Chapter Seventeen
Back in the palace, I’m hanging my armor to dry in our chambers when there’s a soft knock at the door.
I must look like hell because Taran’s mouth falls open in shock when I open it. “He wishes to see you.”
He does, does he? “Tell him after I bathe.”
Taran shifts his weight, his armor clinking from the movement. “He said to bring you to him right away.”
“And you will, right away, after I bathe.”
I am not going to talk to him about whatever it is he wants to talk about in this state. My hair is half-fallen from its bun, half-caked in dirt from my time on the ground, and my clothes are stiff with dried sweat.
Even if it’s just a game that we’re playing in getting to know each other, I am not playing it like this.
The servants have already taken my change of clothes down to the changing rooms, so I finish hanging my pauldrons on their rack and head out the door.
Taran is still waiting there.
“Are you going to oversee my bath?”
Taran blushes a deep red that covers his entire face, neck, and even his ears. I both feel sorry for him and feel validated in my assertion that this poor, shy man can’t possibly be bad just by virtue of his birth. “No, ma’am. I’ll tell him you’ll meet him straight after.”
“Good man.” It takes him a minute to leave even after saying that he will, and I imagine he’s trying to determine if he’s failing to follow an order of Ronan’s, or if my defiance is something that can’t be helped no matter what Ronan told him to do.
I take my time bathing, not only because the heat of the hot cave feels particularly nice on my sore muscles and bruised back, but because I’m thinking of what Larus said to me about Ronan benefitting from me taking his side.
It’s interesting because it’s well beyond what I had been thinking.
It made some sense to me that Ronan might want to keep me close to see what Nithyria was planning and if we had anything to do with the information leak, or to be able to stop me himself if I tried to make a move.
I’m the weakest link in our chain, the person with the least experience on and off the battlefield.
But it hadn’t occurred to me that Ronan might think there’s a chance of winning me to his side entirely.
We would never try to do the same; we know there’s no chance of making Ronan give up his crown willingly.
The very notion is absurd. So wouldn’t he consider trying to win me over equally ridiculous?
Or is he so arrogant that he thinks there’s actually a chance?
I’m still drying my hair with a towel—where’s a wind-born when you need them?—when I hear the same faint tap on the changing room door.
“I’m nearly finished,” I say through the crack as I hold the door ajar. “But I’m hungry. I thought I’d stop by the dining hall—”
“He told me to throw you over my shoulder if I have to, but I must bring you to him immediately.”
I open the door a bit more to get a better look at him. “Would you throw me over your shoulder?”
He winces. “Please don’t make me.”
So that’s a yes.
I let him squirm for just a minute thinking he might have to, then I toss the towel back inside and follow him up the stairs to Ronan’s quarters.
The door opens before we approach it. Of course it would. He could feel me from down the hall.
“What took you so long?” he says to Taran, and the poor man stammers an apology.
“It’s my fault,” I say, interrupting him. “I dared to insist on bathing before I was granted my royal audience.”
“Come inside,” says Ronan brusquely. I shoot a regretful look at Taran—sorry I got you in trouble—before following Ronan.
We’re back in the sitting room again, but this time, he opens the door at the back and leads me through into his chambers.
The room we enter isn’t what I imagined at all. There’s no bed in it, I notice entirely too quickly, so he must sleep elsewhere. This is a lounge of some kind, a space meant for gathering and relaxing.
There are clusters of chairs and low divans in luxurious velvet fabrics, some of them angled to face each other in conversation like the benches in the receiving room.
Shelves reach to the high, vaulted ceiling, filled with books, scrolls, and beautiful objects carved from stone or crafted from silver, all of them worth more than everything I own, I’m certain.
On the far wall, curtains of a delicate, gauzy material billow in the cool evening air to either side of a wide archway.
But what catches my eye the most is a desk in the corner with a great map of Selara hung on the wall behind it.
The map is filled with pins and markers that must relate to the stacks of paper below somehow, important trade routes or military installations or maybe just places Ronan likes to visit.
The answers must be there, right on that desk.
I could learn so much in this room. And he let me in here willingly. He invited me.
Ronan stops just inside the door and turns to me.
