I turned the card.

And felt my heart leap.

“The Phoenix,” I whispered. I then aimed a big smile at him before I went on, “Renewal. Transformation. Rebirth.”

He looked from the cards to me and pointed out, “We do not know what that rebirth will be.”

“Yes, we do.”

“No, darling, we don’t.”

“We absolutely do.”

“Elena—”

I shifted in his lap, took hold of his head in both hands and pressed my lips hard to his.

When I felt his hands glide up my back to keep me close, and perhaps carry on with activities that could lead from a kiss, I disengaged and declared, “We will work. We will toil. We will reflect. We will fight. We will meet victory and be renewed.”

“Your unrelenting optimism is exhausting,” he muttered.

“Well then,” I began, twisting even farther in his lap and pressing my hands to his shoulders to take him down to his back, “if my prince is so fatigued, I shall be forced to do all the work.”

That earned me another grin along with an outright lie.

“It’s devastating to admit, but even just awake, I am remarkably weary.”

As he settled onto the pillows, and I straightened my frame atop him, I felt something not weary at all prodding my stomach.

“Perhaps I can energize you,” I whispered into his neck.

And then I trailed my mouth down, taking my time at his swelling chest, and his delicious stomach, until I found something more delectable between his legs.

I took my time with that too, and my efforts were rewarded.

I energized my prince.

So much, he did not take his time while taking me on my knees from behind, his hand over mine curled on the headboard.

His bed was most sturdy.

But it banged so mightily against the black stone wall, I feared it would crash right through it.

Energized, indeed.

To say the battle that opened the harbor and the subsequent one that ended the siege did not much affect the citizens of Sky Bay was an understatement.

However, the arrest of their king and one of his wives for crimes pertaining to violating a woman did.

I had learned since we arrived in the capital city of Airen why Cassius’s soldiers were lined along the avenue to the Citadel and not off fighting the besiegers.

They were posted thus to be poised to fight any disorder that might occur in the Bay. And as the city was well supplied as a matter of course, and it would take some months for a siege to have significant negative effects on its citizens, they’d been ordered to ignore what happened beyond it until Cassius arrived home.

He needed to hold his capital at all costs, he’d shared. Not only because its harbor was crucial, but also the message it would relay to his people if he could not even secure his home.