Chapter 66 Xavier- POV
XAVIER POV
I had prepared for a viper, but I found myself holding a broken bird.
Ever since she stepped through those massive oak doors, she had been an anomaly. James had whispered warnings in my ear for weeks about the "Daughter of Heart," the weapon the rebellion had spent years sharpening to a lethal point.
Leo’s reports were explicit: she was trained to seduce, to lull me into a false sense of security, and then to slip a blade between my ribs while I was distracted by her beauty.
But as I watched her from the shadows of the dais, I didn't see a killer.
I saw a ghost walking among the living.
She had stood at the entrance as if the very floor beneath her feet was a miracle she hadn't expected to touch.
Her eyes, those haunting, luminous eyes, didn't scan the room for targets or exits. They scanned the crowd with a desperate, frantic hunger, as if she were looking for someone who had been erased from existence. And then, they found me.
The look she gave me wasn't one of a predator eyeing its prey. It was the look of a woman witnessing a resurrection.
There was a terrifying weight in her gaze, a mix of profound relief and a sorrow so deep it made my own chest tighten. She looked at me as if I were already dead, and as if my being alive was a debt she could never repay.
Now, here on the balcony, the "assassin" was gone.
The woman in my arms was shaking, her sobs raw and jagged, tearing through the quiet night air. This wasn't the practiced grief of a spy.
I have spent my life surrounded by liars and mimes; I know the sound of a heart being pulverized. She wasn't crying for a lost love; she was crying as if she had watched the world itself collapse and she was the only one left to remember the names of the fallen.
I felt her fingers bunching the fabric of my coat, clutching me with a strength born of pure terror. She wasn't anchoring herself to me to lure me in; she was anchoring herself to me to keep from drowning in a sea of shadows I couldn't see.
What did they do to you? I wondered, my hand moving of its own accord to stroke her hair. What did you see that left you this hollow?
My heart, which usually beat with the cold, rhythmic precision of a strategist, was thundering against my ribs.
I could feel her pain vibrating through the silk of her gown and into my own skin. It was infectious. It was a burden so heavy I could feel the invisible weight she was carrying on those slender shoulders.
According to the reports, she was fueled by hatred for the crown, a rebel daughter seeking vengeance for a fallen house. But as her tears soaked into the shoulder of my coat, I felt no hate.
I felt only a love so fierce and a longing so ancient it seemed to transcend the very night we were standing in.
I looked over her shoulder at James, who was watching from the shadows, his hand on his blade, his eyes demanding a command. I gave him a slight, sharp shake of my head.
There would be no arrest tonight. No interrogation.
I didn't care if she had a dagger hidden in that red slit of a dress. I didn't care if this was the most elaborate trap ever devised in the history of the Drakes. Because as she wept into my chest, the King inside me, the man who had lived behind masks and walls for a lifetime, felt something he hadn't felt in years.
I felt needed. Not for my crown, not for my power, but for my warmth.
I tightened my grip, pulling her closer, shielding her from the prying eyes of the court. I didn't know who the man was that she had lost, the one she said I reminded her of, but I felt a strange, burning jealousy toward a dead man.
I wanted to be the one to stop her tears. I wanted to know the secrets hidden in the runes of her soul.
"I have you," I whispered again, more for myself than for her. "I have you."
She wasn't the assassin I was promised. She was something else entirely, a mystery I was suddenly willing to burn my kingdom down to solve.
A few minutes later…
The hiccups gradually slowed, her small frame finally ceasing the violent tremors that had wracked her only moments ago. Yet, I didn't let go. There was an inexplicable pull, a magnetic gravity that demanded I keep her anchored to my chest.
She felt right there, as if a missing piece of my own soul had suddenly materialized, shivering and broken, in the middle of a masquerade.
"Are you okay now?" I asked, my voice softer than I had ever permitted it to be in the presence of a stranger.
She looked up at me, and the sight was a physical blow. Her eyes were swollen, the lashes spiked with dampness, but it was the depth of the gaze that haunted me.
It was a look of absolute, singular focus, as if the entire world had dissolved into ash and I was the only solid thing left in her universe.
Who could have inflicted such a wound on her? To look at a man she had just met with the mourning of a thousand years?
"I’m okay now," she whispered, stepping back just an inch, though her hands lingered on my chest, her fingers clutching the lapels of my coat as if afraid I might vanish if she let go.
"I’m sorry... I don't know what got into me. I think... I think it’s just hormones."
She tried to offer a small, fragile smile, but her lips were still trembling. It was a lie—a transparent, desperate shield. I knew pain when I felt it vibrating against my own ribs.
This wasn't a flare of temperament; this was the wreckage of a soul. I had been braced for a wolf, a lethal assassin ready to pounce on the crown, but instead, I was shielding a bird whose wings had been scorched by a fire I couldn't see.