Kira quickly scrambled off Derek, doing her best to keep her face neutral even as her cheeks burned. He sat up with a smug little smile that made her want to smack him and kiss him at the same time.

"Who said anything about love?" she muttered, smoothing down her dress. "My face is flushed from the cold outside. It’s cold outside."

"Oh, really?" Derek drawled, clearly not believing a word.

"Yes," she replied quickly, refusing to meet his eyes. "And what about you? You keep pulling me down onto your chest and kissing me without warning. I told you not to fall in love with me, didn’t I? So what does that say about you?"

Derek chuckled, looking at her with open amusement. "I never knew it only took one question to produce all of that."

"All of what?"

"You’re very predictable, Kira."

She eyed him, but said nothing. He patted the empty space on the couch beside him.

Kira’s heart, which had only just started behaving, immediately resumed its chaos. "I’m suddenly very tired," she announced. "I’m going to bed. You should get back to your documents."

"How’s your leg?" he asked, before she could turn away. "Dr Adah mentioned it’s healing faster than she expected."

Kira’s racing heart slowed a little, grateful for the neutral topic. She turned back to face him. "It is, yes. Much better."

"Come." He patted the cushion again and reached toward the side table for the small jar of balm he kept there. "Sit. I’ll massage it."

She stood where she was. She wasn’t sure she could survive any more of this evening. Why was he suddenly making her so nervous?

Derek glanced up and raised his brows. "Are you going to sit down, or is the legendary Kira suddenly afraid of a little body contact?"

Kira scoffed. "I am not afraid of anything." She crossed to the couch and sat down with great dignity. "I’m letting you do this because Dr Adah specifically said to massage it. That is the only reason."

"Of course," he said, perfectly neutral.

He took the throw pillow from the couch and set it on the floor beside her feet, then sat down on it and lifted her left leg gently into his lap.

"I’m glad this is healing as fast as it is," he said, almost to himself. "It was partly my fault it happened at all."

Kira said nothing; she just looked down at him and fought the very specific urge to reach down and run her fingers through his hair again. She kept her hands firmly in her own lap.

He began to massage her foot and ankle with careful, steady strokes. They stayed like that for a little while, no words between them, just the soft sounds of the evening settling into the palace.

"The day after tomorrow," Kira finally broke the silence, "you’ll officially become King of Dravengard."

Derek looked up at her, and a small smile tugged at his lips. "Who would have thought, right?"

She inhaled deeply. "I never had trouble picturing you as King, honestly." She leaned back against the cushions. "But isn’t the throne hereditary?"

"It is," he replied simply, eyes returning to her leg.

"So why were you made regent? Why did you have to prove yourself before it was given to you?"

Derek remained silent for a long moment. Kira realised she might have touched on something sensitive. She opened her mouth to tell him he didn’t have to answer, but he spoke first.

"When my people were killed in that massacre, I was just seventeen." He said it plainly, without drama, his eyes on her leg. "My memory kept replaying it. I couldn’t make it stop. My father’s severed head on the floor. Those men..." He swallowed. "They violated my mother until the breath left her body. And even after she stopped breathing, they didn’t stop."

"Oh goddess," Kira whispered. Her heart broke in two.

Seventeen years old. A seventeen-year-old boy watching that.

"I couldn’t get through a single day without reliving it," Derek continued. "I’d been trained all my life to protect my people and I couldn’t do it when it mattered most. It tormented me. And when Leo finally surfaced, he came in almost feral. They locked me in the deepest cell in the dungeon."

He paused.

"For two years."

He chuckled. Kira did not find a single thing funny about it. Tears had already gathered in her eyes and she let them sit there, not bothering to wipe them away.

A seventeen-year-old boy losing everything in one night, finding his beast, and being locked underground with it. She could barely hold the image.

"The elders were growing worried I would never recover," he said. "There were discussions about transferring the succession rights to Brian. He was the closest related cousin."

He paused. "Ruby refused to accept it. She was always in my cell. Reading to me. Telling me it wasn’t my fault Jasper died. That she believed I wasn’t lost."

"Ruby was always found asleep outside my cell," he added with another soft chuckle. "No matter what the guards said, she would still come, even on my worst days.

"She would sing badly and do these terrible, awkward performances just to get a reaction out of me."

He shook his head.

"Declan, Kai and Connor would come too. They’d take Leo out to run in the hills, but there was always a leash around my neck. Just in case."

He laughed quietly at that.

"Nana stood against the transfer of rights too, asking for more time before it was done."

Kira let a tear slip down her cheek without touching it.

Derek set her foot down carefully and took a long breath.

"I started to come back at nineteen. Still far from myself, but functional. I began fighting for my right to the throne. That was when the whole mess with Sandra and Brian happened, and the bad blood with Uncle Crane began."

He looked down at his hands. "Brian had already been playing at being King and didn’t want to let go of it. That was when Nana came up with her decree. Marry before twenty-eight, coronation six months after."

He smiled, and this time it was genuine and warm and entirely fond.

"Nana, that old little devil. She put the six-month clause there because she wanted me to have an heir on the way before I was crowned King."

Kira wiped her face finally, pressing the back of her hand to her cheek. Sorry felt like the wrong word. It was too small. It didn’t come close to touching what he had just told her.

Derek looked up at her.

"Have you ever lost someone you loved deeply, Kira?"

She hadn’t. She shook her head.

He nodded, as though that was the answer he had expected.

"I lost almost everyone I loved in the same night," he said quietly. "Right in front of me. And that kind of loss comes with a darkness that doesn’t lift the way ordinary sadness does. You learn to carry it, eventually. But it never fully goes."

"Derek—"

Then the door flung open, cutting Kira off.

A gamma burst through it, breathless, his eyes wide with an urgency that cut straight through everything.

"Your Grace. It’s the Umbras. They’ve infiltrated the palace."