Chapter 14
FOURTEEN
The rain didn't wake her in the middle of the night. She hadn't been sleeping.
November sat in the deep stone window embrasure in the kitchen — a wide-silled alcove cut into the estate's thick outer wall, broad enough to curl into with her knees drawn up and her back against the cool stone — and listened to Aelthar's first rain hit the plateau.
It was a good rain. Heavy and steady, without the theatrical violence of a thunderstorm, just water falling that intended to keep falling for a long time.
The estate's dark stone drank it in. The sound traveled through the walls and into the bones of the building, a low continuous exhalation, as though the whole structure had been holding its breath through the dry weeks and could finally let go.
Her tea had gone lukewarm. She wrapped both hands around the mug anyway and pressed her forehead against the window glass. The plateau was black beyond the rain. No stars. No twin sunset. Just darkness and water and the faint silver sheen of wet stone where the kitchen light reached.
Rhaezon was on patrol.
She had not been able to sleep on patrol nights since that first one — since the night he came back with the gash in his shoulder and she found him bleeding in this same kitchen, quiet about it like he'd forgotten there was another option.
Every patrol night since, she ended up here.
In this window. With tea she didn't drink.
Watching the dark for the shape of him coming home.
She was not going to think about that morning.
She was not going to think about the weight of her body on his, or the way his hand had pressed between her shoulder blades, the other on her ass, fingers spread, holding her against him.
She was not going to think about the amber bleeding into his eyes or the involuntary extension of his wing toward her, curving in that small protective arc.
She was not going to think about the fact that she had looked at his mouth.
Deliberately. With intent. That her eyes had traced the shape of his lips and thought about what they would feel like and had been six inches from answering her own question when Davn's voice pulled her back into the world of consequences.
She pressed her forehead harder against the glass.
There she is. That's my girl.
She took a sip of cold tea and closed her eyes.
A sound came from the corridor. Footsteps — hurried, uneven. She straightened and set the mug down.
Vasek appeared in the kitchen doorway. He'd been composed under every circumstance she had witnessed the past three weeks. He was not composed now. His hair was wet from the rain. His shirt was half-tucked. His hands gripped the doorframe.
"Lady Vaethari." His voice was controlled, but the effort of the control was visible. "My wife."
November was already moving, her bare feet hitting the stone floor. "What happened?"
"That cough she's had for months. For the past two days she's had a fever. It broke this afternoon, and I thought — but it's come back worse. Much worse. Her breathing, it's — she needs the healer. Tonight."
November reached for his arm. His skin was cold and damp. "Where's the healer?"
"In town. Twenty minutes by kethral, longer in the rain.
" He swallowed. Something in his jaw worked.
"I can't leave Maren alone. She can't — I'll wait for the Lord.
He and Davn are on patrol." He looked at her with a helpless expression on his face at waiting while his wife was burning alive in their cottage.
November was already reaching for her boots and coat by the door.
"I'll go."
"My Lady, the road in the rain—"
"I'll go, Vasek. Go back to her. Keep her cool. I'll have the healer there within the hour."
He opened his mouth. Closed it. Nodded once and disappeared into the rain.
The stables were dark, warm, and smelled of hay and kethral musk.
November moved through them with purpose, bypassing Shade's stall entirely.
She was not ready for that animal in the rain at night on an unfamiliar road.
She saddled a bay — one of the gentlest the stablemaster used for supply runs, predictable and sure-footed and unlikely to dump her into a ravine.
The kethral shifted its weight as she tightened the girth. Its ears swiveled toward her. She put her hand flat against its neck.
"I need you to be very good tonight," she said. "The road is dark and wet and I've only done this a few times, so we're going to take it slow and you're going to be patient with me. Yes?"
The kethral blew a warm breath against her shoulder.
"Good enough."
She mounted. The six-legged gait rolled beneath her — that wavelike lateral motion she was still learning, still negotiating with her horse-trained muscles. She found her seat. Gathered the reins. Pointed the kethral toward the main gate and let it carry her into the rain.
The world dissolved into water and darkness.
The road — a packed-stone track that wound down from the plateau toward the market town — ran slick beneath the kethral's hooves.
Six legs were better than four for this; the gripping forelimbs extended on the steeper sections, finding purchase on the wet stone with a sure competence that let November focus on staying centered in the saddle rather than navigating.
Rain streamed down her face. It soaked through her coat within minutes.
Her hair came undone entirely and plastered itself against her neck and shoulders.
The cold was different from Earth cold — thinner, sharper at this altitude.
Cold that found the spaces between your clothes and your skin and settled there.
