Enzo #3
The sendings sat on my desk behind us. My city waited beyond the windows.
My father was riding south. Aldric slept under my roof with treason in his shadow.
Mireya carried death beneath her skin. And Nadia was pressed between my body and the door, her blood on my tongue, her pulse beneath my mouth, and the bond telling me she wanted this exactly as much as I did.
I didn’t have enough mercy left in me to be gentle.
She didn’t want mercy. Not then.
I took her against the door of my study with one hand pinned above her head and the other locked around her hips, hard enough that the wood shook beneath her palms. She pushed back into me like she intended to survive me out of spite.
Beautiful woman. Impossible woman. Mine.
She came with my mouth still at her throat, one hand twisting in mine, the other clawing at the door for purchase. I felt it through the bond, that sharp, helpless breaking that dragged my name out of her in a sound I would have burned kingdoms to hear again.
I followed her over the edge with my teeth still against the mark I’d made, and her name caught behind mine.
For a long time, neither of us moved.
Her forehead rested against the door. My body held hers there. My arm stayed locked around her waist because I didn’t trust gravity, the floor, the walls, the gods, or anything else in the room not to try to take her from me.
The room smelled of rain, leather, lamp oil, and her.
I pressed my mouth once, softer now, to the place I’d bitten. Nadia’s hand loosened beneath mine.
“Possessive bastard,” she murmured, voice wrecked.
I almost laughed.
“No,” I said against her skin. “This was strategy.”
Her breath shook. “Veyne.”
“And fury,” I added.
Then I let my forehead rest against the back of her shoulder and held her while the world outside the door remembered how to exist. For one impossible moment, I let myself forget the sendings. Then I remembered everything.
I carried Nadia to the desk and sat with her on my lap, because if I let go of her too quickly, something in me might show its teeth at the walls.
She let me hold her. That was new enough to matter. Her head rested against my shoulder. My arms locked around her waist. The bond settled into a deep, open hum neither of us tried to quiet.
I glared at the sendings beside her hip. At the names of places I’d failed to reach in time. At the ink that had brought me ruin in three different hands. Then I looked at the woman on my lap.
The thought came slowly, and naming it felt like opening a vein.
Everything in my province had been touched. Villages. Roads. Watchtowers. Household staff. My captain. My city.
Nadia had been touched, too. Marked. Wounded. Hunted. Dragged through every dark thing this war could throw at her.
But she hadn’t been taken. She was here. In my arms. In my study. Breathing. Still herself. Still mine.
Not the only thing I hadn’t failed, no. That was too simple. Too selfish. She was the one thing that reminded me failure wasn’t the end of the work.
The bond carried that before I could stop it.
Nadia lifted her head. Her eyes met mine, dark and clear and far too knowing. She said nothing. Only put her hand against the side of my face. Her thumb traced my jaw.
It wasn’t forgiveness or comfort. It was worse. It was faith.
I closed my eyes and pressed my forehead to hers.
We made it to the bedchamber eventually.
I carried her up the stairs because she let me, and because the part of me that had crossed three days of rot and fear needed the weight of her in my arms more than it needed dignity.
We passed no one. The bedchamber had been prepared. Fire lit. Bed turned down. Food waiting on the side table. Neither of us looked at it.
This time, I undressed her slowly. Properly. In front of the fire, with both of us standing in the warm gold light and the world held, briefly, on the other side of the door.
I kissed each place I uncovered. The new scar on her cheek. The shoulder where the tendril had caught her. The inside of her wrist. The hollow of her throat. The place on her breast where I had bitten her on the night the bond closed, though the mark itself had long since faded.
She watched me do it. No deflection. No sharp little comment. No blade drawn across the softness to make it easier to survive.
She let me worship the proof that she had come back to me. Then she put her hands in my hair and pulled me down to her mouth.
The second time was slow enough to feel everything.
The fire burning low beside us. The quiet city beyond the windows. The bond open and deep and mercilessly honest. Her hands on my back. Her breath in my mouth. The way she broke apart beneath me once, twice, a third time, before I allowed myself to follow.
Gods.
As if I hadn't belonged to her from the first moment the bond locked into place and named every future argument I would ever lose.
I didn’t know what time it was when she finally slept. The fire had burned to embers. The chamber was dark. The city beyond the windows lay under its too-early curfew, silent as a held blade.
Nadia slept against my chest, her face tucked into the curve of my throat. The same place she came back to every night now, whether she meant to or not.
And beyond the glass, my city waited for dawn like a verdict.
I held her through the dark and didn’t sleep.