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I wait, and he doesn’t offer anything further, just stands there. Something about the particular quality of his stillness tells me, before he says a single word more, that whatever’s brought him here tonight is bigger than the room itself.

“Tell me,” I say quietly.

“Night has abdicated,” he says plainly, no cushioning offered at all.

The words land exactly as heavy as I expected them to, and somehow heavier still.

“When?” I manage.

“Tonight. Hours ago. It is done. There is no undoing it now,” he rumbles low, each word vibrating all the way through me.

“And you?” I ask.

“I will be crowned at nightfall tomorrow,” he says.

I sit down on the edge of my bed because my legs have apparently decided standing is no longer a service they’re willing to provide.

He crosses the room, slow, careful, and sits beside me, close enough that I feel the cold of him properly for the first time in days.

“What happens to him?” I ask. “Night. Does he just, stop being anything. Does he lose everything?”

“He keeps his life. His love. What he does not keep is the throne, or the deference that came with it. He will live as any shadow being lives now, ordinary, hidden, choosing his own days rather than having them chosen for him.” Something flickers across his face, complicated, hard to name. “He seemed, when I left him, almost relieved.”

“Relieved,” I repeat. That seems very relatable. “Has he been king long? I don’t really know anything about him, if I’m honest.”

“Since Hex stepped aside,” he says. “Not long, by our reckoning. Barely any time at all.”

“And already he’s stepping down for love,” I say.

“He fell first, and hardest, when it mattered least conveniently.” Something that might almost be fondness crosses Dark’s face. “His match is not what anyone would have predicted. A man offered to him as a sacrifice. The realm changed him rather than consuming him, which was not meant to happen. He is not fully human anymore, and not fully anything else either. Obsessed with exercise and tiny shorts and calling everyone Dude. Night adores him completely.”

“That sounds like an entire story on its own,” I say.

“It is,” he says. “I am not the one to tell it properly.”

“And the realm won’t accept him,” I say. “As consort.” Even though I already know the answer.

“A king requires an heir,” he says. “What he is now cannot provide one. The law does not care how much Night loves him. It only cares what he can give the throne.”

I think about that for a long moment, the unfairness of it settling somewhere heavy in my chest. The sharp sting of it fading into resignation.

“And you?” I ask. “Are you relieved, or terrified, or something else entirely?”

He’s quiet for a long moment, the kind that means he’s actually weighing the question rather than deflecting it.

“Resigned,” he says, finally. “It has simply become the next thing I must do.”

“Do you even want this?” I blurt, and instantly regret it. He said before he’d rather have me. There’s no need to make him say it again, or force him to confess that he’s changed his mind.

His amber eyes flare in the dark. He regards me solemnly, intently, as if I’m worthy of all the focus of the universe.

“I want you,” he says, simply, and it lands somewhere low and aching in my chest. “The throne is not a want. It is a debt I did not choose to owe and cannot refuse to pay.”

I suck in a breath through my aching ribs. “That seems like a very lonely way to make the biggest decision of your entire existence.”

“It is not a decision,” he says. “It is simply what is left, once everyone else has stepped away from it.”

I don’t have an answer for that, so I don’t try to give him one. I just look at him properly instead. And as I watch, he grows more solid. Much more solid than even a few days ago, edges sharp and certain, nothing flickering, nothing uncertain about the shape of him at all. If anything, he looks more real than I’ve ever seen him. Dark hair catching what little light comes through the curtains, the line of his jaw, his mouth, all of it settled into something almost unbearably handsome. Like whatever’s happening to him is sharpening every single thing about him rather than diminishing it.