Cas smiled when Iris reaffirmed that she wanted to be with him. He would never get tired of hearing it. However, the expression didn’t last long as she went on to tell him what she knew about the rebels in the city. His brows furrowed in thought at the mention that they weren’t far from the safe house. That was interesting, since they weren’t very far from the harbor. He wondered if the rebels had been using the waterway to get into the capital and made a mental note to have his security team follow up on that hunch later. There were enough security cameras in the area that one of them had to have picked up [i]something[/i] near the docks if he was right.

[color=#b97703]“One of a few,”[/color] he said with a half-smile, giving her hands a squeeze. He didn’t know where all of the safe houses were off the top of his head, since he’d been a kid when his father had flown him around to see them, but he did know there were at least four of them both in and outside of the capital city. The one they’d ended up using was one of the smallest too.

At her question, he lifted his shoulders. [color=#b97703]“I was, but not around here,”[/color] he replied, sidling closer to her on the bed to wrap an arm around her waist. Now that she was back, he couldn’t help wanting to be as close to her as he could get. [color=#b97703]“Right now, I have a couple guys looking into some officers in the military… but it doesn’t matter.”[/color] He shook his head. [color=#b97703]“You’re not going back to prison, Iris. Never again. And… after we get out of here, I want you to come back to the palace with me.”[/color]

As he pulled her in against his side, he held her gaze earnestly. In his head, it wasn’t even a question. They’d spent too much time apart, and no matter what anyone else thought about it, he had more than enough space with all the vacant rooms his family hadn’t occupied since his father had evicted them. [color=#b97703]“If it’s still too soon to share the master room with me, you can stay in one of the other bedrooms down the hall,”[/color] he offered. Honestly, he did want her as close as possible, but he wasn’t going to push it after everything she’d been through. As much as he wanted to pick up right where they’d left off, he didn’t know if she was ready for that or not.

And there was still the matter of his almost-fiancée. He could see on Iris’s face that she wasn’t happy to find out that he’d started seeing someone else while he’d thought she was dead. A part of him wished he’d waited just a little longer too—but there was no way he could have known he’d see her again. [color=#b97703]“You have nothing to be jealous of,”[/color] he promised. [color=#b97703]“Nothing happened, and we never even got far enough into it to start courting. We just talked about it.”[/color] He winced a little, shuffling his feet as he glanced away from her. [color=#b97703]“She’s, um… the princess of the Suphate kingdom. Her name’s Raine, and the only reason we even considered courting was because we were friends when we were kids. But really,”[/color] he turned back to her insistently. [color=#b97703]“Now that you’re back, everything is different. I don’t want to be with her, Iris. I want to be with [i]you[/i]. I love you.”[/color]