Chapter 5 Mav
MAV
My rooms hadn’t gotten any bigger since this morning, though it felt different with her here.
The space had rearranged itself to make room for something I didn’t fully understand.
The tether tugged between us—no more than a nudge, but enough to remind me we were still bound.
Still stuck. And yet, for all that, I didn’t mind the sight of her here. Not like I should’ve.
I kicked the door shut behind us. “You can have the bed again.”
“Thank you.”
I shrugged and started untying my boots. “Don’t thank me yet. You’ll regret it the morning after a second night on your spine.”
The corner of her mouth turned up. She crossed to the cot with unhurried grace, steps light enough that the boards barely complained.
She lowered herself onto the edge as though the sagging mattress were an intentional design choice, her back perfectly straight despite the dip.
One hand smoothed a crease in her gown—small, absent, but it caught my eye.
Anyone with eyes could see that Quinn didn’t belong in this place—but she didn’t seem to care.
Somehow she made the cot look like a throne, the cracked plaster behind her like some deliberate backdrop.
She was strange like that. Not aloof. Not cold. Just…anchored. Like the world might spin, but she’d keep walking anyway.
I stretched out on the floor, wincing slightly as soreness burrowed into my muscles, and laced my hands behind my head.
The ceiling was the same as always—cracked plaster and spiderwebs and a water stain shaped like a broken heart.
I’d stared at it a hundred nights, wondering how much longer this roof would hold.
Tonight, I found myself wondering something else entirely.
How long would she have stayed if she’d chosen to be here?
If her explanation of the spell was to be believed, we had twelve days left of whatever this was.
For now, she was here. Real, strange, and entirely out of place in my life.
Fidgeting, I realized she was becoming a constant.
Something the world had finally decided to give instead of take.
I didn’t trust it.
I didn’t hate it either.
Quinn stood near the washroom door, fingers poised at the edge of her gown, unsure if speaking would break the air between us.
“Is there a place to bathe?” she asked, as politely as if we were in a palace and not a miserable building.
“Disrobing, are we?” I blinked. “Trying to seduce me already?”
She arched one elegant brow and said, “If I were, I would be doing a terrible job of it.”
“Hah!” A laugh barked out of me. “Fair point.” I jerked my chin toward the door behind her. “Washroom’s through there. It’s mostly functional.”
The hint of a smirk formed on her lips. “Much like its owner.”
My mouth fell open. “Was that a joke?”
Her smile broadened.
“My, my, you are full of surprises.” I rubbed the back of my neck, suddenly aware of the grit there. “Fair warning, I’m making use of it after you. Worked all day, and the last thing you want is to share a room with me smelling like this.”
She tilted her head, considering. “Perhaps I should let you go first, then.”
“Nah. You’ll be faster.”
One brow arched in challenge. “Do you truly believe that?”
I grinned. “Not at all. But I’ll risk it, princess.”
“I am not a princess.” She moved to open the door, but paused. “Should I wait for you to heat the water?”
I grinned, slow and smug. “Nah. My landlord, Wren, who you had the displeasure of meeting, is a Hearth. Keeps the tanks hot for the whole building. Only decent thing about this place—present company excluded, of course.”
The comment earned me the faintest eye-roll, but the corners of her mouth curved. Quinn disappeared into the washroom, pulling the door mostly closed behind her—mostly, because it didn’t latch properly and we both knew it.
I let out a sigh and flopped back on the floor, cursing under my breath.
Because now there was a woman—bare, beautiful, and seemingly cursed—in my washroom.
Fifteen paces away.
Steam hissed faintly through the doorframe, carrying the faint mineral tang of the pipes. A splash of water. The whisper of cloth sliding to the floor.
The tether stirred; the flex of a muscle in sleep.
I felt it low in my chest, an awareness that wasn’t mine alone.
As though somewhere beyond the wall, she’d paused mid-movement, caught by the same inexplicable thread.
A prickle ran beneath my skin. It wasn’t pain, but it wasn’t peace either.
The feeling was too alive to ignore, too faint to understand.
For one impossible heartbeat, I thought I could sense her. The thought left my pulse uneven.
