Chapter 34 Sharing a Fire
Sharing a Fire
It was just as cold inside the castle. Niel paused inside the hallway, still leading Ayla by the hand.
Her nose looked red, her beautiful face otherwise pale with cold. She’d worn her hair down, but it looked mussed now, and damp from snowmelt. A dusting of power still clung to her cloak and clothes. Her teeth chattered.
He longed to brush the snow from her clothes, but didn’t dare touch his hands to the rest of her body. Ayla shivered, blinking back at him with a quizzical look on her face, as if wondering why he’d stopped in the hall and was staring at her.
For a moment, chasing after her through the snow, he’d forgotten that the castle was full of men doomed to die. He’d told her Vulmar’s news was nothing, and the guilt of that small lie gnawed at him. Before spring, he’d have to take his leave of Ayla.
He could use the unicorn cloak to get into the warcamp outside, and deal with her husband.
But while the odds of him being captured with it on were low, they were not zero.
He’d make sound, and leave footprints in the snow, and his brother was a cunning man.
It was no secret that Niel owned the cloak.
He’d won it at a tournament in front of the kingdom’s best knights, many of whom seemed to believe the cloak should have gone to Corin instead of Niel.
Even if he took care of the Lord of Blackfell, he didn’t trust the rest of Enar to treat Ayla as she deserved.
What if they branded her a traitor for the speech she’d given on the wall?
He couldn’t send her out on her own. If he returned to the castle, and gave her his cloak, she could leave without his brother’s army knowing while he stayed with his men.
But that still doomed his men. He couldn’t think of any way to save all the people he owed protection to.
“Niel? Is something wrong?” she asked. They were still standing in the hallway, and he was staring at her. Niel drew a sharp breath and shook his head.
“We ought not to waste wood,” he said nervously. “Would you… share a fire with me?”
“Alright.”
She agreed like it was simple. He squeezed her hand without meaning to.
“Go change to something dry. I’ll have a fire started by the time you join me.” He hesitated. He hadn’t invited her to his chambers to dine since their sicknesses, when he’d still been lodged in her husband’s rooms. “You know I moved?”
“Yes. The blue room.”
He hadn’t known it had a name, but true enough that its accents were that color. He nodded.
“Yes,” Niel said, and reluctantly let go of her hand.
He rubbed his jaw as she dipped a curtsy.
Then he turned and strode away from her.
His heart raced abnormally fast. But it was only sensible, really, asking her to come to his room for warmth.
There was no sense starting two fires, when he still wanted his men to last as long as they could.
And he didn’t feel like thawing out in the kitchen with whatever assortment of soldiers lounged there.
Perhaps he should have offered to warm her room instead of his own. But Niel’s chamber was bigger than hers, if they chose to eat together. It had been hard wedging the table next to her bed all the times they’d dined in her room.
Larkin was wrong. There was nothing natural about how Niel felt.
It wasn’t long until she knocked on his door, then peeked inside when he called for her to enter.
Ayla’s hair still looked damp, and she still carried herself like she’d turned to ice, but she was dressed in a wine-red gown with a neck that scooped down inches below her clavicle.
Her hands were buried in the soft cream-colored cloak wrapped around her shoulders.
Niel beckoned from where he crouched beside the roaring fire. He rose, dusting ash and wood fragments off his hands as the lady approached.
“You haven’t changed,” she said, almost accusingly.
“I was making the fire,” Niel said, flushing at the feeling of her eyes on him. “I will now. Please, make yourself comfortable.” He gestured at one of the two small wooden chairs he’d dragged up towards the fire. “Wine?”
“Not until you’re dry,” Ayla said, with a tone that implied any resistance on his part was a doomed battle.
He gathered a clean set of clothes, and retreated to the ice-cold bathing chamber to clean his hands and quickly strip from the snow-logged outfit.
Niel hesitated, then left the chest armor on the ground beside his discarded clothing.
He didn’t leave the sword, but only because he needed it near if they were taken by surprise, and carried it in hand instead of belting the sheath around his waist again.
In his stocking feet, he padded back out to the bedchamber. Ayla held her hands out to the fire, damp hair spilling loose over her back.
She was not seated in either of the chairs, and had in fact pushed one back to make more space in front of the hearth. She’d sat directly on the furs in front of the fire, her legs tucked beneath herself. His heart pounded harder.
