Chapter 41
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
T he memorial had been…interesting. Filled with tears and heartfelt stories and more emotions in an hour than I would have witnessed in a lifetime in Socair. Even the day itself had seemed to mourn Mac, the airy clouds pouring down buckets of rain while the rest of the air was almost eerily silent and still.
After the memorial, everyone headed to a tavern that had been cleared out for the occasion, telling still more stories and crying more tears through intermittent bursts of bittersweet laughter.
Not everyone was quite as blatant with their feelings. Gwyn said very little, and though my lemmikki had shown up in the tavern with red eyes, she had let very few actual tears fall.
Still, it felt later than it was by the time we walked back to the castle.
More accurately, most of us walked. Davin was toted all the way back by Gwyn, who, despite his protests, had pitched him over her shoulder with all the effort of lifting an unruly child.
Hearing the stories they told over more drinks at the tavern had been a glaring reminder of how different life here was. How different Rowan’s life would be, away from these people who loved her, and openly grieved alongside her, in a kingdom that had known mostly full bellies and peace.
Not to mention the entire kingdom of people who wanted her dead, or worse. A nobler man would have begged her to stay here, but I had never bothered playing the part of the hero. I sure as storms wasn’t going to start where my lemmikki was concerned.
If she wanted to stay here, then she could damned well decide that for herself. I wouldn’t help her along the path of vowing her life to me while she spent it a kingdom away.
As for her safety… I would tear apart every person who looked at her askance until the staunchest soldier in all of Socair would rather peel his own skin away than muster up the nerve to speak her name.
I pulled a book from my trunk without looking at the title and climbed into the center of my bed, trying to dispel the thoughts running rampant through my mind. I was so engulfed in images of her that I nearly missed the telltale click of the passageway door. I set down the book on Lochlannian law, no doubt in my mind this time who it would be.
Sure enough, Rowan glided through the doorway on silent footfalls. If her presence had been expected, her attire was decidedly not. She wore nothing but a nightgown made of a sheer, pale material, her wild curls cascading down the bare skin of her arms.
I had conjured so many images of her in my mind, wondered more times than I wanted to admit what she might look like joining me in our bed on our wedding night, that I half wondered if I had already fallen asleep.
She had burst into my room unannounced on three occasions now, and every time she had come in prepared to do battle. Her features had been guarded, if not outright furious.
Tonight, there was something almost vulnerable in her furrowed brow and the storm that churned in her wide green gaze, in the silent way she stood in front of the door, drinking in the sight of me. The same energy that had crackled off of her this morning hummed in the air between us, potent and expectant as the night sky just before a strike of lightning.
The flippant greeting I was prepared to deliver died on my lips.
Rowan sucked in a breath, louder than it should have been in the hush that had eclipsed all sound and reason in the room. She moved across the room as though on instinct, her eyes never leaving mine.
My breaths were shallow, my heart beating a slow, erratic rhythm in my chest when she climbed onto the bed next to me. The thoughts that were whirling in my mind mere moments ago vanished in the wake of her bare leg sliding across my torso.
I didn’t dare to move or speak or breathe, to break whatever spell we were under. Whatever this was, she needed it. The control. The proximity.
I would have been lying if I said I didn’t feel it, too, the desperate need to feel her warmth against mine after a day that had been singularly focused on death, to know that she was safe and where she belonged.
With me.
Settling against me, she brought her slim hands up to my hair, raking her fingernails gently along my scalp like she was exploring and claiming in the same simple motion. It took every shred of my self-control not to pull her against me, but there was something almost fragile in her presence here, a tenuous, ephemeral thread that would snap under the weight of a single wrong move.
There wasn’t enough rational thought in me to wonder exactly why she was here—I wasn’t even sure she knew. There had been little I could do to ease the shattered expression she wore for most of the day, but this—this was something I could give her.
So I ceded the moment entirely to her, unmoving while her fingers traced along my skin, energy coursing from each point of contact through to my soul. A lifetime passed before she leaned down, her face hovering inches above mine, her breath mingling with my own.
