Chapter 40
There was something to be said for trying to celebrate when her bones were aching with the strain of making a four-day journey in less than two, especially with the darkness of her dream still lingering in her mind.
Arla was too exhausted to enjoy any of the food and wine and they had all ended up in the sitting room almost immediately after the dishes were cleared away, the fire crackling gently beneath the mantlepiece as they chatted amongst themselves.
Jack had joined them during dinner, his face tight with pain. But he buried it somewhere deep and greeted Arla with a warm smile and a hug that had her swallowing around the lump in her throat.
He was walking straighter, less of his weight depending on the cane as he manoeuvred around the table to sit beside Kase. Arla was certain it was the most relaxed Kase had looked in hours when Jack took her hand and whispered something in her ear.
This was the comfort of Flambriar. Of home.
Of her court. Each of them splayed over settees around the fire, chatter punctuating the air, a card game rendering Jaz, Hark, and Seb incapable of using inside voices.
Hyacinth sat beside Kase and Jack, a steady, polite smile on her face as the two of them quizzed her on how her kingdom functioned and on her reasons for coming to Flambriar.
It was the most content Arla had been in years.
‘I am pleased all is well, Dragonhart.’
Arla’s chest swelled at the sound of her dragon. Thara had flown so hard and so fast and Arla was grateful.
‘Me too.’
The settee shifted beside Arla, and she managed to pull her attention away from the increasingly intense card game to meet the gaze of Elin.
The girl had looked half feral when Arla had first arrived, and though her hair had been brushed and she was out of the muddied clothes she’d been in earlier, there was still a fire in her eyes that reminded Arla of herself.
‘I hope you’ve been keeping my horse company whilst I’ve been gone.’
Something flashed across Elin’s face – an emotion Arla couldn’t quite place – before she said, ‘Whatever they tell you I did, they’re lying. Vetta likes me.’
Arla’s heart eased slightly at that. Perhaps the strange atmosphere she’d come home to hadn’t been something sinister. Perhaps it had just been the misdeeds of a young girl. The gods knew Arla herself had managed to bring the likes of Castle Grey to a standstill when she was thirteen.
‘I’m sure you’re right. They don’t like some of the things I do, either,’ Arla said, winking at Elin, whose face split into a grin. Hark joined her a second later.
‘I hope you’ve confessed to Arla how you’ve terrorised the entire kingdom in her absence?’
Arla was ready to leap to the girl’s defence. To argue that Elin shouldn’t have to be placed in a box and taught to be behave just because she was a young girl.
As it happened, she didn’t need to, because Hark ruffled the top of Elin’s hair and offered a genuine smile. ‘You’ve brought some light to recent weeks, at least.’
Arla’s stomach dropped. Something had definitely happened whilst she had been away.
‘You look ready to fall asleep, sweetheart,’ Hark said softly, taking Arla’s hand in his.
Arla didn’t think her heart could swell any more. Didn’t think she had ever experienced this sort of love. It made her stomach twist, her heart flutter, and her throat tighten around all the feelings she would never do justice in describing. She loved him. Desperately.
‘Then perhaps we should go to bed,’ she said.
Hark exhaled, the dimple in his cheek appearing as he smirked at her. ‘I thought you’d never ask.’
There was a quiet luxury to Arla’s rooms – the glass ceiling, the stars, the bed large enough to get lost in.
Not that any of it mattered because Hark marched her straight past the doors to her rooms and onwards to his own.
How she had missed this place! Where Arla’s own rooms had made her feel freer than she had ever felt in her life, Hark’s cocooned her and made her feel safe and secure and hidden.
Heavy velvet curtains so dark blue they were almost black were pulled back from the arching windows that spanned the length of the room, the soft glow of lamplight dismissing any lingering tension that she had felt on her flight home.
The stone floor was covered with a rug so intricately woven Arla was certain only a mage could have managed it, and the bed was somehow larger than her own. And far too inviting.
Hark removed his hand from the small of her back – the gesture had been so soft and lovely Arla had wondered how they had ever hated each other – and moved across the room to draw the curtains across the windows.
‘Leave them,’ she said. ‘I like to see the stars.’
Hark turned to face her, a wicked grin splitting his lips. ‘I hope stars are the last thing on your mind tonight. I’ve missed the feel of your skin, Dragonhart.’
Her skin flushed at his words. At the promise in them.
‘And how much have you missed me?’ she taunted, stalking towards him on silent feet. The very air seemed to still between them, her nerves winding tighter with every second.
She didn’t stop until she was close enough that her chest brushed his, until she could see the desire and delight in those icy blue eyes.
His lips parted and his hands came to rest on her hips, the feel of his fingertips through her uniform burning phantom flames against her flesh.
‘Enough that you won’t ever want to leave again.’
There was a heartbeat of tension before whatever was between them snapped, and their lips were crashing together, a million tiny fires setting light along Arla’s skin as Hark pressed her against the wall, his hands roaming her hips and thighs as if he would never have the pleasure of doing so again.
She felt him tense a fraction of a second before he pulled back, and something in her pathetic heart stuttered at that.
But Hark wasn’t rejecting her. No. His hands were too soft on either side of her face, his forehead now resting against hers as his icy blue eyes tunnelled into hers.
‘Are you okay?’ he asked softly, his thumb stroking along her cheek.
Arla leaned into the touch, glad to be cocooned in the scent of whiskey and leather and Hark.
