Elowen
The archive lock is old, but simple. The ward yields to my herb knife in under a minute, the click traveling up through my fingers. I pause to listen, but nothing. I swing it open, and see shelves rise into shadow above sealed ledgers and survey maps. Candles burn low in iron cups.
I go straight to the wildspont records. The earliest maps show a contained line marked in cautious hatching.
Later ones spread in uneven layers of annotation, different hands crowding the margins.
But it's the symbols between them that catch my attention.
Small recurring marks placed at measured intervals across the surrounding region.
Too precise for survey notation. I follow them lightly with my fingertip.
"That's the third time you've done that." Draekir's voice behind me, I've been caught.
"The lock," I begin.
"Took you fifty-three seconds," he states, closing the door behind him. "I watched the first twenty."
"You could have said something."
"I wanted to see if you'd manage it."
He comes next to me, and studies the map.
"These aren't territorial markers," I point to them.
"No."
"There are older records." He pulls a leather-bound folio from a lower shelf and opens it across the table between us. The diagrams are a geometric lattice. Angles collapsing inward toward a shared center point. I think immediately of the fungus from the forest.
"This is the structure behind it." I break the silence.
"The grevhault carried the same lattice," he mentions while turning the page. It shows three recorded disturbances, each marked with the same geometry. Not natural surges. Containment failures. Someone tried this before, years ago, then buried the records where only Mournhold could find them.
"Not a weapon," I murmur, studying it. "A conduit."
I reach for the folio, and my hand brushes his. His body stills, and his eyes meet mine.
"We should bring this to Nyssara," I suggest.
"Yes. We should."
I attempt to open the door, but it's stuck. The storm had worsened while we are reading, rattling the old wards in their frames. Draekir tests it. "The storm sealed it. I can't magic us out of here with that going on."
I turn back, to find it suddenly feels smaller. We may be here until morning. I sigh and lean back against the shelving. The jaw incident lands at the front of mind, and I try to keep in what I'm thinking.
"You've been avoiding it," I eventually say. "Since that night in the kitchen. Whatever was in that room with us that you decided not to say."
Nothing.
"You gripped my face, said what you said and left.
" I make my voice level. "And you've done it every time since — found something that needs handling the moment the distance between us becomes inconvenient.
A door to check. A hunter to brief. A report that apparently cannot wait.
" I hold his profile in my peripheral vision.
"I'm not subtle enough to keep pretending I don't notice. "
"Elowen." My name in his voice sounds like a warning.
"Say what you wanted to say," I demand. He shifts a little. Not away — closer.
The muscle in his throat moves. His hands come up above either side of me, and I feel the weight of his engrossment settle over me making my breathing go careful. This close, his chest moves with each breath he is trying to keep controlled. He glances at my mouth, and returns to my eyes.
"I have not had a single quiet thought since you arrived here."
The words are stripped of every layer he keeps between himself and the world, and they land in my heart. I didn't expect honesty. Not this kind. Not without the armor.
"I have spent over a hundred years knowing exactly what I am and what I am not.
" His jaw is tight. "I have not known how to make sense of you since the first morning you tried to leave with no shoes and a leg that didn't work.
I have become aware of your presence before I cross thresholds.
Every time you argue with me I find myself looking forward to the next argument.
I still don't know how to deal with it. And that is not something I am accustomed to. "
A long roll of thunder moves through the stone beneath our feet. His rough hand reaches to my cheek and he closes the distance. Our lips connect. The kiss is not careful or exploratory.
He keeps one hand above me, and I pull him even closer, letting the shelves dig into my spine. The kiss feels like something has been waiting weeks to happen. He groans and it moves through me like the thunder through the stone.
I wrap both hands around his neck and he slants forward. His body pushes against my hip through the layers between us, the thick press of his cock already straining at the lacing. Neither of us is breathing at a rate Nyssara would approve of.
I retreat only enough to speak. "The staff—"
"Can manage the night." His forehead drops to mine, and he resumes kissing me. His hands slide down to my waist, settling at my hips with intention — that slowness — that is more undoing than any urgency would have been. He's not rushing.
He stops to look at me, and asks, "can I?"
"Yes," I confirm.
Then his hands move to the hem of my tunic, slow enough that I feel every inch of cool air that follows, the anticipation becomes its own insatiable.
