Chapter 20
Quiet.
That's what wakes me. Not sound—the absence of it. The constant grinding static that lives behind my eyes has gone soft, muffled, like someone wrapped cloth around the inside of my skull. I don't open my eyes. I don't move. I just lie there and try to remember the last time my head felt like this.
I can't.
She's against me. That's why. Her back to my chest, her ribs pushing into my palm with each breath, her hair in my mouth. I don't move my arm. I don't care about her hair. I care that she's warm and she's here and the noise has finally, finally shut the fuck up.
My hand spreads wider across her stomach. I can feel her heartbeat if I press hard enough.
I press hard enough.
The world outside the blankets doesn't exist. The War God waiting somewhere, the plans I'm supposed to care about, the servants I can hear moving in distant corridors—none of it.
Static. Irrelevant. There's only the heat of her and the weight of her and the fact that if I shift my hips forward she'll feel exactly what waking up next to her has done to me.
I shift my hips forward.
She makes a small sound in her sleep, her body curling tighter, instinctive, pushing back against me. My teeth find the back of her neck and I stay very still.
I could wake her up. I could roll her onto her back right now and find out what her face looks like when she opens her eyes with my cock inside her. I could—
I breathe against her hair instead. She smells like sleep and skin and something underneath that's just her, something I can't name, something I want to put my tongue on.
Her breathing changes.
I feel the exact moment consciousness hits—her breathing changes, her muscles tense, her body goes rigid against mine as she realizes where she is. Who she's pressed against. What's pressed against her ass.
I'm hard. I've been hard since I woke up. Maybe before. My cock is flush against her and there's no way she doesn't feel it.
"Don't."
The word comes out lower than I intended, almost a growl, and my arm tightens around her waist. She freezes.
"You're awake," she says, her voice rough with sleep. Uncertain.
"Yes."
"You—" She tries to shift away and her ass drags against my cock and I groan, my hips grinding forward before I can stop them. Pressing harder. Fuck. Fuck. My teeth find the back of her neck and I bite down, not hard enough to break skin but hard enough that she gasps.
"Do that again," I say against her spine, "and I'm not going to stop."
She goes very still.
My hips are still pressed against her. I don't pull back. I let her feel exactly what she's doing to me, exactly how hard I am, exactly how easy it would be for me to hike up this shirt and slide inside her right now.
"How long have you been—" she starts.
"A while."
She's quiet, and I can feel her thinking. Her heart rate picked up the moment she woke—I can feel it against my palm, faster now, and faster is better. Faster means I'm affecting her. Faster means she's not as calm as she's pretending to be.
"I should—"
"Stay."
Not a request. She goes still again.
"The War God," she says finally. "Renan mentioned—"
"Later."
"But if there are plans to discuss—"
"Later."
My hand slides up, just slightly, enough that my fingers brush the underside of her ribs. The soft give of flesh over bone. She inhales sharply.
"There," I say. "Good morning."
"That's not—" She tries to pull away again and I let her get an inch before I drag her back. "Koshin."
"Iowyn."
"You're being—"
"Myself. Yes."
She makes a frustrated sound and I smile against her hair.
"I need to get dressed," she says.
"Eventually."
"Now."
I consider it.
Now.
She wants distance.
She wants space.
She wants to rebuild whatever walls she thinks will protect her from—
From what, exactly? From me?
I release her.
She scrambles out of the bed immediately, too fast, overbalancing, catching herself on the edge of the mattress. I don't move. I watch her from the pillows with my arms behind my head.
She's wearing one of my shirts, hanging off her shoulders, hitting mid-thigh. The collar gaps and I can see the edge of her collarbone, the hollow of her throat.
I want to put my mouth—
"Stop looking at me like that," she says.
"Like what?"
She doesn't answer, putting distance between us, and I'm out of the bed before I've decided to move.
She flinches when I appear beside her. Good. She should.
"I can dress myself," she says.
"Yes."
I don't step back.
She stares at me and I stare back. The silence stretches until she finally looks away, her jaw tightening.
"Fine," she mutters. "Fine. Stand there, then."
I do.
I stand there while she pulls clothes from the wardrobe, while she turns her back to me and pulls my shirt over her head—
The scars.
Raised white lines crisscrossing her back. Old. Healed. A whip, maybe. Something designed to hurt without killing.
My hands curl into fists at my sides.
I stand there while she steps into a dress, while she struggles with the laces at her back, while she—
"Let me."
