Edria
"You're not listening to me," I say.
"I'm listening." Nyrius stands near the forge entrance with his arms crossed, which is his version of braced. "I disagree. Those aren't the same thing."
"Then hear this part." I set down the blade I've been pretending to work on. "I underestimated the buyers once. I won't do it again. I know the forest around Oxwood better than any patrol you've assigned, and I've been moving through it at night for three years."
"The threat has grown past what it was when you started."
"I know that."
"Then you know what you're walking into isn't the same arrangement anymore."
"I know." I face him fully. "And I'm still the best judge of what risks my family's survival requires. Not you."
His face carries that controlled expression, the one that means he's holding something back. "You can't know how a situation will go before it happens."
"Neither can you. You plan and you prepare and then you adapt when it goes sideways.
" I mirror his posture. "Which is exactly what I do, every time, because no one else was going to do it.
" I let him absorb that. "Until you've had to choose between a dangerous errand and watching your brother go without medicine for a month, you don't get to rank which risks are acceptable. "
Something in his expression changes. Not softening — more like a wall that's been load-bearing for years developing its first crack.
"I know I can't make that comparison," he says quietly.
"Then stop trying to make my choices for me."
"I'm not trying to make your choices." He drops his arms. "I'm trying to—" He stops. Starts again. "I don't know how to watch someone I care about walk into situations that could kill them and do nothing."
The forge is very quiet.
I study my hands for a moment. The burn scars across my knuckles, the calluses at the base of each finger. Those decisions written directly onto my skin.
"I'm terrified," I say, and it comes out steadier than I expect.
"Not of the smugglers. Of—" I stop. Try again.
"I've been the one holding everything together for so long that I don't know how to let anyone else carry part of it.
Because every time I have, it's gone wrong.
" I look up at him. "If I depend on you—emotionally, financially, any way—and something changes, my family pays for it.
Not me. Them." My voice doesn't waver, but it wants to. "I can't afford to need someone."
He uncrosses his arms and takes two steps toward me.
"You're the most stubborn, most capable, most relentlessly determined person I've encountered in a hundred and thirty years," he says.
"None of that means you're disposable. None of it means you have to do all of it alone.
" He stops so close, I can’t look at him without tipping my head back.
"I'm not telling you you're weak. I'm telling you that watching you risk your life matters to me, because you matter to me. "
I study him for an extended moment.
Then I reach up and pull him down to me.
The kiss starts hard, both of us leaning into it with the full weight of the last hour's argument, and then it shifts into something deeper.
His hands come to my face, mine grab his open coat, and when his tongue moves past my lips I make a sound I don't plan for.
My legs tremble. I grip his coat tighter and lean into him, and he responds by walking me back half a step until I'm against the worktable.
He breaks the kiss just enough to speak against my mouth. "Not here."
"No," I agree.
He takes my hand.
His camp sits a quarter mile north of the village, tucked into a fold of tree line that the patrol maps don't mark. The tent is a campaign tent, heavy canvas, a cot and a small table and a lamp that he lights with a murmured word and a spark from his fingers.
I watch the lamp catch. "That's useful."
"Border lords have their advantages." He sets the lamp on the table and turns back to me.
I close the distance and kiss him again, slower this time, my arms going around his neck.
I push up on my toes and drag myself against him, the rough fabric of his shirt against my chest through my thin undershirt, my nipples hardening against the fabric, and he makes a low sound and grabs my backside with both hands, hauling me up against him until I feel the hard press of his erection against my stomach through our clothes.
He pulls at my shirt. I work at the buttons of his coat. We get in each other's way twice, impatiently, and eventually both of us run out of patience for fasteners entirely and just pull until everything comes free.
He backs me to the cot and I drop to the edge, feet on the ground, and he drops to his knees in front of me.
He grips the backs of my knees and opens my legs with unhurried confidence, and I stop breathing for a moment.
He presses his lips against my thigh, warm and delicate, working inward. A shiver moves through me from the point of contact outward. When he closes his mouth over my sex, my spine loosens.
His tongue moves through my folds slowly, tasting me, learning the shape of me.
He slides into my slick entrance with a long stroke and I gasp, my hips lifting toward him.
He works back up to my swollen clit and settles there, his tongue circling and flicking with a rhythm that builds fast and perfectly—each stroke landing exactly where I need it, reading my reactions and adjusting without breaking contact.
I fall back onto the cot.
My fingers find his hair and grip. My hips roll up against his mouth, chasing the sensation, and he follows me, unrelenting, his tongue lavishing my clit with strokes that tighten everything inside me into a single gathering point of heat. I twist the sheets with my free hand.
The climax hits like a wave breaking against stone — full body, uncontrollable. I cry out and shake, thighs clamping around his head, fingers pulling at his hair as the pleasure rolls through me in hard, shuddering waves.
He eases back slowly, pressing one last kiss to the inside of my thigh.
I stare at the tent ceiling and try to remember how breathing works.
He moves up over me, bracing his weight on his forearms, and I look up at his face — flushed, white hair loose around his shoulders, violet eyes dark in the lamplight.
He presses his cock to my entrance.
"Yes," I say, before he asks.
He slides into me with a slow, certain push, and I close my eyes and moan softly, my legs spreading wider to take him, my heels finding the backs of his thighs. He settles deep, pauses, then begins to move.
I cradle his hips between my thighs and roll my body up to meet each thrust. He drops his forehead to the crook of my neck, his breath hot and ragged on my skin, his hands gripping my hips with the steady, possessive pressure that borders on pain and lands just short of it.
His cock drives into me in long, deep strokes, filling me completely, brushing my inner walls with every thrust until the pleasure rebuilds fast and urgent.
He groans against my neck, low and unrestrained, and quickens his pace.
I grab his shoulders and hold on. The wave builds again, sharper this time, and when it breaks I writhe beneath him and cry out, my body clenching around him in tight pulses.
He moans against my skin, his hands locking on my hips, and drives into me hard through his own finish—three deep, forceful thrusts as he spills into me with a rough, breathless sound.
We stay there, tangled and still, while the lamp burns low.
Nyrius is up before dawn, quiet and unhurried, pulling on his coat while I watch from the cot with the blanket pulled to my chin.
"You could stay," I say. "Another hour."
"I have a council review in Denvara by midday." He buckles his belt. "If I leave now I make it without riding hard."
I watch him move through the tent — efficient, practiced. He’s gone through this routine hundreds of times. He checks his saddlebag, rolls his spare map, sets two things aside for Cyran.
He pauses at the tent entrance and looks back at me.
"I'll return in four days," he says. "Five at most."
I nod. "I'll be at the forge."
He almost smiles. He goes.
I lie there in the grey pre-dawn light, listening to the camp come awake outside, and I press my palm flat against the blanket where he was lying an hour ago.
The warmth is mostly gone.
I stare at the tent ceiling and let the thought I've been circling settle into something I can actually name.
I'm in love with him.
I’m not sure where to put that. But I know it's true, and I know it's been true for longer than I've been willing to admit, and there's no math in the world that makes it simpler.
I get up, dress, and walk back to the village in the cold morning light.