“You already stole my heart,” Arthur drawled, the words slipping from him before he could think better of them. Had hearts truly been able to rise into one’s eyes, his would have been unmistakable—bright, foolish, and utterly unguarded.

He wasn’t quite sure who had stumbled upon whom. The thief—if that was what they were—had appeared in his chambers only to return an object they’d taken, deeming it unworthy of keeping. An absurd mercy. How they had slipped past the palace guards, the wards etched into stone and air alike, was a mystery Arthur doubted he would ever solve. Yet one truth stood clear as daylight: he was hopelessly in love. Treasonous? Undoubtedly. But there was something in the way their eyes glinted from beneath the shadow of their hood, something magnetic in the secrecy of them. The rest of their face remained hidden, as though the night itself had claimed it.

“There’s nothing more to come back for,” Arthur said lightly, smiling as he rested his fist against his chin, watching them scale the outer wall of his room with effortless grace. So cliché, his heart teased him—falling for someone who slipped in through moonlight and vanished just as easily. And yet, even knowing they had never come for the right reasons, he couldn’t bring himself to wish them gone.