The town materialized from the dark gradually. Lights first — amber and white, wavering through the rain — then buildings, then the familiar market square she had walked through with Rhaezon just days ago.
She shook the memory off. The tavern was lit. Its windows spilled warm light into the wet street.
She dismounted, tied the kethral to the post, and pushed through the door.
Warmth hit her like a wall. The tavern was mostly empty — a few late drinkers at a corner table, the barkeep wiping down the counter, the low hum of conversation that stopped when she entered and then started again with a different quality.
The barkeep looked up. Blinked. November watched him take in the picture: the Lord's human wife, soaked to the bone, alone, at this hour.
"Lady Vaethari."
"I need the healer. Vasek's wife has taken a bad turn. Can you send someone?"
He did not ask questions. He did not hesitate.
He called to someone in the back. A young, gray-skinned Aeltharian who appeared, wiping his hands on a cloth, and the barkeep spoke a few quick words in the local dialect that November's translator caught a half-second behind. The healer. Now. The Lord's estate.
The young man was out the back door before November could say thank you.
"He'll be there within the half hour," the barkeep said. He looked at her. At the water pooling on the stone floor around her boots. At the way her arms had wrapped around her own body. "Sit down, my Lady. Warm yourself before you ride back."
He set a mug of something hot in front of the fire-side chair before she could refuse.
She sat. The fire was enormous — Aeltharian hearths were built for the brutal winters, and even in the mild season the tavern kept it burning — and the heat of it reached into her wet clothes and pulled the tension from her shoulders by degrees.
She peeled off her wet coat and let the fire warm her.
The drink was extraordinary. Warm and slightly sweet, with a depth that unfolded across her tongue — something herbal, something spiced, something that tasted like the amber light of Aelthar's dominant star looked.
Halfway through the mug she identified the current underneath the sweetness.
Alcohol. Not mild alcohol. Not the gentle warmth of wine.
Something with actual engineering behind it.
She considered putting the mug down.
She did not put the mug down.
She was cold and tired and the rain was still hammering the roof and Rhaezon was somewhere out in it and Vasek's wife was burning with fever and she had looked at Rhaezon's mouth today and thought about kissing him and the drink was very, very good and she was going to sit here by this fire for five more minutes while her clothes dried and then ride home while thinking about Rhaezon's hands on her body some more.
The mug was empty before she knew it.
The warmth spread through her chest, her arms, the backs of her hands.
The fire swam a little. She blinked. The room had softened at its edges, gone slightly liquid, and she understood with belated clarity that she had dramatically underestimated the strength of Aeltharian spirits.
She had matched them against Earth liquor in her head and the comparison was laughable.
This was something else. Something that had been fermented by people who lived on a wind-blasted plateau and needed their drinks to mean it.
Fine. Maybe ten more minutes. Then she would ride slow. She would be careful. She would—
"Look at the human."
The voice came from behind her — loose-vowelled, amused, pitched to carry.
November did not turn. The fire suddenly seemed less warm.
"Look what the halvyn brought home to warm his bed."
Chair legs scraped. Two sets of boots crossed the stone floor toward her. The barkeep set his cloth down.
"That's enough, my lord. Go back to your table."
"I'm just being friendly."
"You're drunk. Go sit down."
"I'll sit when I'm done looking."
He came around the side of her chair into her field of vision. Broader than Rhaezon, less refined — dark grey-brown skin, scales surfacing at his jaw, green-gold at the edges of his eyes. He looked her up and down with slow, entitled attention.
November set the empty mug on the hearth and stood. The room tilted a quarter-turn before settling. "I'm leaving."
"You just got here."
He stepped into her path. His friend closed in from the other side — shorter, thicker, grinning like he had been promised a show. The barkeep came around the counter.
"My lord. I am asking you—"
"And I am not listening."
The noble's hand closed around November's upper arm. He pulled. She planted her feet, but the pull still carried her, and her boots slid on the damp stone.
She had time to think no very clearly before her back hit his chest.
He sat down in the chair she had just vacated and brought her down with him, into his lap, the whole of her settled against the whole of him.
The stranger's erection ground hard against her backside.
One arm clamped across her waist. The other hand came up and closed over her breast through her wet shirt, squeezing, thumb dragging.
"Maybe you'd like to come warm my bed, too. Experience what a true full-blooded Drakon can do."
His friend laughed. The barkeep was shouting. November could not get her hands to do what she wanted them to do — the spirits, the cold, the speed of it — she pushed at the arm across her waist and it did not move and her mind went briefly, terribly blank.
"What does the halvyn see in you, human? Let's find out."