“You brilliant female,” he barks out before unsheathing a large dagger from his hip. He scrunches his eyes in concentration and grips the dagger tightly. Slowly, he rises in the air. Opening his eyes, he whoops with delight when he sees that it’s working. My burly best friend rises maybe a dozen steps before his fingers slip and he crashes to the floor. Silene and I cackle with delight. Fionn only stands and glares at us before sheathing the dagger and stalking up the stairs once more.

We finally make it to the door of the Council chamber we came to on our second day here. Laurel’s rooms are just a few paces down this hallway. When we reach the large wooden door engraved with thayars and about a hundred other kinds of flowers, I knock lightly, letting her know we’re there and the hallway is clear. She opens the door, and we quickly file in.

Laurel looks captivating, as usual. She’s dressed in casual clothing, hair braided back, no makeup. I can see her freckles like I did the day we trained, and my body demands that I move closer to her. As I pass her to enter the room, our eyes meet, and I swear electricity zaps between us. This keeps happening, the feeling similar to conjuring tiny bolts of lightning in my hands. But she turns as if nothing happened, leaving me wondering if I’ve imagined it. My body aches to touch her, but I push down the urge, finding a corner near the doorway to stand in as I survey her rooms.

Like everything else with this unlikely monarch, her chambers surprise me. They’re smaller than even my own chambers in Velmara. There’s a simple sitting room and bedroom beyond, but that’s it. The sitting room is furnished with chairs that look like they could be older than my father, many of them fraying at their seams. As I walk farther into the room, her magnetic and seductive scent hits me—overwhelming lilac with the barest hint of mint. It invades my senses and nearly chokes me, so strong in her living quarters that I almost growl at the way it makes me feel. I take one deep inhale to satisfy whatever beast lurks deep within me, then continue scanning the room in detail to distract myself from the building heat in my core and the untethered way it makes me feel.