Page 14 of Labyrinthine
Heat creeps up my neck and over my cheek.
“Did you think I didn’t see you, Princess?”
I’ve trained beside Mallen for years, fought against his blade, endured his bruises and taunts. I know the cut of his jaw and the swell of his muscle—not because I admired it, but because I learned how to break past it. Even so, he seems broader than I remembered now the candlelight catches on the breadth of his shoulders. Dark hair damp at his temples, a curl loosening in the steam. His gaze holds mine, steady, as if he has been practicing restraint his whole life. And now, under the flicker of the flame and the veil of steam, the lines blur. I can’t tell if I’m watchinghim—or if I’ve been seen too clearly, and it’s already too late to look away.
When I splash him, testing the weight of this new imbalance, he doesn’t flinch. He just laughs. But it’s not joy—it’s calculation. A warning disguised as play. It says he will not be bait. If I want more, I will have to ask.
“Need help with your hair?” he asks, too casually.
What he means is:Will you let me touch you? Will you give me that much?
I want this game to continue, but I’m not ready to explore this. Not yet. Not in the way he wants. Not when the lens I view him through is shifting and I’m dazed by its changing colors.
I shake my head and reach for the bottle. He sets it in my hand at once and steps back to the edge of the room. The silence that follows is not still. It smolders between us, heat banked under iron, and I let it burn in me too. I comb the tangles from my hair while he keeps his watch.
“You should return to your chamber.” Mallen turns his back, offering a moment’s privacy.
I rise from the bath as if it’s nothing.
As if I feel nothing. As if I don’t want everything.
It’s only as I dry myself that I remember my tunic is still adrift in the pool, waterlogged and silken where I abandoned it, the weight of it forgotten. I eye it and then glance at Mallen’s turned back. There’s no robe. No shift. No gown. The new attendant never brought them. So I wrap myself in the towel instead, clutching the corners with more dignity than grace.
“I’ll walk back in this,” I mutter.
Mallen turns and freezes. His mouth parts slightly, just enough to catch the breath as it stutters past his lips. His eyes turn to midnight, like he’s seeing something precious left too close to danger, like a storm cloud sliding over the sun.
“No, you won’t,” he says, voice low.
He shrugs off his cloak without ceremony and drapes it over my shoulders with careful hands. It’s warm, smelling faintly of smoke and steel, and far too large—swallowing me whole. Still, he adjusts the folds so they cover me fully, even tugging at the collar to shield my neck.
“You could have found something cleaner,” I murmur, my tone caught somewhere between dry and grateful.
“It wouldn’t be mine,” he says, as though I’ve just given him everything he’s waited for.
I don’t quite know how to respond. To that. To him.
“You’re not going anywhere in a towel, Azhara.” His voice is low. A sound catches in his throat. “You’re mine. Not because I own you, but because you’re carved into me. Written in my bones. No one else sees that. No one else ever will.”
The ferocity in his voice startles me. There’s heat behind it, and command—and a tension that might break me open in the best, or maybe worst, way. My stomach flips, heat curling low and deep, and gods help me, I want to be claimed like that. I want to belong to something. To someone. Maybe even to Mallen.
Before I can think of what to say, he lifts me into his arms, gentle but firm.
“Mallen—”
“You’re tired,” he says. “And I don’t want to argue.”
His hold is careful, as if he’s taking the weight of me. I rest my head against his shoulder despite myself. Neither of us speaks on the walk back. The silence is soothing. Nothing more needs to be said. There’s peace here. Balance too. And I catch myself before I drift asleep in his arms, certain he’d never let me forget that my guard fell.
He sets me down at the edge of the bed and steps back immediately, putting distance between us that he doesn’t seemto want but gives me anyway. He crosses to the windows and checks the bar, his gaze on the courtyard instead of me.
The girl rushes in and helps me dress for bed while Mallen looks away, her hands brisk. I sink into the sheets, exhaustion finally catching up with me.
“If you need me,” Mallen says from across the room, “I’ll be right here.”
I open one eye and spot him dragging a blanket onto the small couch in the corner.
“You’re not serious.”
