Page 19 of Accidentally Vital

And now I understood that even total victory ended the same place. The king wakes, Ryhn stays a prince instead of a regent's puppet, and a prince marries a Kaithran daughter of a great house within the season. That's the law, that's duty, that's the entire pull of a culture that taught the man I loved that love means protecting your people even from your own heart. Win or lose, I went home. Win or lose, he married someone with the right blood. The only difference was whether his father was alive to watch.

I'd spent my whole life being the person who does what's necessary without acknowledgement, and I'd made my peace with it. But this was a new one, even for me. It was to save a man's life knowing that he would marry someone else. To pour everything I had into handing a kingdom back its king, a girl back her father, a prince back his future — knowing the future had no room in it for me anywhere.

Ryhn found me that night, and he took one look at my face.

"Nila told you," he said.

"She thought I knew." I was too tired to be angry. There was no one to be angry at anyway. "It's not a secret you kept from me. It's just true. It was always going to be true." I made myself say it, because somebody had to. "Even if it all works, Ryhn. Even if he wakes and you keep the throne and Vaelin loses, you marry a high-house daughter and I get on a ship. There's no version where that changes."

He crossed the room. He didn't argue, because he was done lying to me. That was its own kind of devastating. He just gathered me in against him. His purr came up low and grieving, a register I hadn't heard before. I realized he had a sound for this too, for love that knows it's ending. Nobody in the universe would ever make me feel as known as a man who couldn't lie to me with his own body if he tried.

"There is something I have not told you," he said into my hair, his voice gone quiet. "How he fell. The realm believes it was a border skirmish, a stray blade. It was not. It was meant for me. An old blood-debt from my grandfather's wars, a blade at my back I never saw, and my father did. He put himself between me and it as he had told me my whole life a strong man must. He took the wound that should have been mine, and the shock of it dropped him down into the healing-sleep, and the healing-sleep into the terror, and the terror into the corner of that room."

His arms tightened around me. "My father is a frightened animal because he loved me the one way he knew how — with his body between me and the world. I have told no one that. Every hour I have knelt in that room has been me trying to give back what cannot be given back."

I kissed him. It wasn't like the first night. I kissed him slowly, sad and certain, and felt his grieving purr change under my hands.

He stopped with his fingers at my waist. His claws were sheathed so completely I felt only the warm blunt pressure of them through my clothes. "Tabitha. Are you certain?"

"Yes." I put my forehead against his. "I know what tomorrow is. I'm choosing tonight."

His eyes closed. The purr deepened until I could feel it in my sternum. He let me lead him to the bed.

I undressed him in the dark, learning him as he'd learned me, because I was greedy now. I wanted to remember all of him when I went home. I pulled his tunic over his head and ran my hands over the faint raised patterns across his chest and stomach. His skin was hotter than mine. His purr changed pitch when I found a sensitive line beneath his ribs.

"There?" I asked.

"Everywhere you touch me," he said. There was nothing polished or princely left in his voice.

He reached for my clothes. I caught his hand.

"Let me take care of you this time."

For half a breath the old refusal tightened his face. Then he lay back with his hands open beside his head.

I bent and pressed my jaw to his, the Kaithran gesture he'd taught me on the high wall. I didn't have the glands or the senses to do it properly, but his body understood mine. He shuddered beneath me.

"Mark me again," I whispered. "Not the bite — you. I want to carry something of you home."

His purr stumbled. Then he drew his jaw along mine, over my throat and down to my shoulder. Heat lingered everywhere he touched. By morning every Kaithran who came near me would know whose bed I'd left.

I opened his trousers and wrapped my hand around him. He was smooth and impossibly warm, and his purr made my breath catch. It didn't stop at his chest. The vibration traveled through the hard length of him into my palm, low and steady until my fingers tightened and the sound broke rough from his throat.

"Tabitha." My name broke on the last syllable.

I slipped the rest of my clothes off and straddled him. His hands settled at my hips, claws still safely hidden. He could have moved me anywhere he wanted. He waited instead.

I guided him to me and sank down slowly. The vibration came with him, a deep pulse tied to his breath. Every change in his pleasure moved through me. My eyes closed.

"Look at me," he said softly.

His pupils had gone wide, the gold reduced to a thin bright rim. He watched my face while I moved over him, holding himself still until I gave him more, then meeting me with a slow roll of his hips. He waited for me to set the pace. I learned what made his breath stop, the stroke that brought the purr up through both of us, the small helpless flex of his fingers when I leaned down and put my mouth to his throat.

His arms closed around me. He turned us only far enough to settle me beneath him, keeping his weight on one forearm, his other hand cradling the back of my head. His sheathed claws combed carefully through my hair. His forehead stayed against mine while he moved, so I could watch what I did to him and he could watch what he gave me.

"I have you," he whispered.

The purr climbed inside me until my body tightened around him. I cried his name, broken and too loud, and the answering vibration stuttered through us both. He held me through it, moving slowly until the last tremor passed. Then I pulled him closer and matched each slow thrust until his control gave way.