He tossed the sword down onto the bed.
“Now will you take wine?” he asked hoarsely. She turned to look up at him, a soft expression on her face, and nodded. He approached with two cups. Her fingers brushed against his, hers so soft, as he handed a drink down to her.
And then he pushed back his own chair and sat carefully beside her, leaving a foot or two between them. Ayla held her wine in both hands, then took a small sip. He tried not to stare at her.
It was far more intimate, sitting on the floor with a woman instead of in chairs. On the floor, the distance between two points did not seem quite so fixed.
It was impossible not to remember the way she’d looked, pinned beneath him in the snow.
There had been a moment, before shame flooded his body, where he’d dreamed there was desire in her eyes.
And her lips had been so close to his own that he could nearly have bent down to press his own mouth to hers.
And just now, she was only feet from him. If he thought for even a moment that she would enjoy it, he could lean over towards her…
His whole body felt tight, and Niel tore his eyes away from Ayla, worried she could somehow sense the direction of his thoughts. She made him feel like some long-dead part of him was coming back to life. And that was dangerous.
“Did you do that often when you were younger?” Niel tried to keep the strain from his voice. “The snow fighting?”
“Yes, in the winter months. Did you enjoy it? I hope I was not too cruel.”
“Your name and cruelty don’t belong in the same sentence. Though I am not sure I should ever thank such a fierce warrior for attacking me without warning.”
From the corner of his eye, he could see Ayla laughing silently into her cup.
“I use what advantages I can, sir.”
“You have plenty,” he told her, his voice low. He cleared his throat and glanced towards the room’s small window, and the icy world beyond. “It was nice to have a game in the middle of this.”
“Life cannot all be war. Even in a siege.”
“No,” Niel agreed, and sighed, “though sometimes…” he tapered off, staring into the fire.
“Sometimes?” Ayla urged.
He shook his head, but he could feel her gaze on him. Almost involuntarily, Niel turned to look at her, and found her wide gray eyes studying him openly. He allowed himself the luxury of staring back. His heart thumped loudly in his chest.
How would it feel, to kiss somebody who he wanted to kiss?
He had never longed, before meeting her, to find out.
But now he wanted to bear her down flat onto the furs.
He’d caught just enough glimpses of her, when he’d changed her clothes in her illness, that he could imagine her naked all too easily.
If he were being honest with himself, he’d imagined it far too often at night, each daydream soured by the guilty knowledge that she’d never invited him to see any of it.
“I fear I am so inexperienced I ought never to take my eyes off the task at hand,” Niel said.
She didn’t answer, but continued to look at him.
Niel frowned, and continued. “Not finding the tunnel before those soldiers—and now, leaving the woodpile where their arrows could find it instead of bringing it inside…”
“You cannot possibly blame yourself for that,” Ayla said, tilting her head slightly to the side.
“Strategy is thinking two steps ahead. Something I often fail to do.”
“You cannot see all ends.”
“Perhaps not. But now we are short on wood,” Niel muttered.
The lady only shrugged.
“There’s plenty in the castle.”
“Is there?” Had he missed some cellar with stored logs somehow, even in all the time Niel and his men had spent searching the castle?
Ayla lifted her eyes and glanced around the room meaningfully. He followed the line of her gaze. Tables. Chairs. A desk. A chest of drawers for clothing.
Niel’s lips pressed together in a smile.
“Perhaps I needn’t have forced you to share my fire after all.”
“Nonsense,” Ayla said, lifting her cup to her lips. “There’s still no sense wasting what we have.”
For a moment they sat in silence, their eyes locked, as the fire crackled.
“Ayla?” he said, his mouth feeling suddenly dry. “I’ve a confession. A bad one.” She didn’t answer, but watched him, silently inviting him to continue. “I told you the rider had no news, except that my father received my message. That was not fully truthful.”
“I guessed as much,” Ayla admitted.
“I was supposed to return with him,” Niel said quietly. “My father is… not so certain about sending troops as I had expected.”
Ayla’s eyes stayed fixed on Niel, but he watched her expression slowly change, her lips falling at the edges and the look in her eyes going hollow.
“I’ve ideas on how to fix it.” His voice was low. “You needn’t worry. It changes nothing about your safety.”
“But what about yours?” Ayla’s voice nearly cracking. “Niel. You had a way out? Why wouldn’t you—”
“You can’t think I’d leave.”