My hands are already on the laces. She's still. My fingers brush her skin where the fabric gaps, tracing over the ridges of scar tissue, and the heat of her seeps into my knuckles.
"You don't have to—"
"Who did this?"
She stiffens. "What?"
"Your back." My fingers find a thick ridge near her spine and follow it down. "Who."
Silence.
"It doesn't matter," she says finally. "It was a long time ago."
"It matters to me."
"Koshin—"
"Who."
Another silence. Then, quieter: "My father. When I was… disobedient."
Her father. The man who sold her. The man who handed her over as payment for a debt and walked away without looking back.
Still alive. Still breathing. Still walking around with skin on his back while hers looks like this.
"Where is he now?"
She turns her head, just enough to see my face. Whatever she finds there makes her breath catch.
"You can't kill him," she says. "He's—there would be political consequences—"
"I don't give a fuck about–"
"Koshin."
"I'm going to peel the skin from his back strip by strip. I'm going to make him count each one. And when he's screaming, I'm going to ask him if he thinks that's sufficient discipline."
She's quiet for a long moment.
"You can't."
"Watch me."
"I'm asking you not to."
…
I stare at the back of her head. My hands are still on the laces, still pressed against the ridges of scar tissue her father carved into her skin, and she's asking me not to kill him for it.
"Why?"
"Because I don't want to owe anyone his death. Not even you." She pauses. "If anyone kills him, it's going to be me."
Something hot and vicious unfurls in my chest. Not pride. Something darker. The image of her standing over her father's body with blood on her hands, and me behind her, watching, already planning where to put my mouth when she's done.
"I'll hold him down for you," I say.
She chuckles.
I finish lacing her dress, my knuckles dragging against her back, against the scars her father left on her skin. He's still alive. He won't be for long.
I tie the final knot and don't step back.
"There," I say, my mouth an inch from her ear. "Dressed."
She moves away immediately. I let her. For now.
Renan is waiting in the adjoining chamber, sprawled across a chair with one leg hooked over the arm, tossing a knife into the air and catching it. When we enter his gaze flicks between us—me first, then Iowyn, then back to me. His mouth curves.
"You look like you slept well," he says to me. Then, to Iowyn: "Did he behave?"
"Define behave."
Renan's grin sharpens. "Better than yesterday. Yesterday you couldn't even look at me."
"Yesterday you walked in without knocking."
"I never knock." He catches the knife without looking. "You'll get used to it. Or you won't. Either way, I'm not changing."
"I could lock the door."
"You could try."
She doesn't back down.
"The War God," I say.
Renan's attention snaps to me, still grinning. "Right. Caius. In your study. Has been for an hour. Getting twitchy about it, too. Doesn't like to be kept waiting. It offends his sense of importance."
"Mm."
I cross to the sideboard where there's fruit and pick up a fig, biting into it.
"Did you hear me?" Renan says. "Caius. War God. Your study. Waiting."
"I heard you."
"And?"
I chew and swallow. Iowyn is hovering near the door, watching, and I can feel her attention on my back.
"I'm taking Iowyn to the bathhouse," I say.
Renan blinks. "Now?"
"Now."
"The War God is in your study. Right now. To make war plans. Plans he's been waiting an hour to discuss." Renan's eyes are bright. "And you want to—"
"Bathe. Yes."
He stares at me and I take another bite of the fig.
"Oh, this is going to be fun." He swings his legs down from the chair arm, leaning forward. "Can I watch when you tell him? I want to see his face."
"I'm not telling him. You are."
"Absolutely not." But he's still grinning. "I want to see his face, not be the one he puts his fist through. You go tell him yourself."
"Fine."
I drop the fig on the sideboard and move toward the door that leads to my study. Renan scrambles up.
"Wait—you're actually going to—"
I push the door open.
Caius is standing by the window, arms crossed, radiating that particular brand of violence he carries everywhere. He turns when I enter.
"Discord," he says. "Finally. I've been—"
"Something came up." I lean against the doorframe. "I'll find you in an hour. Maybe two."
His expression flattens. "We have war plans to discuss."
"We do."
"Plans that cannot wait."
"They can wait an hour."
"Discord—"
"Or two." I push off the doorframe. "Your guest chambers. I'll find you."
I close the door before he can respond.
Renan is leaning against the wall when I turn around, arms crossed, looking delighted. "You're a bastard," he says. "He's going to gut you."
"He's welcome to try."