Chapter 40 It's my body Aeryn

Chapter 40 It's my body Aeryn

The Dawnbreaker rocked gently at anchor, a cradle of oak and iron. The lantern above Elara’s bunk swayed in slow arcs, painting gold across the beams and then taking it away again. She had bathed (the first real bath in weeks), scrubbed the marsh and blood and dead men from her skin until it stung. The grey wool dress they had given her was soft, almost kind, but it still felt like borrowed clothing on a body that no longer knew whose it was.
She sat cross-legged on the narrow bunk, hair dripping down her back, staring at the locked door. The key had turned with a decisive click an hour ago. Protection, the Queen Regent had called it. A polite cage was still a cage.
A soft scrape came from the porthole.
Elara’s hand found the shard of broken mirror she had palmed from the surgeon’s tray (sharp enough to open a throat if necessary). She rose silently, bare feet cold against the planks.
The porthole was too small for a man. Yet something moved beyond the glass: a darker shape against the dark, fluid as smoke. Fingers appeared (long, clever fingers), working the latch from outside with a sliver of steel. The porthole swung inward on silent hinges.
A man unfolded himself through the gap as though the laws of bone and muscle did not apply to him. He dropped to the cabin floor without a sound and straightened.
He was tall, lean, dressed head to toe in matte black that drank the lantern light. A half-mask of dark leather covered the upper part of his face, leaving only a finely drawn mouth and a jaw shadowed with several days’ growth. His hair (black as a raven’s wing) was tied at the nape with a strip of crimson silk that looked suspiciously like Royal Courier colors.
Elara leveled the glass shard at his throat. “One word,” she whispered, “and I scream for the marines.”
The stranger tilted his head, studying her the way a cat studies a bird that has suddenly grown teeth. Then he smiled (slow, crooked, devastating).
“Hello, little raven,” he said, voice low and velvet-rough. “You’ve looked better. Still beautiful when you’re murderous, though. That’s reassuring.”
The accent was coastal, salt and smoke. She had never heard it before, and yet something in the cadence tugged at memory.
“Who in the nine hells are you?” she asked.
He performed a courtly bow that belonged in a ballroom, not a locked cabin. “Aeryn,” he said, tasting the name like wine. “Just Aeryn. No house, no colors, no allegiance except the one I choose tonight.” His gaze flicked to the glass in her hand. “You won’t need that. If I’d come to kill you, you’d already be dead.”
“Comforting,” she said dryly, but lowered the shard a fraction. “The Queen Regent’s guards are right outside.”
“They’re playing dice and drinking the surgeon’s rum. They’ll be no trouble.” He stepped closer, into the lantern’s reach. The mask shadowed his eyes, but she caught a glint of green (sea-green, storm-green). “Lysenne sent me. Indirectly. She wants to know if the girl who stole Halric Veyl’s treason is clever enough to survive what comes next.”
“And she sent you through a porthole to find out?”
“Queens are cautious creatures.” Aeryn’s smile widened. “Also, I like portholes. They’re honest. Doors lie.”
He was close now, close enough that she smelled cedar and steel and something darker (night air on skin). Close enough that her pulse betrayed her, thudding against the fresh stitches at her throat.
“You’re shaking,” he murmured.
“I’m angry,” she corrected.
“Liar.” His gloved thumb brushed the line of her jaw, feather-light. “You’re exhausted and half-mad with grief and you haven’t let yourself feel a single thing since the marsh. I can taste it on you.”
Elara’s breath caught. She should have stabbed him for the presumption. Instead she found herself leaning into the touch before she caught herself and jerked back.
“Get out,” she said, but it lacked force.
“Make me,” he whispered, and kissed her.
It was not gentle.
His mouth claimed hers like a conqueror planting a flag, all heat and demand and five years of loneliness crashing against her defenses. She bit his lower lip hard enough to draw blood; he groaned into her mouth and kissed her harder, backing her against the bulkhead until the lantern rattled in its gimbal.
The glass shard clattered to the floor, forgotten.
