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But I had walked off worse, I reminded myself.

I had thrown myself into a Rift never meant to hold me. I had stared down a Gorgon King, and the Labyrinth that breathed, and driven a lightning-filled dagger into the heart of a war. I had done all of it terrified, yet I had done it anyway.

So, I lifted my chin, gathered every scrap of nerve I had left, and I stepped forward to meet my king.

The whole room seemed to hold its breath as I crossed that parted sea of nobles toward him, the silver in my gown catching the candlelight with every step. And Atlas, gods, the look on Atlas’s face as he watched me come to him was almost enough to undo all my hard-won bravery on the spot.

“You can do this… You can do this… Just keep your eyes on him, don’t look at anyone but him,” I whispered to myself like some secret mantra, one his smirk told me wasn’t as secret as I would have liked.

Finally, we met in the middle of the hall.

His dark eyes moved over the gown, the silver leaves in my hair, the flush already climbing my throat, as though he was committing every detail to memory. Then he reached out, curved one hand around my waist, and drew me flush against him, close enough that his next words brushed warm against my ear, low enough that they were for me alone.

“You look… Gods, Alexandra,” he murmured, “You look like something a man would burn his entire kingdom down to keep.” His hand splayed possessively against the small of my back. “It makes me want to claim you all over again, little bird. Right here. To peel you out of this gown and taste every single inch of you until you forget there was ever a room full of people watching.”

“Atlas,” I hissed his name, heat scorching up my face as my eyes darted to the hundreds of onlookers pressing close on every side.

“People are watching.”

He drew back just far enough to look at me, and the slow, wicked curve of his mouth told me I had said exactly the wrong thing.

“Then let them watch.”

And before I could so much as draw breath to argue, his hand slid up to cradle the back of my head, tipped my face up to his, and he kissed me.

Right there. In front of the entire kingdom of Theïkós.

It wasn’t a chaste kiss either. Nor was it a careful one. No, it was the kiss of a king claiming what was his before every lord and lady in his court. One deep and unhurried and completely without shame, and for one dizzying moment, the hall, the crowd, the whole watching world simply ceased to exist. There was only his mouth on mine, and his arm banded around me. That and the absurd, soaring certainty that he did not care one bit who saw.

A ripple of shocked gasps moved through the hall.

And then Lazaros, bless his shameless heart, threw an arm into the air and bellowed over the murmur, “Your King! And the woman who saved us all!”

At this, the hall erupted.

The gasps shattered into a roar of cheers, stamping, and ringing applause, glasses raised, voices climbing toward the chandeliers, until the whole vast room shook with the force of it. When Atlas finally drew back, he was grinning down at me, breathless and entirely unrepentant. As for me, I stood there with my face on fire and absolutely no idea what to do with my hands.

His knuckles brushed slowly down the curve of my burning cheek.

“This,” he murmured, eyes dancing, “is a rather beautiful colour on you.”

“I hate you,” I whispered, which was a lie, and we both knew it.

“No,” he said. “You don’t.”

Then he laced his fingers through mine and led me up onto the dais, past the long table, to the two thrones waiting side by side. He drew out the empty one himself, and after the smallest hesitation, beneath the weight of a thousand watching eyes, I sat.

In a throne.

Beside a king.

As though I had any right to it at all.

Atlas didn’t sit, however. Instead, he reached for a goblet from the table, and the moment he lifted it, the hall began to hush of its own accord, the cheers fading into an expectant quiet.

“These are dark times,” he began, and his voice carried effortlessly to the farthest corners of the hall, deep and steady and made for exactly this.

“And they will be remembered as such. There is not a soul in this room who has not lost someone to the darkness. Tonight, we honor them. We remember them.” He let that settle, let the grief breathe, before he went on. “But tonight, we also remember that we are still here. That against every impossible odd, this kingdom did not fall.”