He pulls it over my head, and admires me, my body — candlelight on bare skin, the arch of my collarbone, the curve of my breasts — and that gaze does something to my heartbeat.
His mouth travels to my collarbone, outward along the line of it. I can feel my pussy getting wetter as he moves. He takes his time across my breasts and then he puts his tongue on one nipple. I make a sound I did not plan on, and my fingers go into his white hair and hold on.
He works around my nipple gently, until I am pulling at him and my hips are moving against nothing.
The sensation between my thighs has become something I can't ignore.
I want it, I want him. I reach for the fastenings at his shoulder.
The hunting leathers are knotted in ways I don't understand, and my frustration rises fast enough that he exhales against me with something that is almost amusement.
"Here," he whispers.
His hands close and guide mine. It loosens, and underneath is smooth skin, hard muscle and scars mapping him in lines I have been wanting to trace. I brush one with my fingertip. His whole body pauses for a moment. I look to him fast enough to catch it — pleasure.
He grabs my ass, lifting me onto the table in one flow, steps between my legs, and suddenly we are level, and I can feel his pulsating cock against my pussy.
"I have wanted to touch you, since the forest." He admits.
I reach between us and press my palm flat against the front of his trousers, feeling the thick, hard ridge of his cock straining against the fabric. The sound he makes is immediate and it does something irreversible to my ability to think clearly. I work the lacing open.
His cock is heavy, hot, and larger than I was accounting for, but I wrap my fingers around him and pull slowly, base to tip, watching his jaw lock and his eyes go somewhere. I tighten my grip as his hand finds my hair, and he pulls so my eyes meet his.
"You are going to be the end of me," he confesses.
"I know."
He reaches for the remaining fabric between us and removes it — not roughly — until there is nothing left. I have not been this bare in front of anyone in a very long time.
He releases my hand, and drops to his knees.
His mouth finds the inside of my thigh and moves inward — slowly dragging across my skin, teeth grazing once, and pressing my thighs wider when I try to close them.
No effort goes into him holding them open, he keeps going until his mouth finally finds the soaking wet center and I stop being coherent.
His tongue moves as he reads each sound I make, each involuntary rock of my hips, adjusting until he has found the rhythm that makes my fingers tighten and my thighs shake.
He moves it flat and slow against my clit and then flicking, repeatedly, until the pressure builds into something I can't manage or moderate.
I know the explosion is coming. "Draekir. Please. Faster."
He listens and I come apart, the moan is loud enough that I am grateful for the thickness of the walls. I'm pulsating, and I want him to be inside me. I want it again.
He rises and I pull him toward me before he can straighten. He pushes inside slow — steady and deep, watching me the whole time — and I feel every inch of him in stages, the stretch of his cock fills me as I exhale hard.
He is big enough that I have to adjust. His cock drives deep, long strokes that I feel the full length and girth of, and the pace builds.
I stop caring about anything other than the angle he has found.
His hands grip my hips hard enough to leave bruises, and he pulls me in as he thrusts deeper and deeper.
I have given up entirely on keeping quiet.
"Look at me," he requests.
I do. I am the only fact in his world right now. The possessiveness of it should unsettle me, but it doesn't.
He turns us, shifting the angle and pushes back inside me. I grab the shelf above with my hands and hold on. His thumb finds my clit and works it in tight, steady circles while he fucks me, and the combination is ruthlessly effective — within minutes I am shaking.
Both of us are completely past the point of managing anything. His breathing has broken. One hand presses flat beside me. I think he's about to come.
We gaze into each other's eyes, and something rumbles inside me — it's magnetic.
I'm going to come a second time. He knows it too.
He thrusts deeper, untangling me. I can't control my hips, as he pins me down.
The gasp that fills the silence undoes him, I feel the come squirt all over him, and his cock expanding as we both come together.
He falls to my side, keeping one arm around me, and I'm unsure whether I should get up. He curls his arm so I can snuggle into him while he grabs the coat and places it over us. His heartbeat is returning to steady, and I just listen to it.
The high window shows the dark beginning to thin at its edges. The information we found lies where we left it. Still open to page forty-two. Still waiting.
We will unravel it together with Nyssara and begin taking it apart properly. In the morning.