Aeryn’s hands were everywhere (sliding under the wool dress, mapping the scars along her ribs, the curve of her waist, the tremor in her thighs). When his gloved fingers found the bare skin above her stockings, she made a sound she did not recognize as her own.
“Tell me to stop,” he said against her lips, voice ragged, “and I will.”
She should have. Every rational part of her screamed it. Instead she dragged his head down and kissed him until they were both breathless.
He lifted her easily (hands under her thighs) and set her on the edge of the chart table. Charts scattered like startled birds. The dress rucked up to her hips; cool air kissed overheated skin. Aeryn dropped to his knees without ceremony, pushing her thighs apart with reverent hands.
“Gods, look at you,” he breathed, almost worshipful.
Then his mouth was on her (hot, wet, merciless).
Elara’s head fell back against the bulkhead with a thud. Pleasure knifed through her, sharp and bright as broken glass. His tongue traced wicked patterns, teasing and ruthless by turns, until her legs shook and her hands fisted in his hair hard enough to hurt. She bit down on her own wrist to muffle the sounds tearing from her throat.
When she came, it was sudden and blinding, a white-hot wave that left her gasping his name like a prayer she’d forgotten she knew.
He rose slowly, licking his lips with deliberate satisfaction. His eyes (finally visible when he pushed the mask up to his hair) were indeed sea-green, and currently dark with hunger.
“Your turn,” she managed, voice hoarse.
She slid from the table, pushed him back until his shoulders met the door. Her fingers made quick work of laces and buckles. When she freed him, he was hard and hot against her palm. She stroked once, twice, watching his head fall back, the corded line of his throat exposed.
“Elara,” he rasped, warning and plea at once.
She sank to her knees.
He tasted of salt and danger. She took her time (slow, deliberate torment), learning every shudder, every broken curse that fell from his lips. When his hands tangled in her damp hair, urging her faster, she pulled back just enough to make him groan in frustration.
“Patience,” she whispered, smiling against his skin.
His laugh was half-sob. “You’re evil.”
“Occupational hazard.”
She took him deep, hollowed her cheeks, and felt him lose the last of his control. He came with her name on his tongue, hips jerking, fingers clenched in her hair like a drowning man clutching driftwood.
After, they stayed on the floor, limbs tangled, breathing hard. The lantern had burned low; shadows danced across the planks like lovers.
Elara traced the line of a scar that curved beneath his collarbone. “Who are you really, Aeryn?”
He caught her hand, pressed a kiss to her palm. “Someone who owed Lysenne a favor. Someone who just decided the debt’s been paid in full.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“It’s the only one I have tonight.” He brushed a strand of hair from her cheek. “The Queen Regent wants you alive and sharp. She thinks Halric will try to retake you before the fleet makes landfall. She’s not wrong.”
“And you?”
“I think,” he said softly, “that the realm is burning, and you’re the only spark worth following into the fire.”
She laughed (a small, broken sound). “Pretty words for a man who just had his tongue between my legs.”
He grinned, unrepentant. “I’m multitalented.”
They dressed slowly, stealing touches, trading kisses that tasted of salt and sex and something perilously close to tenderness. When he moved toward the porthole, she caught his wrist.
“Will I see you again?” she asked, hating how young it sounded.
Aeryn looked back at her, mask in place once more, eyes unreadable.
“Count on it, little raven.” He brushed his thumb across her lower lip, still swollen from his kisses. “Next time, I’ll use the door. Less dramatic, but I’ll want to take my time.”
He slipped through the porthole like smoke. The latch clicked shut behind him. The cabin was silent except for the creak of timbers and her own heartbeat.
Elara touched her mouth, still tingling, and felt something settle inside her chest (something dangerous and bright).
Outside, the fleet slept under a sliver of moon. Somewhere beyond the horizon, Halric Veyl sharpened his knives, and Cassian (gods, Cassian) hunted shadows that all looked like her.
She smiled into the dark, fierce and sudden.
Let them come.