‘I’m fine,’ she whispered softly, searching the endless depth of his gaze for something that should indicate she shouldn’t be all right at all.
Hark smiled and it made her want to crawl right between his ribs and settle against his heart.
‘You would tell me if you needed anything? From me, or from this kingdom?’
‘Of course,’ she replied, confusion beginning to seep into the edges of her mind, but …
she had longed for this. For many years all she had wished for was someone to ask her if she was okay.
If she was struggling in her journey along the dark path she’d been sent on by the fates.
And in that simple question – in Hark’s ability to see she needed someone – she knew that she would never have to walk that path alone ever again.
He would always be at her side, ready to take on anything that came for her, just as she would for him.
‘I love you,’ he said, placing a gentle kiss on her forehead. ‘And I want you to be happy here. So anything you need, Arla, it’s yours.’
Gods why was her throat so tight?
She summoned a smile to her lips.
‘Anything?’
Mischief shone in Hark’s eyes, that infuriating smirk she’d known for years beginning to fan out across his face as he purred, ‘Anything.’
Before she had a chance to catch her breath, he was lifting her, her legs wrapping around his waist as he carried her to the bed and laid her gently on it. His face hovered inches above hers, the dimple in his cheek bringing a smile to her own lips.
‘Perfect,’ he murmured, pressing kisses along her neck, collarbone, and shoulder.
Her shirt decidedly looser than it was only moments ago.
Arla brought her own hands up, one on the back of his neck, the other tangled in the tousled strands of dark hair.
She was certain he hadn’t cut it in all the time she’d been gone.
He kissed her harder then, a clash of lips and teeth as hands flew and clothes were removed, soft sighs the only sounds in the sanctuary of Hark’s room. His hands traced her skin, down her chest, over her stomach, hips, and thighs, never quite where she needed them but electric all the same.
Arla arched her back beneath him, anything to be closer, to feel the sensual assault that came from his skin against hers.
Logical thought fled when his fingers found the apex of her thighs, the gasp wrenched from her throat eliciting a rough laugh from his.
Perhaps she should have asked what had happened in Flambriar during the time she’d been gone, but honestly, that could wait.
Who really cared as long as he was kissing her? Touching her?
‘Did you miss me, Dragonhart?’ Hark purred in her ear, the sound of his voice drawing ragged breaths from her.
‘Yes,’ she managed, rocking her hips against him as his fingers moved in masterful precision.
He lifted his head, pinning her with those gods-damned eyes, his gaze burying beneath her skin.
‘Show me, then.’
Afterwards, when her bones felt soft and her heart full, they lay in darkness, the glowing embers of the fire hypnotic as they lulled her to sleep.
Her head lay against Hark’s chest, the rhythmic drum of his heartbeat the most reassuring sound in the world.
His fingers traced her hipbone idly, and her own ran up and down the length of his arm.
Arla was certain she knew every inch of Hark’s body so when her fingers traced a knot of ridged, scarred flesh on the back of his shoulder, she knew with certainty that she’d been right to worry.
She paused her perusal of his skin, sitting upright and flicking the lamp on beside her. Hark tried to move, as if he could prevent the inevitable, the alarm on his face illuminated in the lamplight.
‘What—?’
‘I wasn’t keeping it from you,’ he interrupted, reaching out to rest a hand on her shoulder as though it might keep her from attacking him. That ugly, angry thing in her chest was rearing its head again…
‘Do not harm him. Regret is a tedious emotion.’ Thara’s voice in her head did nothing to assuage the annoyance in her blood.
‘Tell me. What. Happened?’ she growled through her teeth, relishing the wariness that passed through Hark’s eyes.
A frustrated noise forced its way through Hark’s lips, and for a moment, Arla didn’t think he’d speak. She thought he might keep this secret from her after all they’d been through together.
He must have seen the unspoken threat in her eyes because his face softened, the rigidity of his body that had arisen when she’d ran her fingers over the scar melting away.
‘There’s been … a problem.’
‘What do you mean, a problem?’ she snapped, rocking forwards in the bed.
‘If you’d let me finish,’ he barked, the voice of Flambriar’s ruler shining through. Arla sat back against the headboard.
‘Soldiers have been appearing in the mountains – Elrod’s soldiers. We’ve been killing them before they can get to the city but…’
She knew what was coming before the words arrived. She’d seen it in a dream that had led her to flee Malarye in the middle of the night.
‘They don’t die. They have the strength of five men. It takes the removal of their heads for them to stay down.’
A shudder ran along Arla’s spine, the same dread reflected at her down the bond. Thara, however, was silent.
‘It’s why I’m back,’ Arla whispered, hating the fear that flickered in Hark’s icy eyes. ‘I dreamt of them. I thought I might find you all—’ She swallowed around the lump in her throat and willed away the unshed tears. ‘I thought I might find you all dead.’
The tension between them shattered then as Hark pulled her close to him, the solid steadiness of his body a reprieve against an army they could not comprehend. There were things at work here she couldn’t hope to conquer, and, judging by her dragon’s silence, Thara couldn’t either.
They needed an army – greater than the one they were hastily trying to build.
‘We’ll discuss it tomorrow,’ Hark said gently, brushing a blonde curl away from her face. ‘Let’s not ruin tonight.’
‘Okay,’ she whispered, already aware of the dreams on the edge of her consciousness that would plague her all night.
They needed an army. And she knew where she might find one.