Chapter Thirty-Six
Iwake in the morning on my side with Ronan’s arms wrapped around me, his body pressed against mine.
There’s a chill in the room where the fire has gone out, though I can only feel it on my cheek, the rest of my body shielded from it by his embrace. The morning light is streaming through airy white curtains, casting soft shadows through the room.
Ronan’s bedchambers. A place I’d thought about so many times, and I’m finally here, waking up with him.
The space is smaller than I had imagined.
The four-post bed takes up most of it, leaving only enough room for a velvet chair and a small table near the fireplace.
The furniture in here, as I expected, is all Nithyrian wood.
The sheets against my body are smooth white silk, and the comforter over us is soft and wine-colored, with golden threads running through it.
Ronan stirs against me, and I feel the length of him as he shifts my hips back to him.
We woke each other twice more in the night, and I thought that after the last time had left me so satiated I couldn’t see straight that we’d taken care of our desires at least until the evening came again.
But feeling him against me, my body responds, sending warmth between my legs once more.
He kisses my shoulder as I pull him into me again.
We’re both so exhausted, our bodies so spent, that we stay exactly where we are.
We take turns, him thrusting into me, me shoving my hips back and taking him in, until we find our release again in moaning gasps, our bodies slick with sweat and each other.
By the time I wake again a little while later, the windows have been opened, allowing a warm, late morning breeze into the room. The bed beside me is empty, but Ronan hasn’t gone far. He’s wrapped in a loose robe, sitting at the small table eating breakfast.
When he hears me sit up, he comes over to me, kissing me on the cheek. “Good morning,” he says. It wasn’t a dream, then. Thank Kerensa for that. “I hope you don’t mind that I started without you. You looked too peaceful to disturb.”
Another chair has been brought into the room.
Ronan shows me to his washroom through an absurdly large chamber dedicated entirely to his clothes—which do exist in colors other than black, although black predominates—and I take the opportunity to freshen up, donning a silk robe of my own in a sage green color.
I notice that he’s already fixed his hair. I muss it up as I join him at the table, eliciting a very adorable, “Hey!” and a lot of frantic smoothing.
I devour my breakfast—eggs, sausage, roasted vegetables, and a chewy honeyed pastry that I’ve grown particularly fond of and that has appeared more and more frequently on the palace menu in recent weeks, purely coincidentally, I’m sure.
As I’m eating, Ronan explains that he’ll need to spend the day, possibly the next few days, dealing with the Alchemists’ Guild situation.
He invites me to join him, but I decline, at least for today.
I need to let Larus know what happened to me before they hear it from someone else. (And Adria too, I suppose.)
And I need to find out if Larus has managed to derail the invasion. Because there is one last thing between us—the reason that we came here. I want to tell him the truth even more now after he saved me. After what happened between us last night.
But I can’t betray my family. Not unless I have no other choice.
After breakfast and one final morning tumble in the sheets, Ronan shows me a passage that leads from his chambers to the hall that contains the chambers Adria and I share.
“I’d like to introduce you to the court,” he says, suddenly shy, as I’m about to leave. “At the closing ball. If it would be alright with you.”
He doesn’t say it, but I understand his meaning. He’d like to introduce me to the court as his consort. His partner.
It’s a serious move. From what I know of courtly politics, only official relationships receive such an introduction typically, and only when the monarch or other royal intends to marry, although the marriage could still be far off.
It’s a lot to grasp. As much as I feel for him, I don’t know how I feel about letting everyone else know.
There’s a part of me that wants to shout it from the palace rooftops, but there’s also a part of me that wants to keep it entirely to ourselves.
To keep it our secret, something that we share with only each other, for as long as possible.
Maybe it’s the shadow-born in me.
“Oh,” he says, feeling my panic. There’s a twinge of pain, and then he smiles mischievously. “Of course. I’m getting ahead of myself. Our secret for now, then.”
And then he fucking winks at me.
“I swear to the gods—”
“You love it,” he says, winking wildly so that it looks like his face is spasming and pulling me into his arms.
He kisses me while laughing. The kiss deepens, as all of our kisses seem to do now, but he breaks from it, spanking me as he sends me into the passage.
“Get out of here before I take you back to bed,” he says, and I sigh as I return to my chambers, missing him already.
