Chapter 49
Theren leads Elegy out of the sanctuary, past his boots and her boots, past the flames that flicker against the antechamber walls, and she lets herself be led. She sees black robes in front of them; Nerina, walking them to wherever they’ll be staying that night.
She can’t think about Cedre Station, about Nisov and the Fever and “equo ne credite.” All she can think about, in this moment, is Shir.
He was with her the first time she came here.
Hair flopping over his forehead, his smile wide and eager.
And after, how he spoke to her. If saving Cedre means you’ll love two men at once .
. . well, it’ll be worth it. Like Elegy being destined to betray him by loving another man changed nothing between them. Like everything was still normal.
That isn’t how Theren Forint talks to her. With him, everything is its proper size, everything has its proper weight, even if it’s far too big and far too heavy. For better or worse, he lives in reality. He’s here.
He’s now.
They’re in a cool stone room. Someone has already been there to light the lanterns. She’s standing on a rug, cream--colored and soft. There are plants everywhere, vines, their leaves tumbling down to the floor from the bookcase, tilted toward the windows. The air smells like citrus and smoke.
She knows there are things she has to say. Apologies she has to make—-that she let him find out about the prophecy this way, that yet again, someone has made him no more than a pawn in a game augurs play, that she’s sorry he’s trapped between her and Rava—-
“I’m—-” she starts.
He cuts her off. “Don’t.”
He doesn’t look angry. Only . . . curious. It’s an expression she’s not sure she’s seen him wear before. Not because he isn’t interested in people, but because curiosity requires, among other things, a hesitation between not knowing and knowing—-and he always knows too much.
“I’m not waiting for an apology. Or an explanation,” he says.
“Okay.” Her voice sounds rough.
“I’m waiting . . .” He reaches out, and hooks his fingers in her belt loops, drawing her closer. She’s too startled to do anything other than let him. He bends his head so he can speak close to her ear. “For you to take what’s on offer.”
She doesn’t even need to ask what exactly that is.
He offers himself, and he always has. He’s never asked for her to be rid of her grief.
Never asked for any promises, any declarations, or any answers she wasn’t ready to give.
He’s never even asked for her forgiveness, though he got it a long time ago.
He’s only ever asked her what she wants.
He holds himself apart from her, just a breath of space between them. So she has to move; she has to choose.
And she does.
She backs him up against the wall and kisses him, clutching at his shirt—-and then shoving it up so she can bend down, almost kneeling, to get her mouth on his stomach, his chest. He touches her hair, her shoulders, like he’s tracing the outline of her body, then he raises his arms as she pushes the fabric up and over his head.
The shirt falls on the ground next to them, and she smells the Cenobium soap, lavender and mint.
In the unsteady light she sees that he’s not as spare as he was when she first saw him again in House Vidar; life in Cedre has made him thicker, stronger.
She feels frantic with the need to get closer to him, her hands trembling with it, her breaths fast and unsteady.
She touches him, palms flat against his arms, which are muscled from the longsword, and she gives up on patience, gives up on savoring this.
She fumbles with his belt; he covers her hands, and she thinks he’s pushing her away, slowing her down—-but all he does is take his pants off for her.
His eyes stay locked on hers, black and focused.
God, she thinks, because there’s nothing else to think, with all that bare skin in front of her, asking to be touched; scars begging to be traced, maybe with her fingers, maybe with her tongue.
She swallows a curse at the thought. The world has done a number on him, and he wears it on his skin.
She’s dizzy with the sight of him, drunk on it, but she still hesitates with her hands on the hem of her own shirt.
“The last person who touched me,” she says, breathless, “was him.”
He runs his calloused fingers along her jaw and behind her ear, tenderly.
“The last person who touched me was her,” he replies.
Elegy pauses for a moment as the weight of those twin statements settles between them. Sometimes she forgets that she’s not the only one who brings grief here. He does, too, though a different kind.
She nods, as if deciding something, though she already decided it a long time ago, when she pushed him up against a shelf in Naarm Stronghold. She lifts her shirt away from her body and drops it at her feet.
He bends to kiss her—-her shoulder, her breast, and then, dropping to his knees, he kisses her stomach, right under her belly button.
He unbuttons her pants, and she thinks of the last time they did this, the way his teeth scraped her skin and she put her hands in his hair—-only this time she doesn’t intend to stop and have a mature conversation instead; she intends to take whatever he’ll give her, and offer whatever she has.
She plants her hands on his shoulders to steady herself as he takes her pants off, slowly, his lips following every inch of skin he exposes in a line of heat—-her belly, her thigh, her knee.
