Unspoken

“Do you believe in soulmates?”

He’d asked Kenna that once. They’d been sat in the courtyard mid-summer and she’d been making chains of flowers, a completed one twisted through her hair. She’d looked at him, tilted her head to the side, and hadn’t answered. Instead, she’d draped the flowers over him and laughed, distracting him from her lack of answer with the warmth of her smile.

Dom had always assumed he knew her answer, that she’d simply chosen to leave it as unsaid as everything else between them because it was easier for everything to remain unacknowledged than to accept that nothing could come from it. He didn’t think she needed him to admit his heart belonged to her to know that it did.

His heart was still hers, even after Luther’s attack had forced them apart. It probably always would be. The two years since had been spent doing whatever he could to keep her safe, wherever she was, and once he realised Kenna and her army planned to retake Stormholt, he’d let himself hope that they would finally get a happy ending.

For a moment, only a moment, after he finally saw her again – sword in hand, armour glowing in the fire of the battlefield, Marco’s forces falling around them – and they’d run into one another’s arms, he’d been foolish enough to believe that was what they were getting.

But then Gabriel had died, Kenna had been crowned and the restoration of the five kingdoms had begun. All that, plus Sei’s announcement that one day soon he would have to go and train, and his dreams of a future were set aside.

He went back to waiting. It wasn’t the time for their feelings to be discussed. There were other, more important, things to prioritise. Kenna spent her days in strategy meetings with the ragtag group of warriors and rulers she’d gather while they were apart. If Dom wasn’t with them, he was training with Sei.

Not that it stopped them spending time together. Despite having more to do than before, they found more time now, something that was much easier without Gabriel or the Queen telling them they shouldn’t be sneaking off to talk.

Except it felt different now. Kenna was different, changed by the years of loss and hiding and war. She’d had to change to become the warrior queen she now was, and although he loved the woman she’d become as much as the woman she’d been, they’d both been through too much, and grown too much,  to recapture the innocence they’d had before.

Even with everything that had changed and everything else they had to do, they found moments. He joined her for lunch almost every day, foregoing the bread and cooked meats he was used to in favour of rich meals shared with her.

“My lady?” Raydan interrupted them one day, materialising out of the shadows to stand at Kenna’s shoulder. Kenna sent Dom an apologetic smile and he watched as she followed the spymaster away from the table.

They didn’t go far, just into the shadows in the far corner of the great hall. Dom hadn’t seen them talk away from the war table before, and despite wanting not to notice, he couldn’t help but see how close they stood to one another, barely any space between as they whispered to one another, Kenna’s hand on Raydan’s arm. He kissed her hand before he left.

Kenna didn’t say a word when she returned to the table.

He didn’t mean to watch them after that, but his gaze was drawn to the two of them whenever they were together. Raydan was her right-hand man in the strategy meetings, always standing closer than necessary, his hand occasionally venturing to the small of Kenna’s back whenever he would lean in to point to something on the map. They whispered to one another in the shadows, Kenna twisting the gold tassels of his shirt between her fingers as they spoke.

It was when he was returning back through the castle after training with Sei that he saw it. He had just passed by Kenna’s room when he caught a glimpse of movement out of the corner of his eye. It was too close to Kenna for him to ignore anything suspicious, and he ducked into the shadows, familiar with the hiding places of Stormholt.

He almost felt like he should have expected it when he saw Raydan, illuminated only by the moonlight streaming through the window. The spymaster rapped his knuckles on Kenna’s door – three sharp knocks – and it opened. Kenna was a vision in dark lace, her smile just as bright as the ones Dom had believed

were

just for him, and they had barely spoken before Kenna tilted up her head and kissed him.

It was brief, a quick press of her lips to Raydan’s between whispers, but Raydan made it more. He kissed her again, and it hurt to see Kenna’s enthusiastic response. She rose onto her tiptoes, her arms going around his neck as she pulled herself closer. Raydan held her to him, one arm around her waist, his other hand in her hair.

Dom walked away when Raydan walked Kenna back into her room, the two of them still locked in an embrace.

It took a while for him to sleep that night. He’d imagined Kenna dressed like that, imagined her welcoming someone into her bedchamber with fervent kisses, but in those thoughts, it was him she was kissing. He half-wished he was still oblivious to their affair, but at the same time, it was almost a relief to realise the real reason things felt different.

It wasn’t just the two years of distance between them. Before, there had always been potential, possibilities of something more. That was gone now – because Kenna wanted someone else or because he had, subconsciously, understood that his dreams had been just that.

Maybe what he had assumed was unspoken was really just… unfelt.

A few days later, they were in the courtyard. Kenna’s hair was plaited away from her face, her eyebrows furrowed and her expression serious as she ran through sword drills. She huffed at herself whenever she misstepped or angled her sword wrong. She wasn’t wearing her crown, but if she had been, it would have been gold, not daisies.

He couldn’t help himself. “Do you believe in soulmates, Kenna?”

She stumbled, caught herself, and then turned to stare at him. “What?” Dom repeated the question, watching as a soft, nostalgic smile lifted the corners of her lips. “You’ve asked that before. A long time ago.”

“You never answered.”

She frowned, considering, and then her gaze moved away from him to something over his shoulder. He didn’t turn to look. He knew what – who – was behind him, hidden in the shadows.

“I might.”