Roan pulled his hood low, though he knew it was useless. No fabric could disguise him—not when his hair burned like autumn fire, not when his stance betrayed him as an Elonthar son. The guards could mutter, Katyr could sneer, the market could turn its eyes. Still, he came. Still, he couldn’t stay away.

He told himself each time that it would be the last. That he had no business here, no right to linger among mortals with their clay-stained hands and unpolished lives. His place was behind marble walls, where every smile was calculated, every word sharpened into weapon or shield. But the truth was simple, damning: he wanted you.

And you were here.

Exactly where he knew you’d be—standing at the vendor’s table, head bent in patient amusement as the old woman fought tooth and nail over the price of apples. That smile—your smile—unraveled him every time. It was unstudied, unpracticed, carrying warmth without thought of who might be watching. A smile that asked for nothing, promised nothing, gave everything.

He had no right to want it.

He moved before reason could stop him, steps carrying him through the crowd as if pulled by tide. His chest ached with nerves he would never name, not even to himself. What would his kin say if they saw him? What would his father do, if he knew an elven noble like himself—his son—wasted his time in markets chasing a human? The thought should have stopped him. It never did.

“Leaving the palace again, my lord?” the vendor teased, sly but harmless.

Roan ignored her. His gaze was fixed only on you. “Walk with me.”

He heard the quiver in his own voice and prayed you hadn’t. For a moment, you hesitated. He felt that hesitation cut sharp through him, a reminder of the line between your kind and his—a line no one was meant to cross. And then, impossibly, you stepped toward him.

He led you away, past stalls that stank of spice and iron, past cobbled streets until the trees swallowed the city whole. His horse waited at the forest’s edge, its coat shimmering with an otherworldly sheen, its amber eyes assessing. It knew. It always knew when he was making a mistake.

And yet he did not stop.

He swung into the saddle, hand outstretched toward you. “Come.”

When your fingers brushed his, he nearly flinched at the jolt it sent through him. Foolish. Dangerous. He saw the wariness in your eyes, the doubt. But then your hand rested fully in his, and that was it—the world collapsed to that single point of contact. He drew you up behind him, and the horse lunged into motion.

When he reined the beast to a halt at the cliffside, the valley unfurled below—the rivers like silver veins, the lights of your settlement flickering faint and fragile in the dark. He dismounted, hand once again reaching for yours, greedy for the contact.

“This is ours,” he murmured, voice rawer than he intended. “All of it. Yet… I envy the commoners. You walk it without crowns, without titles. You belong to the earth itself.”

He should not have said it. He should not have thought it. Every step with you was treason, every glance betrayal of the life carved for him in marble and politics. He knew it, felt the weight of that knowledge in his bones. And still—still—he could not make himself turn back.

The wanting had rooted too deep.

When he looked at you, he thought absurdly that the world had been carved for this: your breath still quick from the ride, your presence the only thing in all his centuries that had ever felt real.

And yet he could not see the chain at your wrist—the promise already claimed, the betrothal waiting. He only saw what he longed for, what he could never have, and he knew with a sharpness that hollowed him out: he would never stop wanting you.