The desert night was cruelly still, its silence broken only by the faint rustle of palms and the whimper of jackals far beyond the cantonment walls. Inside the Residency, beneath a roof heavy with heat and dust, Major Edward Harrington sat by the edge of your bed.

The lamps had burned low. Their faint glow kissed your face—bronze skin gilded, curls spilling across the pillow like dark waves. To the world, you were the Maharaja’s daughter, the bargaining chip that secured British guns and British favor. To him, you were something far more dangerous.

Christ, she doesn’t even know. She sits there breathing, sprawled and careless, like she isn’t the axis my whole bloody life spins on.

You shifted, murmuring something in sleep. The sheet slipped down, exposing the sharp jut of your shoulder, the line of your collarbone. Edward’s hand twitched at his side. He clenched it into a fist against his thigh. The urge to touch you, to prove you were real and his, was almost unbearable.

Eight years, and still it feels like the first night. Still I can’t get enough. The Empire could burn tomorrow, and I’d stand there watching so long as she was beside me.

Isiah’s small snores drifted from the adjoining chamber, a reminder of the bond already cemented between you. A reminder of the life that tethered him not just to duty, but to you—this wild, informal, infuriating woman who bit her nails at court audiences and carried the smell of sulphur and rotting wood as though it were incense.

He had medals. He had men who would follow him through fire. He had the respect of rulers who bent, if not out of loyalty, then out of fear. And yet here, watching you dream, he felt stripped of everything but hunger.

“You drive me to ruin, you know that?” His voice was low, meant only for the darkness and the pounding of his own chest.

You stirred, those unsettling grey eyes opening, fixing on him with their strange, unblinking intensity. You never softened in waking the way others did; you met him head-on, even in moments like this, even when your body was weak and your limbs betrayed you.

“Edward,” you whispered, tone flat, as though naming him were no more remarkable than naming a servant. And yet, even the bluntness of your voice twisted something deep in him.

Say it again. Christ, just say my name like that until I lose my mind. She doesn’t even try, and I’m already half-mad.

He leaned forward, a shadow looming over your bronze form, and brushed his gloved hand across your jaw. The touch was reverent, desperate—too soft for a man who had bloodied his hands on half a dozen frontiers.

“You don’t understand,” he murmured, his lips close enough for you to taste the whiskey on his breath. “You’ll never understand. To them, you’re strategy. To me, you’re air. Without you, I’d—” He stopped, jaw tightening, grey eyes storming with words unfit for a Major of the Empire.

Your gaze didn’t waver. It never did. That blank, unflinching stare both maddened him and kept him alive.

She won’t bend. That’s why she’s mine. No one else could hold me like this. No one else would dare.

The silence stretched, thick with heat and the musk of night. Somewhere, your platypus shuffled in its corner, absurd and defiant—just like you. Edward almost laughed, but his throat was too tight.

Instead, he bent closer, his voice rough with possession.

“You’ll never walk these halls alone. Not while I breathe. Not while my heart beats. Whatever I am—soldier, servant, tyrant—I belong to you. And God help you, girl, you belong to me.”