He had heard that Magnus Karas was a very generous and wise person.

A good man. A patient man. Jealous, perhaps, but not insecure. You know, the kind of man who had probably never once in his life squatted in a frozen garden in full imperial regalia, hiding from a woman who had killed his father and was now asleep in his bed.

But any man with blood in his veins and a pulse in his throat and the basic territorial instincts that came standard with the male package, would kill if they knew their soon-to-be wife had taken an afternoon nap in another man’s bed.

Right?

This was not complicated nor was it subtle, right? This was the kind of thing that led to duels at dawn and blood feuds spanning generations.

In the first place, how would one explain to one’s entire bloodline about why exactly one’s fiancée had been found horizontal on the emperor’s mattress?

Unless Magnus Karas had the same abundant generosity as Arkai Dawnoro, Oathran Alicei, and Eastiel Edengold.

Damon’s brain stuttered to a halt.

Unless Magnus Karas was, by some cosmic coincidence, also the kind of man who would happily share his wife with two other men and call them brothers.

No. No, he should not assume.

He sat on the chair.

He stood up again.

He walked to the door and locked it. Precaution. Shut up.

The click of the bolt sliding home was very loud in the quiet chamber. Too loud. He walked to the door of the adjacent chamber. Locked that too. Another click and another damning sound.

Yes, it could be interpreted in approximately seventeen different ways, sixteen of which would require him to explain himself to an angry fiancé with a sword.

But he had the right to lock the door, alright? This woman snuck into his, the emperor’s room in broad daylight. She also claimed his bed like she was a cat and it was a sunbeam. Let him lock his doors!

First of all, how?

Well, she might have snuck in through the balcony, but again he should not assume. So, he locked the doors. So she wouldn’t run? That was a dangerous question and a dangerous scenario. But not quite.

At least if he locked all the doors, outsiders could not stumble in and discover this scandalous scene. The unmarried, freshly crowned Emperor of Iondora, alone in his bedchamber, with a foreign princess who was very much engaged to someone else, and was at some point in history, engaged to him.

Right?

This looked bad, right?

You understand that this looked irredeemably bad, right?

So, he locked the door. Clearly the responsible thing to do.

Right?

He turned.

He was about to sit back down on the chair when he saw that the woman’s eyes were already open, staring at him.

"Damon Iondora..." Ivy said slowly. She had clearly woken up at some indeterminate point during his door-locking frenzy and had been watching him ever since. "Why did you lock the doors?"

Damon would have been afraid she misunderstood, but he surprised himself that he glared back. "You are the one who sleeps in a man’s bed without locking the doors."

Again, he was surprised he could say all that. After all, he had spent the last several hours hiding in a frozen garden playing tic-tac-toe with sticks because he was terrified of this exact confrontation.

"How else can you come in, then?" Ivy’s eyes rolled. Such eloquence. She sat up, the blanket pooling around her waist, her blonde hair spilling over her shoulders in a disheveled cascade that categorically did not diminish her beauty in the slightest.

Her traveling clothes were rumpled. Her feet were bare. She looked like a painting. A painting that had broken into his room, stolen his bed and was now looking at him like he was the one being unreasonable.

"Listen." Damon’s glare did not waver. "If you want to be mad at me, just be mad at me. Yell. Throw something. I probably deserve it." He paused. His jaw tightened. "But doing this... is just... dangerous, Ivy. You are engaged. We were engaged. This does not look good."

Ivy stood slowly. She walked toward him, as usual, elegantly enchanting.

"Mad?" she asked, almost curious. "Who said I am mad?"

Damon’s internal alarms, which had been ringing steadily since he first smelled her perfume in the corridor, escalated to full, screaming temple bells.

"Because I did not tell you about Lady See—"

"Yes!" Ivy snapped. "You did not tell me about Lady Sees! How could you?!"

They stood face to face, glaring at one another.

Then Ivy moved.

She stepped closer, close enough that the heat of her body radiated through the cold imperial silk of his robe. Her hands slipped beneath the heavy fabric, palms flat against his chest, fingers gliding to the sides, tracing the lines of his torso. She focused her eyes on his chest and tilted her head sensually.

Damon went pale.

Not flushed or flustered. Pale.

The blood drained from his face so quickly that his entire body went rigid, every muscle locking into place. Like a prey animal facing a predator.

What the fu—

"I forgive you, okay?" Ivy whispered intimately. Her breath ghosted across the silk of his robe. "So... how about we... talk?"

Every hair on Damon’s body stood up. Every. Follicle. Of. Hair. He. Possessed. Every single one rose in unison. His hands, moving on instinct and self-preservation, grasped her wandering hands.

He yanked them away from his body.

"What are you doing?!" He squeaked, never once sounded as panicked as he did right now.

Ivy looked up at him through her lashes. Her hands, still trapped in his grip, did not struggle. "I said I wanted to talk."

"You are engaged!"

"And you are the Emperor." Her smile widened. "Locked in your chambers. With me. After dark."

Damon’s soul briefly vacated his body.

"Ivy."

"Damon."

Her voice was like warm honey, heated and poured directly onto his exposed nerves.

Damon’s heart boomed in his chest. He had just realized he was locked in a room with something far more dangerous than an assassin. His eyes faltered and he knew she saw it.

This felt nothing like Ivy’s usual demeanor.

He had been hugged and kissed on the cheek by her multiple times. The casual touches. The easy affection. The way Cassians treated physical contact like a handshake, warm, friendly and completely without subtext.

This was a different Ivy.

These were not the casual touches a Cassian would grant their friends.

"I thought we were friends—"

"I do not want to be friends." Ivy said, her eyes, still fixed on his, glimmered unplatonically like colored glass. "Not when you are close with. A. Literal. Divine. Dragon."

Damon blinked.

Divine... dragon?

Close?

Did she mean—

Cecilia’s husband number one?

Oathran Alicei? The Dragon Lord?

"Da~mon~" Ivy’s voice had shifted into something entirely new. Something sing-song and coquettish. She wiggled herself free from his grasp, and before Damon could react she hooked her arms around his neck.

"Why didn’t you tell me that Luna Sees is a di~vi~ne dra~gon~ hmm~?"

She drew out the syllables like taffy, stretching each one into something sweet and sticky and impossible to escape. Her arms tightened around his neck. Her body pressed closer, not quite touching, but almost, the suggestion of contact more devastating than contact itself.

"Augh, if I had known—" She sighed. "Magnus wouldn’t get jealous. He would even encourage me to get clo~ser~ to~ you~!"

Damon was lost in the cosmos.