I was officially going mad. Although I knew very little about the Tether gift, or any of the higher-order magics, I’d never heard of the connections it forged allowing communication. No. This delusion must have been born of my own loneliness and pathetic longing.
Saints help me.
I rolled onto my stomach, hoping it would somehow silence the thoughts clawing their way through my skull.
It didn’t.
I wasn’t an idiot. I’d seen naked women before. But this—this was different.
Because this wasn’t about sex.
It was about the fact that she trusted me enough to turn her back. To undress in a room that didn’t lock. To strip away her defenses and slip into something so human as hot water and soap.
It affected me more than I was prepared to admit.
A faint ripple in the tether again—as if the thought had carried across it. I froze, irrationally certain she might feel that I was thinking about her. I told myself that was ridiculous. Told myself it was just my imagination. But the paranoia refused to leave.
I squeezed my eyes shut. Tried to think of anything else. Sweating horses. Moldy soup. Wren’s snoring. Physical exams by surgeons with cold hands.
Nothing worked.
There was a bare woman in my room. In my tub. And I was trying very hard not to imagine the steam pooling over her collarbones, the curve of her legs, the way her hair might float like ink in the water—
The tether gave another traitorous thrum.
Nope.
I sat up, slammed my fist gently into the mattress, and muttered, “You’re headed to the seven hells, Mav. The slow way.”
I stood and paced twice, then dropped back down, arms crossed behind my head, the picture of innocence.
The water shifted again, enough to imagine skin sliding against porcelain. I swallowed hard.
Get a hold of yourself. You are a gentleman.
Or I was at least a man who was trying.
And that had to count for something.
The door creaked open.
I didn’t look immediately, at the risk of seeming too eager or borderline unhinged. Or like I hadn’t spent the last ten minutes pretending the thin wall separating us might turn transparent at any moment.
Quinn stepped fully into the room, and my traitorous eyes slid to her. My mind and lungs ceased functioning in maddening harmony.
Hanging loose on her frame was one of my old tunics, navy linen, worn soft at the seams. The collar gaped at her collarbone.
She’d pushed the sleeves to her elbows, hem brushing dangerously high on her thighs.
Her legs—Saints, her legs—bare and pale, carried her across the floor as if this were any other day.
As if her walking around my room, wearing my clothing, and smelling of my soap was a normal occurrence.
She wasn’t trying to be seductive.
Which was worse.
Because it meant she didn’t know.
Quinn didn’t know what it did to me to see her this way—soft edges in a room built out of sharp angles and sharper disappointments. Dark hair curled where it clung to her neck. Skin flushed from the bath’s heat.
She caught me staring. Of course she did.
Her brow arched slightly, cool and knowing. “It was the only thing that did not smell of stable.”
I cleared my throat, trying to find words other than a prayer or obscenity. I failed. “Looks better on you anyway.”
She ignored the remark—gracefully, damningly—and padded to the bed.
I dropped to the floor with a thud, grateful for the splinters in my spine if only because they gave me something else to feel.
The steam still floated in the air, carrying the scent of soap.
My shirt clung unpleasantly to my back, stiff with the salt of a day’s work.
I couldn’t remember the last time I’d been so aware of how much I needed a bath.
I pushed myself up before the tether could talk me into staying where I was. “I’m taking my turn,” I muttered, nodding toward the washroom.
Her eyes flicked to me, unreadable. She didn’t comment, but gave a brief nod in acknowledgment.
I shut the washroom door as far as it would go—not because it latched any better for me, but because I needed the barrier. Needed the space. Even if it was only a few paces. The water roared into the tub, sending clouds of fresh steam swirling around me.
I stripped quickly, dropping my clothes in a heap on the cracked floor.
The sudden absence of fabric felt…dangerous.
Because it hit me all at once: I was naked.
She was in my bed, wearing my shirt. And the tether, smug bastard that it was, hummed like it wanted to point out we were both acutely aware of the other.
I stepped into the tub and sank down with a hiss.
The heat loosened the knots in my shoulders, but it didn’t do a damn thing for the tight coil in my gut.
