The palace was dark except for the soft glow of moonlight spilling through shattered glass, stripes of silver catching on rumpled sheets and golden hair. Seraphina was stretched out on her bed, bare skin cool against the silks, a crown on her nightstand and Lucian's hand on her thigh. She'd lost track of what they had been talking about—it started with politics, drifted through prophecy, dissolved somewhere near Lucian's lips on her shoulder.
He moved closer, breath warm and teasing at her ear. "You keep thinking about tomorrow's council," he murmured, "when tomorrow isn't even here yet."
She let her fingers dance up his ribs, tracing the lines of his sculpted stomach, feeling the way he shivered under her touch. "If I don't think about it, the world falls apart."
"Let it," he said, his voice rough. "Let it burn for just one night." His mouth met hers—hungry, claiming, the kind of kiss that made her forget even her own name. He tasted like wine and secret promises, and she opened for him, arching into his hands.
Her body was heat and ache, every nerve awake, every thought burned away by the way he pressed his thigh between hers, the way he whispered her name like a prayer and a curse. Lucian's hands were everywhere—her waist, her bare midriff, mapping every rune, every scar, every inch of her that ached to be touched. His palms lingered at her belly, his thumbs brushing her navel, and she giggled between gasps because he had memorized exactly how to make her lose herself.
"Mine," Lucian said, his mouth on her throat, a possessive growl stealing between kisses. She tangled her fingers into his hair and drew him up so their foreheads bumped, their breaths gone ragged—she wanted to look into his eyes and let him see everything, the ache, the hunger, the hope.
"Yours," she answered, meeting him stroke for stroke, need for need.
Their bodies came together, fierce and tender, desperate and slow—her legs around his hips, his hands cradling her as if she was the only treasure he'd ever found worth having. The world was spinning and trembling and Seraphina held on tight, trusting Lucian to carry her wherever this fire would lead.
When it was done, when their sweat and laughter and whispers showered the room with a new kind of magic, Seraphina curled against his chest, listening to his heartbeat steady under her palm.
"Promise me," she said quietly, "that you'll always bring me home."
His lips brushed her hair, soft and sincere. "Always, Sera. Even if the world burns."
Outside, the city was restless and wild, but inside these four moonlit walls, there was only paradise and passion—and the freedom, for a few stolen hours, to belong entirely to each other.