Chapter 55: Until Morning

Aziza

I was dressed in the cold and heavy silk of the black tunic, wet and sticking to my ribs and leaving a trail of water in the grooves of the floorboards on the polished wood of the hall beyond the doorway of his room. Stray tendrils of hair from my pins had sprung loose and flattened to the back of my neck, and my toes caught in a raised sliver of the wood as I staggered into Rhydian's room. He didn't speak; he merely glanced up briefly to my face, then shifted his stance, gesturing. My knees didn't bend well and so I fell to the edge of the bed long before I got to the washstand beside it, my thigh connecting with the frame a heavy blow and my hands flung up to the hollows of my eyes as I pressed them, hard, until black, then blood red. Then the noises came from my own throat—a thick, gasping, hiccuping sob catching in your ribs so hard you can't catch your breath. I had been building up to them since the edge of the pool, since the scrape of the wet gravel under my boots, since Vessa had leaned in so close I could feel the heavy coconut oil of her hair caress the air around my head, to tell me he came to her rooms every night.

The mattress sank with a puff of air when he put his weight down behind me, and he did not pull my hands from my face or make me meet his eye. He simply laid the flat of his hands against my shoulders, fingers spread wide, the skin so hot it seeped through the cool, damp linen of my tunic in moments.

I threw it all at his lap, from the end of the story, then backwards to the middle, and then right back to the beginning, forcing my words through my lips so they didn't get stuck in my teeth—the wall, Vessa's mouth opening and the words, her name that spilled from it, his presence in her room, asking if they were trying again, the gesture of her fingers clawing at me as she lunged forward, the mud splatter on her dress, the smack of her spit on the wet gravel. Rhydian didn't interrupt. The muscle in his jaw tensed into a tiny knot under his ear, but his hand never left the smooth line of my spine.

"She said that you had been going to her rooms?" I whispered, my voice hoarse, dry already. "That you were trying again?"

He turned his head slowly towards the hearth where a burning lump of wood that was splitting in the center of a pine branch was slowly being reduced to embers, a pallid red bloom that lit his face, just his left cheek, making it warm, then shadowed.

"Is that true, Rhydian?" I asked.

A short puff of air exited his nose. "Yes."

I pressed my knuckles together in my lap until they ached and the skin across the joints was white.

"Why?"

He turned his head very slowly, his neck tensing under the starch of the collar of his tunic, looking down into my face. "My father expects an heir from my line, Aziza. Vessa is still my mate under the law of the pack. There are things I… things that I have to maintain." His lips thinned. "It has nothing to do with you and I being here."

"She said that you told her you loved her," I choked, my tongue clumsy and thick. "Last night. While you were dancing with her at the gathering."

The firelight gleamed on his cheekbone, so high he had to turn his head. It caught one side of his face with warmth and threw the other into deep, dark shadow. His mouth was parted slightly, the way it always was when he stopped running the careful explanations he offers to soothe tensions within a council session, and let it show in an unguarded, ragged moment.

"I said what I had to say to preserve the peace," he said, very softly.

My eyes followed the trail of a droplet of water down the smooth dark wood of the floorboards to my chin, where it sank in to leave no trace.

He placed his finger and his thumb under my chin, turning it so that I was looking at him. Smooth pads pressed themselves to my pulse, tracing the bone there twice before moving upward to the point of my jawbone, again in a soft press, tracing my cheekbones so gently that for a few moments I feel as though I have no feeling in them. Then his mouth covered mine—hot and heavy. I held my breath for one sharp instant, a thrumming in my ribs that was like a captured bird beating against the wood, then my lungs released in a breath and his mouth on mine eased, loosened the knot inside my sternum.

He pulled a heavy arm about my waist and lifted me from the edge of the mattress, and held me, full length into the air, my soaked hemline bunching against my hips.

We went to the bed until the sheets tangled round our ankles, then found the rug, bare feet cool on the fibers. Back to the floor then; bare planks proved too sharp under my knees. We tumbled about his room like that—like strangers whose nights have defined edges and no time to waste on activities beyond necessity.

