven by the thrust of his hips. The groan of his mouth against my lips, the high keening cry that slips from mine.

  In its wake, a calm washes over me. As if the world exists of only me, Abel, the stars overhead—and everything has just become perfectly and gloriously alright.