I find Adria and Larus together in a palace courtyard, watching the winning comedy street performance. It’s a bawdy, silly affair about fishmongers going on an epic quest; Quinn and I saw it a couple of weeks ago before the competition came to a close.
“And where have you been?” Adria whispers to me.
Damn. I was hoping she would have found someone to keep her entertained last night, but it seems like she noticed I was gone.
“Kidnapped,” I say simply. Larus’s eyes open wide. “Nearly killed.”
“Very funny,” she says.
“Sylvie?” asks Larus, realizing I’m serious.
“I found the missing shadow-born I told you about a few weeks ago,” I say to Adria. “The Guild Mistress decided I needed to join their number. Apparently Hermes was helping her. He’s dead.”
That finally gets her attention. “Are you saying that the Mistress of the Alchemists’ Guild kidnapped shadow-born?”
“Kidnapped you?” asks Larus.
This is the part I know they’ll both like. They know he’s still alive, so it doesn’t jeopardize their plans. “It was a trap for the king.”
They shoot an approving look between them. “Did it work?” asks Adria. She guides me by the shoulder, and the three of us leave the courtyard and head onto a path out of the palace.
The streets are busy once again, this time with carts full of the incoming harvest. The harvest festival next week, which I’d once thought to be a dangerous waste of limited resources, is now something I’m really looking forward to.
Even Adria forgets to mime her discontent as a cart of wonderfully fragrant plums passes.
We find a bench overlooking an empty plaza, tucked out of the way of the main thoroughfare. There, I explain to them how the king rescued me and healed me, killing Zara in the process.
“And you stayed with him last night?”
I smile but shake my head. “I was paralyzed. I stayed under the supervision of a healer until I could move again this morning.”
Mostly true.
Adria exchanges a look with Larus, something from an earlier conversation of theirs that I can’t interpret. I find myself wishing I could feel them just as I can feel Ronan when I’m near him.
“Do you think…is there a chance he’d ask you to stay longer? After the festival is over?”
“Why?” Has Larus come through for me? Is something wrong with the plan?
She smiles weakly, her annoyance underneath apparent. “Our brother is giving me grief. I gave him one task—”
“Adria,” Larus warns as her voice rises.
She composes herself. “We may need a bit longer than we imagined. The festival ends in ten days, and we aren’t ready. And not only Seth, but the ships aren’t willing to risk the storm—”
“There’s a storm coming?” There hasn’t been a drop of rain since we left Nithyria.
“It’s far from here, out on the southern reaches of the Blue Sea,” says Larus. “Some of the ships coming in warned my mother, and she won’t send her ships out of harbor until it passes. I doubt it will even come here, but there’s no arguing with her once she’s made up her mind.”
I could hug him. Larus did it. I don’t know how, but he’s managed to delay the plan at least. It’s not the end of it, but it gives me enough time to think of something to make Adria change her mind.
But I need to suppress my joy if I want to keep Ronan alive. “So you’re saying I need to…keep doing what I’m doing?” I feign disgust. “I don’t know how much longer I can keep him from…” I shudder. I hope it’s convincing.
“You can do it,” says Adria. “I’ve seen what you’re capable of. Now that you have him, push him away again. He’ll come back.”
Larus nods in agreement. “She’s right. I don’t think there’s much you can do now to dissuade him if what you said happened last night is true. He killed for you, Sylvie.”
He had. I hadn’t truly thought about what that must have cost him.
“It won’t be much longer,” promises Larus. Adria looks at him skeptically, but she doesn’t argue with him. “Tell him you need to spend some time with us, if you need an excuse to get away. We’ve missed you.”
Adria does her best “I’ve missed you” face, which is closer to “If you fuck this up for me, I’ll murder you in your sleep,” but that’s about what I expected.
I do end up spending the day with them. Having been entertained nearly to death by the previous weeks of the Festival of Arts, we go for a walk along the River Mara instead, following a paved path down to the sea.
“Just…there,” says Larus, pointing to the southeast. “If you keep going, you’ll reach Port Limin.”
Adria looks out over the waves as if willing the storm away. Her eyes are filled with determination, even with this setback. I can’t imagine how to convince her to change her course.
What would I do to stop her? How far would I go for the sake of Ronan? For the sake of Selara and Nithyria both?
How far would I go for the greater good?
Wherever my limits lie, I suspect I’ll find out soon enough.
One way or another.