Chapter 28 King Xavier POV
Leo bowed. "And for the morning, Sire? The Council—"
"The Council can wait until I've seen the color return to her face," I said.
I didn't let her walk. I swept her up into my arms, marveling at how light she felt despite the heavy burden she carried. I carried her through the hidden attached door, passing from the cold stone of the conservatory into the warmth of my private quarters.
The room was bathed in the soft glow of a dozen candles, reflecting off the deep mahogany and gold tapestries.
In the attached bath chamber, the steam was already rising from the sunken marble tub. I set her down gently on the edge, watching as she looked at the water with dazed eyes.
"Together," I said softly, as I began to undo the fastenings of my own tunic.
We bathed in silence, the hot water washing away the blood of monsters and the grime of the road. I moved behind her, taking a sponge to scrub the dirt from her back, my touch as light as a prayer.
She leaned her head back against my shoulder, her eyes closing as the warmth finally seeped into her bones. There was no king here, and no assassin. Just two people scarred by a war they inherited, finding a moment of peace in the heart of a storm.
"Leo," I called out as we eventually stepped out, wrapping ourselves in heavy, fur-lined robes. "Bring the wine. The heavy red. And enough food to remind us that we're still alive."
I led her to the massive, velvet-draped bed, tucking her in as if she were the most precious treasure in the Drakmor treasury.
As I climbed in beside her, pulling the silk sheets up, I knew the morning would bring fire and blood. The Council would demand an account. Her parents would demand her soul.
But for tonight, the only thing that mattered was the steady, rhythmic beat of her heart against mine.
"Xavier?" she whispered into the dark as the wine arrived.
"Yes?"
"Thank you."
The silk sheets slid against my skin like water, cool and impossibly smooth, as I settled into the narrow space beside her. Elena shifted, her back finding the curve of my chest, her hips settling into the hollow my body made for hers.
I pulled the sheets higher, tucking them around her shoulders, and felt her exhale, a long, unmeasured breath that seemed to carry something out of her she had been holding since I first touched her.
My hand found her waist beneath the covers. The skin there was fever-warm, still tender from where my fingers had gripped her earlier. I traced the edge of her hip bone with my thumb, not to arouse but to anchor. To remember the shape of her while I still could.
Tomorrow the Council would convene. They would want answers wrapped in accusations. They would want my head, or failing that, my obedience.
And her parents, those polished, predatory creatures who had sold her to death like a deed of land, would hear whispers of where she had spent the night. They would come with their carriage and their contracts and their cold, calculating love. They would speak of duty and destiny and the price of defiance.
I pressed my face into the curve where her neck met her shoulder. She smelled of sweat and lavender and something else now, something that belonged to me, to us, to this room where we had broken ourselves open and found each other in the wreckage.
The knock came soft, almost apologetic.
Elena tensed against me, her hand finding my forearm and tightening there. I murmured something wordless against her skin and rose, pulling a sheet loose to wrap around my waist.
The door opened to reveal a serving girl with downcast eyes and a tray bearing wine, bread, two glasses. She set it on the small table by the window without speaking, curtsied to the floor, and fled as if the room itself might bite.
I poured without asking if she wanted it. The wine was dark, almost black in the moonlight, and it smelled of cherries and earth and time. I carried both glasses back to the bed and climbed in again, the sheet slipping, not caring.
Elena took the glass I offered but didn't drink. She held it in both hands, staring into its surface as if reading something there. The moon caught the rim, turned it silver.
"Xavier?" Her voice was barely air, barely sound.
I set my own glass down on the wooden ledge of the bedframe. "Yes?"
She turned then, enough that I could see her face in the dimness—the disarray of her hair, the flush still fading from her cheeks, the uncertainty in her eyes that she would never have allowed me to see by daylight. Her fingers whitened on the stem of her glass.
"Don't turn back into a monster tonight." The words caught, scraped. She swallowed and tried again. "Just stay."
I reached for her glass and set it beside mine. Then I took her hands in both of mine, turned them palm-up, traced the lines there with my thumbs, the life line, the heart line, all the small scars from blades and needles and whatever else her training had demanded of her.
"I'm not going anywhere, Elena." I pressed my lips to her knuckles, to the pulse at her wrist, to the center of her palm where the skin was softest. "Not anymore."
She made a sound, not quite relief, not quite belief. Her fingers curled around mine, held on. We lay back together, the sheets tangling between us, her head finding the space beneath my chin.
I could feel her heartbeat through her breastbone, through my own chest, a steady rhythm that seemed to synchronize with mine as we breathed together.
The wine sat untouched. The bread grew cold. Outside, somewhere in the city, a dog barked and was silenced. The moon moved across the window, slow and indifferent to human urgency.