He’s wearing a sheer black tunic similar to the robes he wore the first time we met.
It’s tight through his shoulders, revealing the tension in the muscles there.
His beautiful, flawless face shifts from annoyance to concern and then returns to a careful neutrality.
There’s a war happening in his mind as he tries to decide how much to give away. It's a feeling I know well.
His composure falters as he looks at my neck. Someone must have told him about what happened in the arena. Did he send someone to keep an eye on me, or had Zara come straight here after the fight? It’s only been a few hours since then.
Instinctively, I try to hide my throat from his gaze. There’s no wound there anymore, but it feels too vulnerable to let him see where someone hurt me.
Did he ask me here to check if I’m alright?
He steps closer, close enough for me to feel his heat, to feel the warmth of his light. Then he reaches out quickly, and then suddenly slows before he makes contact, as if he can barely restrain himself. As if he needs to feel me to be sure that I’m okay, but he’s afraid of how I’ll respond.
I look into his eyes, and there’s something so vulnerable there, so worried, that I lift my chin, granting him access.
Gently, with an almost unbearable delicateness, he brushes his fingers on my skin.
His touch is different than Soren’s. Soren’s touch was familiar and comforting, like the embrace of an old friend. This touch lingers on me, warm and intoxicating, the feeling of it new and rare and sacred. It tugs at me, pulling me into him.
My lips part involuntarily. A droplet of water from my damp hair runs down my neck and onto my chest. I can feel his eyes follow it, and I want him to keep looking.
I want him to watch as the water traces the curve of my breast before disappearing beneath my evening gown.
I want him to wonder where it is when it doesn’t soak into the thin linen fabric.
I want him to envy it.
He exhales softly, and I know his eyes have done as I hoped without even looking up.
“Her work was good,” he says, his voice low and sultry, “but there’s still some bruising.
Here.” He wraps his arm around me and rests his hand on the small of my back, his fingers slipping into the gap between the buttons.
I gasp as his fingertips graze a bruise just below my waist. My skin tingles painlessly as their heat repairs the damaged blood vessels. In moments, the bruise is gone so completely that my only indication it was there at all is the lingering touch of his hand.
I want more.
Am I even pretending now? Do I even need to remind myself that it’s good to give in to this feeling? Or have I somehow managed it without any convincing?
I still don’t know how much of anything that’s happening is real, but I would let him touch me, I realize. He could slide his hand down my back and pull me to him. He could angle my chin up until my eyes meet his, and he could kiss me. Soft, at first. Tentative.
And then harder, wilder, until I’m breathless and gasping for him.
Can he feel that?
I wait for a moment, but he doesn’t move.
He’s as frozen as I am, transfixed by the contact of his skin on mine.
When I look into his eyes, I see another war being waged there.
He wants this—he needs it—but…what? I can’t tell what holds him back.
Maybe he’s afraid? Maybe he’s uncertain if this is a step too far.
Maybe the line between real and pretend is getting a little too hard for him to find.
I know the feeling.
I take a step back, and he pulls his hand from my dress. “Thank you,” I say, my voice barely a whisper. “I’m alright now.”
I turn to leave. I can’t be in here anymore; my feelings are overwhelming my thoughts. I’m not sure if they even are my feelings, or if they’re just the desires of my body.
I feel lightheaded. I feel a heaviness in my core that desperately wants to drag me down with it.
I feel like I should wrap my arms around his neck and kiss him.
I feel like I should run out the door and never so much as look at him again.
I take a step forward, a step away from him, a step towards the door and my sanity.
And he grabs my arm.
It takes every single ounce of my strength to turn around slowly. To not throw myself into his embrace. To wait and hear what he has to say before losing myself in him entirely.
“Wait. Don’t go.”
I stare at him, unblinking.
I can’t move. I can’t even breathe.
His hand is still on my arm. He rubs a gentle circle there with his fingertips, then they still as he thinks better of it. The war in his mind has spread to his hands, to his body.
I know that feeling as well.
Finally, he speaks, the battle won. “Have dinner with me.” He’s trying desperately to regain his composure, to return his voice to its normal tone and cadence, but it only half works. It’s half “have dinner with me,” half “come to bed with me.”