PROLOGUE: THE SUMMER BETWEEN KINGDOMS

Before the betrayal, before the Orb, before the giant eagle's annoying tendency to show up uninvited with his judgmental gaze mirroring a high priest meticulously reviewing their carnal failings - there had been summer. It had been stupid, it had felt endless, and had been the happiest they'd ever been.

Tharros had not announced neutrality yet, merely indecision. A city of silver spires and streets carved into the cliffside, where diplomats sneered with daggers and the pigeons were likely spies. Seraphina Moonshadow, twenty-three and reveling in her new independence, was engaging in a thoroughly illicit affair with a Drakenborne prince. An impulsive decision for the independent mess she was, even more so for the Princess of Miralith.

Especially not Kaelrith Drakenhal. And yet, Kaelrith still had the maddening tendency to employ treason as foreplay.

They had attended a peace conference, both as negotiators, both working in secret for their respective monarchies. Their hatred radiated the sexual tension of an electrical storm-hot, dangerous, and too charged to be resisted.

Their first kiss was in the library. She'd backed him into a corner over a border issue. He'd insulted her work. She had slapped him. He'd kissed her. One second they had been making out, but when they broke apart, half the book stacks had fallen and somebody was complaining about a loss of parchment.

They slept together the second time they were alone. They were on a rooftop, under a canopy of stars and suspicion, both semi-dressed, laughing in rapt breath as he pressed her down into the cushions. His mouth sought the hollow of her neck, then lower, her laugh something deeper, something torn open and unrepeatable. He savored each detail. She let him.

They'd only gone to Vire Crag once that summer-a dilapidated tower on the border that no one even bothered to guard now, completely forgotten and covered in moss, mildew, and half-fallen down stairs. It was the last place they could hear themselves think, or kiss, without some courtier breathing down their neck. She had carved a crescent glyph in the wall with her stiletto, a simple magical glyph that would flare blue when touched by the correct sigil word. "So you'll know if I ever make it here before you," she said with another kiss to his jaw, "or if I don't make it at all." He had laughed at the time, called it sentimental, but then, when they lay side by side under the broken rafters, his fingers mapped the mark as if it meant more than he could articulate. It remained there, half-hidden under mildew and memory, long after summer.

He said all sorts of things against her skin that were not diplomatic-loving, blasphemous, exciting things that made her legs go weak and her heart skip a beat. She dug her nails into his back hard enough to leave trails. He smiled into her neck and said he hoped they scarred.

The next time involved a wardrobe, a splintered door frame, and a bloody hand. She had arched her back in climax, clinging as he picked her up, and caught the edge of a twisted hinge.

The pain did not register with her. Her palm soaked his shoulder with blood.

"You're leaking," he said afterwards, having nuzzled her neck.

They had tried to dress the cut, but it refused to close up nicely. A scarring crescent, a near half-moon, remained, always nestled in the flesh of her palm. Not a lover's pledge, not a brand. Only an accident. Only a scar. And by the end of the summer, that's all she had left.

He didn't say the words, but he often stood looking at her as if she were something holy in a blasphemous world.

She dropped everything to the floor and crumpled.

He dropped before her and stripped away her boots. Wiped the soles of her feet dry with the bottom of his tunic. Leant his face against her knees and simply lay with her.

He valued that she did not flinch. That she also lied better than he had ever had. That she mocked his skill at swordplay and would not in any way ever back down from him, even when he raged with the type of fury that broke stone.

For she didn't treat him as a monster, nor as a prince. But as a man. Only as Kaelrith.

And sometimes, when she laughed—that gentle, unguarded ringing of bells against one another—he felt she made him something more than he had been born to be.

She adored him in ways she would never confess. The ease with which he would dispatch a spy down a hallway, then trip over his own feet inches from a hem of a dress. The calluses that roughened his palms. The heat of desire in his veins. But mostly she loved that he could submit to her lead, be strong yet still question, make room for her rage, her cleverness, her contradictions.

They weren't caught. Not truly. Because if they had been, they would've had a scandal. A scene. An international incident.

Only Cyric ever saw.

He did not budge initially. Remained in the doorway, the fine livery of him looking resplendent but stiff with disdain, and watched them bump into each other and knock over a tray of wine. Barely even saw him standing in the doorway at all until he wanted to be seen.

Then he'd filled a glass to the top with something expensive and had spoken in that as-smooth-as-silky voice: "At least he's no ambassador. That would've been more difficult to explain."

Seraphina had almost hurled a pillow in his direction. Kaelrith had stood still—too naked, too panting.

Cyric had been a friend to her even before she knew how few of them she had. A Tharrosi diplomat, of course, but more. An oddity. There was something in his eyes when he talked to Kaelrith—a look that read almost like history, but would never fully cohere into words. She had asked no questions of Kaelrith, and he had never spoken. Cyric did what he could for them in his own way: not by telling lies, so much as by telling the correct stories, putting the correct words in the correct ear, and leaving wine or a patch of clean linens in the right locations.

He remained a knife in velvet—cutting when necessary, gentle as he pleased. And he didn't press her for what she had perceived about Kaelrith. That too was a courtesy.

He passed a tightly rolled-up scroll to her before he departed for the summer.

No seal. No wax. Only her name, and in it:

"Some things are worth the burn of a flame, princess. Don't be the tinder."

Summer concluded, and Kaelrith returned to Drakenborne. So did Seraphina to Miralith. Her hand healed from the gash. And the world, seemingly in gratitude, resumed war.

No promises, no goodbyes.

That forbidden summer burned into them both: a lingering scar in her palm, an empty ache in his heart, and the specter of a passion too forbidden to speak. Three years later, when their eyes once more met in the dust of a toppled tower, her scar flared in silence. A similar shiver ran through him.