Her ethereal green eyes blazed into mine with an intent I couldn’t quite read, a rare question I didn’t know how to answer. My heart forced out several stilted beats, and she didn’t move, even as the energy that thrummed between us crescendoed to an unbearable burning.
Every part of me needed to feel her against me, to taste her lips on my skin, to make her understand what she was to me without all the games and caveats baked into the words we hurled carelessly at one another.
I saw the need mirrored on her own features, but still, she was held back by a dilemma I didn’t understand.
“Lemmikki.” I meant the word as a question, but a plea slipped out unbidden.
Whatever she wanted, whatever she needed, I needed her to tell me. To move. To do something besides torture us both with the same uncertainties that plagued our every interaction.
She squeezed her eyes shut on an exhale, a contradictory relief that was so palpable it was almost painful. Like she had spent an eternity dangling from the edge of a cliff only to finally let go, without knowing where she would land. If she would land at all, or if she would tumble into an abyss.
I wasn’t sure either.
All I knew was that she wasn’t headed there alone. I hurtled through the air right alongside her, losing myself in the intoxication of her lips on mine. The energy between us hummed in satisfaction and I lost the scattered remnants of self-control I had been clinging to.
I grasped her waist with all the gentleness I could manage, leaning into her touch as it lingered just above my heart. Abruptly, she pulled away, resting her forehead against mine.
A hitched breath escaped her, and I pulled away far enough to take in the tears streaming down her cheeks.
It wasn’t the first time I had seen her cry, let alone the first time today. Though this could have been a resurgence of her grief, a reaction to the day, that explanation fell flat in my mind.
“Lemmikki.” I brushed the wetness from her cheeks with my thumbs, pressing my lips against her forehead the way I had wanted to do from the moment she walked into the breakfast room today. The desire to comfort was entirely new to me, but so was everything else about this moment. About her.
“What is it?” I murmured against her skin.
“Nothing.” She shook her head against the obvious lie, correcting it in the next breath. “Everything.”
She tilted her head forward the way she did when she wanted her curls to cover her face—to hide from me—sliding toward the edge of the bed in the same move.
I had told myself I wouldn’t interfere with what she wanted tonight, ever, but like hell was I letting her run away now. Not when she was in pain.
I held her hips more firmly, pulling her body back fully onto mine, willing her to talk to me.
She met my gaze once more, sucking in a breath. “You said no.”
“What?” I didn’t bother to mask my confusion.
I certainly hadn’t said no just now, nor was I planning to.
Rowan lifted her chin in resolve, her body tense over mine. “I asked if you were planning on proposing when you left. And you said no .”
I closed my eyes against the obvious hurt in her features. From the moment she had asked that question the first time, I had known the answer would bother her. Then our conversation had spiraled into something else, as so many of them did, and we had never revisited the subject.
Would I have, if I had known it was causing her pain?
Even now, I wasn’t sure. Talking had never been our strong suit, and there wasn’t much I could say to reassure her without an outright lie.
“I keep trying to get past it.” There was no vitriol in her tone, nor accusation. Only a quiet rationality, a plea for a better explanation. “But what does that mean, exactly? That you’re here out of convenience? Luck? Did you come out of spite and then stay because I agreed to marry you?”
I opened my eyes, considering the best way to answer her.
There was nothing at all convenient about coming here, but had there been spite? Perhaps.
Looking back, there was more than that. Panic. Betrayal. A visceral need to remind her that she absolutely the storms damned hell did not belong to Korhonan.
But hadn’t I also wondered, deep down, whether she wanted that reminder? Whether there was something salvageable in the complicated web we had woven for ourselves?
I tucked a stray curl behind her ear, letting my hand linger on her face and hoping she understood a fraction of what I was trying to convey.
“When I got Korhonan’s letter about marrying you, I didn’t know what I was going to do,” I told her truthfully. “So many of your choices had already been taken from you in Socair. I thought this was the one thing you were choosing for yourself. Was it really my place to take that from you?”
Even once I got here, I had tried like hell to make myself agree to honor her wishes, even if she didn’t seem to know what the hell those wishes were.
“But you came,” she pressed.
