“If what?”

“If you wish it wasn’t so.”

His brows narrowed. “Why would I ever wish that?”

She shook her head, unable to answer, and stared over her shoulder toward the sea.

It seemed like he would close the distance between them, but he remained where he was. “Aelin.” His voice turned hoarse. “Aelin.”

She looked at him then, at the pain in his words.

“Do you know what I wish?” He exposed his palms, one tattooed, the other unmarked. “I wish that you had told me. When you realized it. I wish you had told me then.”

She swallowed against the ache in her throat. “I didn’t want to hurt you.”

“Why would it ever hurt me to know the truth that was already in my heart? The truth I hoped for?”

“I didn’t understand it. I didn’t understand how it was possible. I thought maybe … maybe you might be able to have two mates within a lifetime, but even then, I just …” She blew out a breath. “I didn’t want you to be distressed.”

His eyes softened. “Do I regret that Lyria was dragged into this, that the cost of Maeve’s game was her life, and the life of the child we might have had? Yes. I regret that, and I wish it had never happened.” He would bear the tattoo to remember it for the rest of his days. “But none of that was your fault. I will always carry some of the burden of it, always know I chose to leave her for war and glory, and that I played right into Maeve’s hands.”

“Maeve wanted to ensnare you to get to me, though.”

“Then it is her choice, not yours.”

Aelin ran a hand over the worn wood of the desk. “In those illusions she spun for me, she showed me variations on one more than all the others.” The words were strained, but she forced them out. Forced herself to look at him. “She spun me one dreamscape that felt so real I could smell the wind off the Staghorns.”

“What did she show you?” A breathless question.

Aelin had to swallow before she could answer. “She showed me what might have been—if there had been no Erawan, if Elena had dealt with him properly and banished him. If there had been no Lyria, none of that pain or despair you endured. She showed me Terrasen as it would have been today, with my father as king, and my childhood happy, and …” Her lips wobbled. “When I turned twenty, you came with a delegation of Fae to Terrasen, to make amends for the rift between my mother and Maeve. And you and I took one look at each other in my father’s throne room, and we knew.”

She didn’t fight the stinging in her eyes. “I wanted to believe that was the true world. That this was the nightmare from which I’d awaken. I wanted to believe that there was a place where you and I had never known this suffering and loss, where we’d take one look at each other and know we were mates. Maeve told me she could make it so. If I gave her the keys, she’d make it all possible.” She wiped at her cheek, at the tear that escaped down it. “She spun me realities where you were dead, where you’d been killed by Erawan and only in handing over the keys to her would I be able to avenge you. But those realities made me … I stopped being useful to her when she told me you were gone. She couldn’t get me to talk, to think. Yet in the ones where you and I met, where things were as they should have been … that was when I came the closest.”

His swallow was audible. “What stopped you?”

She wiped at her face again. “The male I fell in love with was you. It was you, who knew pain as I did, and who walked with me through it, back to the light. Maeve didn’t understand that. That even if she could create that perfect world, it wouldn’t be you with me. And I’d never trade that, trade this. Not for anything.”

He extended his hand. An offer and invitation.

Aelin laid hers atop his, and his callused fingers squeezed gently. “I wanted it to be you,” he breathed, closing his eyes. “For months and months, even in Wendlyn, I wondered why you weren’t my mate instead. It tore me up, wondering it, but I still did.” He opened his eyes, and they burned like green fire. “All this time, I wanted it to be you.”

She lowered her gaze, but he hooked a thumb and forefinger around her chin and lifted her face.

“I know you are tired, Fireheart. I know that the burden on your shoulders is more than anyone should endure.” He took their joined hands and laid them on his heart. “But we’ll face this together. Erawan, the Lock, all of it. We’ll face it together. And when we are done, when you Settle, we will have a thousand years together. Longer.”

A small sound came out of her. “Elena said the Lock requires—”

“We’ll face it together,” he swore again. “And if the cost of it truly is you, then we’ll pay it together. As one soul in two bodies.”

Her heart strained to the point of cleaving. “Terrasen needs a king.”

“I have no intention of ruling Terrasen without you. Aedion can have the job.”

She scanned his face. He meant every word.

He brushed the hair from her face, his other hand still clasping hers to his chest, where his heart pounded a steady, unfaltering rhythm. “Even if I had my choice of any dream-realities, any perfect illusions, I would still choose you, too.”

She felt the truth of his words echo into the unbreakable thing that bound their very souls, and tilted her face up toward his. But he made no move beyond it.

She frowned. “Why aren’t you kissing me?”

“I thought you might want to be asked first.”

“That never stopped you before.”

“This first time, I wanted to make sure you were … ready.” After Cairn and Maeve. After months of having no choices whatsoever.

She smiled despite that truth. “I’m ready to be kissed again, Prince.”

He let out a dark chuckle and muttered, “Thank the gods,” before he lowered his mouth to hers.

The kiss was gentle—light. Letting her decide how to guide it. So she did.

Sliding her arms around Rowan’s neck, Aelin pressed herself against him, arching into his touch as his hands roamed along her back. Yet his mouth remained featherlight on hers. Sweet, exploratory kisses. He’d do it all night, if that was what she wished.

Mate. He was her mate, and she was finally allowed to call him such, to let him be such—

The thought snapped something. Aelin nipped at his bottom lip, scraping a canine against it.

The gesture snapped something in him, too.

With a growl, Rowan swept her into his arms, never tearing his mouth from hers as he carried her to the bed and set her down gently. Off came their boots, their jackets and shirts and pants. And then he was with her, the strength and heat of him pouring into her bare skin.

She couldn’t touch him fast enough, feel enough of him against her. Even when his mouth roved down her neck, licking over that spot where his claiming marks had been. Even when he roamed farther, worshipping her breasts as she arched up into each lick and suckle. Even when he knelt between her legs, his shoulders spreading her thighs wide, and tasted her, over and over, until she was writhing beneath him.

But something primal in her went quiet and still as Rowan rose over her again, and their eyes locked.

“You’re my mate,” he said, the words near-guttural. He nudged at her entrance, and she shifted her hips to draw him in, but he remained where he was. Withholding what she ached for until he heard what he needed.

Aelin tipped back her head, baring her neck to him. “You’re my mate.” Her words were a breathless rush. “And I am yours.”

Rowan thrust into her in a mighty stroke as he plunged his teeth into the side of her neck.

She cried out at the claiming, release already barreling along her spine, but he began moving. Moving, while his teeth remained in her, and she moaned with each drive of his hips, the sheer size of him a decadence she would never be able to get enough of. She dragged her nails down his muscled back, then lower, feeling every powerful stroke of him into her.

Rowan withdrew his teeth from her neck, and Aelin claimed his mouth in a savage kiss, her blood a coppery tang on his tongue.

He went wild at that, hoisting her hips to angle himself deeper, harder. The world might have been burning around them for all she cared, all he cared, too.