My mind kept circling back to the bed outside this door—how she might be lying now, one knee drawn up under the hem of my tunic, dark hair spilling over the pillow.
I shut my eyes. Bad move. The image sharpened.
This wasn’t the first time I’d been naked in close quarters with someone I wanted. But it was the first time it had felt like the room itself was in on it—like the spell between us was pressing its mouth to my ear and whispering every thought I was trying not to have.
Through the thin wall, I could hear the faintest creak of the mattress when she shifted. Every sound was sharper than it should have been. And Saints help me, all I could picture was turning the handle, crossing the room, and—
No.
I dragged a hand over my face and leaned back against the warped rim of the tub.
She was here because the spell gave her no choice.
That wasn’t the same as wanting to be here.
And whatever pull there was between us, I had no right to act on it.
I scrubbed at my skin harder than necessary, as if I could scour away the thoughts themselves.
By the time I finished and toweled off, I’d convinced myself I could manage it—the space, the restraint, the control.
But stepping out into the main room and seeing her there in my bed again…
hit like a fresh blow. She’d drifted onto her back, hair spilled across my pillow, the blanket drawn high enough to be modest, low enough to make my chest ache.
I told myself I didn’t care if she was asleep.
But my pulse didn’t agree.
I dropped to the floor with a thud.
This is fine.
This is anything but fine.
There was a beautiful woman in my bed. In my shirt. And I was lying on the floor like some self-flagellating monk with boundary issues.
The tether hummed between us again, soft and slow, a reminder that she was there. I was here. And something bigger than either of us had stitched our fates together, threads on the same spool.
I stared at the ceiling.
A sigh. The sound of sheets rustling.
Never in my life had I been so attuned to every sound.
She shifted again on the cot, the mattress creaking softly.
I tried not to imagine her curling her legs under the tunic, or stretching until the hem rose higher.
I thought of chamber pots. Of hot ale. Of swords through the gut.
Anything but the way she’d looked standing barefoot on my floor in clothing that had once touched my bare skin and now lay against hers.
“Good night,” she said softly.
“Good night,” I said quickly, louder than necessary, thinking volume could erase my thoughts along with my guilt for having them. I cleared my throat. “We’re visiting someone tomorrow.”
Her voice floated down, suspicious. “Who?”
“An old friend.”
“Why?”
“Because I want to be rid of this spell.”
Another beat of silence.
Then came the scoff. “It is only two weeks.”
“Exactly,” I said. “Two weeks longer than I want to be camped out on floorboards while you commandeer my bed.”
“Perhaps you should get a larger bed,” she muttered.
A grin stretched across my face. “Why? So we can share one?”
That did it.
The mattress creaked as she shifted sharply. Her glare could have frozen the Merise sea. “I meant a different bed,” Quinn snapped.
“Oh, I see,” I said, feigning understanding. “Different bed. Not shared.”
She went quiet, as if she wasn’t sure if answering would help or hurt. I glanced up at her.
“You know,” I added after a breath, “you’ve got a very dramatic reaction to hypothetical bedding arrangements.”
She didn’t answer. Not with words. But her breath snagged as she fumbled with her own silence.
And Saints, it thrilled me. Not because she was flustered, but because she wasn’t unaffected.
I didn’t say anything further as I lay down. In that low, suspended quiet, I let myself wonder what it might be like to sleep next to her.
Not because of a strange spell, but because I thought I might want to.
She settled once more, a rustle of fabric against skin. Two nights in the same room shouldn’t be enough to learn the pattern of another person’s breathing, or the way the mattress dips when they turn. But I was already starting to recognize her shape in the dark.
Two weeks. Fourteen days. Then she would be gone, pulled back into that unreachable sleep, and I’d be standing here alone, staring at a bed that suddenly felt too big and too cold.
The thread of magic between us gave one more unprovoked pulse, as if it agreed.
I closed my eyes. Told myself to sleep.
But my pulse refused to slow. And her breathing didn’t fade. And the space between us felt narrower with every passing minute.
Realization settled over me as sleep blurred the edges of my thoughts. This was the first time, in longer than I could say, that I hadn’t felt alone.
I wasn’t ready for the day she’d leave.