She’s so alive with sensation she doesn’t think about how bare she is, how vulnerable.
His mouth is on her, and she arcs forward like a plucked harp string, gasping. She steadies herself on the wall.
But she wants—-
“Up, get up,” she says, breathless.
He stands, and she guides his hand, lightly, to the hard line of the contraceptive implant in her arm.
Then she backs up toward the bed, pulling him with her.
She marvels at the lantern light flickering over his skin, at how long his legs are, at every line of tension in his body. She pulls him down to the bed with her.
She laces her fingers with his, and almost laughs at how much smaller her hands are. It would be so easy for him to overpower her, but he seems content to let her take the lead, instead, with the same patience he’s showed in every training session, every conversation they’ve ever had.
She brings his arms above his head, pressing him into the mattress as she leans down to taste the salty skin of his shoulder, to close her teeth lightly over his clavicle.
She wrenches desperate sounds from him, and a part of her can’t believe that she can make someone sound like this, can make someone want her like this.
When she runs her fingers over his lower lip, he kisses at her fingertips.
His gaze moves over her body, slow. She’s never liked to be stared at, never enjoyed eyes on her.
But his eyes, dark and attentive, feel just like his touch.
They erase everything else. They wake every nerve.
And the same attunement that he has to her in the training room, or in the heat of combat, is here, too, as he moves with her. Easy. Present. Focused.
She doesn’t need to speak—-as usual, he already knows what she needs; he already knows her. He touches her, his fingers gentle but certain. Release hits her so hard that her body shudders and she lets out a wordless, sharp sound.
In the breathless aftermath, she tries on the truth like a new garment:
She loves him.
Yes, she thinks. That fits.
She steps out of the bathroom after washing, later, to find him standing by the bed, buckling his belt. As he picks up his shirt, she puts her arms around him and stills his hands, her face pressed to his spine.
“I do have to get dressed sometime,” he says, obviously amused, and she likes him this way, loose and laughing. This version of Theren Forint that few people ever get to see.
She says, “Is that a rule, or something?”
He tugs her hand up to his mouth and kisses her fingers. “I think there are laws against public indecency, yes.”
“Not all laws are just.” She smiles into his skin, and wonders if he can feel it. “I like looking at you.”
“I like looking at you, too. I’m sure you’ve noticed.”
She hasn’t, exactly, but she does remember Parekh telling her, He’s gorgeous, and he barely looks at anyone who isn’t you. Elegy wonders how much she’s missed because she was too afraid to look for it. She intends to make up for that now.
He turns, and sits on the edge of the bed, so they’re almost at eye level. “I suspect you have things to do right now.”
She runs her thumb along the underside of his jaw, slowly.
Guilt pinches at the edges of her, the parts of her that feel like moving forward is a betrayal of Shir and everything they had.
But she’s discovering that there’s a lot more space inside her than she thought there was—-that she can grieve for Shir and still feel this, this giddy possibility, this scorching desire, unabated even now.
Only—-she wants other things, too. To find out how Theren likes to be touched, and how she likes to touch him. To find out what he looks like when he does ordinary things, like wash his face, or put on his clothes.
“Things to do,” she repeats, and she traces the line of his neck with her finger. His eyes close, and she can’t read him, but she thinks that’s a good sign. “But I’m already doing something.”
He rests his hands on her waist, and his thumbs find the points of her hips. He squeezes, gently.
“Trust me,” he says. “There are things I’d rather do than whatever is waiting for us out there.”
She tilts her head. “Oh?”
“Would you like me to enumerate them for you?” he asks, laughing a little.
Elegy grins, but she knows he’s right, knows they can’t ignore everything for any longer than they already have.
She’s hungry, for one thing. But for another: the attack on Cedre Station. Her grin fades as she considers her next move.
“I think I have to do something that I really don’t want to do,” she says.
He nods, and picks up his shirt, breaking the spell between them. “What do you need?”
“From you?” She sighs a little. “A Knight, I think.”
He raises his eyebrows, and she covers his mouth with her fingers to stop whatever response he was about to give.
“I don’t need you to swear an oath again,” she says. “I just need you to say yes, for as long as it suits you.”
He closes his hand around her wrist, and lifts her fingers from his lips.
“May I speak now?” he says.
She rolls her eyes.
“My answer is yes,” he says. “Go have your meeting. I’ll find Hela and get the update about the others joining us.”
“Don’t believe I mentioned a meeting,” she says.
He tips his head up and kisses her.
“I’m very good,” he says, against her mouth, “at reading people.”