“I couldn't seem to stop myself.” Not that I had tried very hard. “I needed to know...to see it for myself. And then I got here, and I realized that no matter what else was happening, you were still mine.”
I had known that on some level from the moment I saw her, but more so when she came into my rooms that first night. She had still been every bit as compelled toward me as I was toward her.
She froze, her features going tight like she had been stabbed in the abdomen all over again, and I furrowed my brow.
“Is that what it comes down to, even now, Evander? The fact that you think you own me.” Her voice was a quiet whisper against the eternal backdrop of all the ways we managed to hurt each other.
To misunderstand one another.
So I chose my words carefully this time, ensuring there was no room for doubt.
“I do own you, Lemmikki.” It wasn’t a feeling or an entitlement, it was a certainty, built into the very laws of the universe itself by whatever powers tied her inexorably to me.
She looked away, more tears falling down her cheeks, tears I never wanted to be responsible for again. I grasped her chin in one hand, pulling her gaze back toward me so she could see the truth etched into my very being.
“But you own me, too.” Did she hear the conviction that burned from every word that was branded into the air between us, cauterizing the wounds we had carved into each other’s souls.
She took a breath, all of the uncertainty bleeding from her features as the words resonated within her, too.
This time, I didn’t hesitate to pull her against me, bringing her bottom lip into my mouth and savoring the taste that was so uniquely her. She let out a gasp, arching into me.
I didn’t stop there, dragging my teeth along her skin, driven by the singular need to feel her skin on my lips, to track each one of her reactions and commit her body to memory.
When I got to the ropy scar at her shoulder, I paused, pressing a gentle kiss along it that had her grasping my shoulders. Her body was flushed with desire, the crimson color rising from the low neckline of her nightdress.
How long had I wanted to track that movement with my mouth?
I gave into the compulsion at last, wrapping one hand in her wild, glorious curls while the other braced her upright. I teased my tongue along the seam of her nightgown, grasping at the patience that had buried itself somewhere underneath an avalanche of desire.
But I already missed her lips. I worked my way back up to them, shifting her until she was on her side next to me. She put her hands on my head, dragging her nails along my scalp once more and pulling me closer to her, like she was worried I was going to stop.
Not ever, Lemmikki. Not if I had the choice.
The first time I kissed her, I had known it was a mistake. That she didn’t know how she felt. That I would have to let her go one day. Then we had played our games at the festival, taunting one another and sharing a single, brief kiss.
Now, I was finally able to take my time, to explore her plush lips with the reverence they deserved, to trace her tongue with mine and revel in the way she reacted to every touch.
She didn’t give any sign that she wanted to take things further, and I was more than content to take my time with her like this. Which is exactly what I did. Minutes, then hours disappeared in the eternal sensation of her body against mine. I was so lost in her that it took me longer than it should have to realize the room was several shades lighter than it had been before.
Der’mo . The sun was rising, and she hadn’t gotten a single moment of sleep. With our wedding in two days—no, tomorrow, now—we both had a full day ahead of us.
I didn’t think either of us wanted to explain why we were so tired, especially considering my day involved spending quality time with my favorite king of Lochlann.
I forced myself to break off our kiss, hammering down my self-control when she made a sound of protest and chased my lips with hers. Instead, I pressed my mouth against her forehead once more, murmuring against her skin.
“We should get some rest, Lemmikki.” My voice came out a low growl, raspy with disuse.
She peeked up at me through her lashes, the heat in her eyes a denial as clearly as if she had spoken it.
I couldn’t disagree, especially not when my gaze landed on the lips that were swollen from the hours they had been pressed against my own. Forcefully, on more than one occasion.
Just before I could contradict myself, she nodded, which I told myself was for the best. A feeling of rightness clicked into place when I tugged her against my chest, one I had been too enmired in grief to understand the first time I held her while she slept.
Then again, perhaps I had understood it better than I wanted to. Wasn’t that why I had come here? Why I had asked her to marry me?
Why I still wanted her to choose Socair and damn the many consequences to us both?
When she sighed against my chest, pressing herself in closer to me, I couldn’t bring myself to regret a single one of those things.