He mapped the curve of my ribs through the rough linen while I dug my nails into the slopes of his shoulders, drawing pink marks that paled and then disappeared as he moved. The tiny air of the room grew heavy with the sweet smell of smoke, skin, and the thick sweetness of exertion while the light outside the window grew deeper than midnight to a dull plum color.

He didn't even flinch as my breath caught, hiccuping into gasps, and as his lips lingered on the hollow of my throat, he hurried still; my thighs clamped his hips in a trap as I pulled him by his hair. Some hours later the voices in the garden ceased, the weight of the two rings around my neck became bearable, and the thought of the study down the hall dissolved. All that remained was the slippery slide of his chest across mine and the weighty pressure of the wardrobe pressing against my back as I leaned into it, and we found the exact angle for our motion until the first low growl broke against my ear. The rug on the floor again, broad enough we were indifferent to the sweat or the grease that marked the surface. Then he pulled me up on the mattress when my bones rattled at the joints, and put his mouth against my neck as he let me hang, limp, until my breaths evened again.

The part I liked best was when I was positioned above him. My knees hooked over the thick ridge of his flanks. He didn’t pull his gaze from mine; never even so much as cast a glance at the door or calculated the hour until morning. He looked directly at me with the unflagging single focus he used when he signed a new treaty, and when the firm pressure of his fingers closed on the flesh of my hips, he completely unraveled me, not just my body, but my whole being, in a way that no act of physical intimacy has ever done before.

By the time the glass outside the window grew the pale grey-white color of a wet slate stone, we lay tangled beyond disentangling under the thick down of the bed coverings. My face was flat against the center of his chest where I could hear the muffled, soft thump of his heart.

The two rings round my neck were still where they should be; I traced two fingers through the metal to test their heat where they rest against my skin, tucked between my breasts, against his chest. I wonder what Sena will look like if she sees the dark purple bruises around my throat, the shadows beneath my eyes, and when she finds me in my chamber at dawn.

She will say nothing—at least, not out loud. She will fill the water pitcher with so much water that it will overflow, her eyes fixed on the dusty, crisscrossed joists in the ceiling, and wait. Wait until I find a voice again—a voice of my own, and use it.

"She spat on you," Rhydian said, his body a warm dead weight against me, but his voice was low and dry and surprisingly alert against my hair.

"Yes."

The logs crackled softly, settling further into their bed of glowing embers, and let out a wet hiss, the sound startlingly loud in the silence.

"Rhydian," I said, rubbing my cheek against the short, coarse hair of his chest. "Don’t you dare do anything to her."

"I am contemplating."

"Contemplate slowly, then," I said, thumping my fist on his chest until it resonated. "She’s hurt and profoundly humiliated, and she hit out because it was the only thing she had left in the world. It wasn’t right, but I understand why she did it, and I don't want you sending her to a cell, or worse."

He didn't answer.

"Please," I whispered.

He put out his hand and closed his fingers tightly around my knuckles and pressed me closer to his body. He still wouldn't meet my eye.

"She will attack you again. She'll try again on you."

"I can handle Vessa."

"She spat on you."

"And I am still breathing," I said, levering myself up onto my elbows on his chest. "You have to let me deal with Vessa. If you continue to intervene and punish her every time she says anything derogatory about me, people are going to assume that I’m some fragile creature who can't exist here without protection. I cannot afford to look that weak."

He met my gaze for a long time. His lips were tightened in a hard line, then he turned his face back to the ceiling.

"Very well," he said.

The light coming from the glass in the window was gray and flat. It would be just minutes before the iron bell would clang across the courtyard and the servants would trudge away to their breakfast tasks, and Sena would be at my chamber door in the east wing to find it empty.

I laid my head back down on his shoulder again and closed my eyes. "I need to be in my room before the first bell," I whispered.

"You have five minutes," he replied.

I stayed for ten.