Chapter Thirty-Two Lavender Sheets #4
Cool air from the bay drifted through the cracked window, sending a chill across their sweat-damp bodies. Caelan didn’t move, just held himself over her, panting, hands threading into her hair. He pulled her with him as he fell onto his side, utterly spent.
There was so much she wanted to say to him. She wanted to tell him it had been everything she’d wanted and would ever want again, but they’d been awake for two days straight even before what had just happened, and her eyes were already closing.
When he chuckled, they fluttered open again to find him watching her, just as exhausted.
She doubted many people had seen the soft, vulnerable smile he gave her.
The bed had always felt quite large to her.
But as Caelan swallowed the mattress, she realized how narrow it was.
He pulled her against his chest, pressing a kiss against her hair as he settled back into the pillows.
So quickly, she drifted off into darkness, and this time there was no ashen valley or keening dead, no cottage in the snow. There was only a distant turquoise shore and the promise of what was to come.
Reya woke to the feel of Caelan’s hands running down the curve of her bare back. The candles around them had gone out in their pools of wax, and outside her window, dusk had fallen on Edris.
They’d stayed in her flat all day. He’d taken her twice that morning, first in bed with her astride him and second in her kitchen when she’d attempted to make them both coffee.
Every time she’d tried to get up and get dressed, reminding him that she’d promised to meet Omira and Thance in the East End for a tour of her favorite galleries, he’d tugged her back into his arms, with a gruff, “They can wait,” before silencing her protests with his body as the day passed them by.
Already, she could hear the festival-goers outside her window.
They were tangled together beneath soft lavender sheets, Reya half strewn on top of Caelan, who held her tight to him, like she was the one about to leave and not him.
“Are you hungry?” he murmured against her ear. Neither of them had eaten since last night. She nodded, and he kissed the top of her head. “I’ll make you something. What do you want?”
She smiled, unable to remember the last time someone had cooked for her. “I don’t have any food,” she reminded him. Probably a few jars of nuts, but that was it. He brushed a curl behind one of her ears, and she knew her hair must have been a tangled mess.
“I’ll find something,” he said.
He hadn’t yet asked how he might find her again after they parted ways, and she hadn’t had the nerve to bring it up.
Trying to ignore the pit in her stomach, Reya watched as he conquered her kitchen, opening cabinets to investigate their options, knowing he had to leave soon.
Meanwhile, she threw on a nightgown of deepest emerald trimmed with sapphire lace—which she’d purchased years ago solely in homage to her eyes—before she climbed onto the counter, joining him.
Night had fallen by the time Caelan handed her an anticlimactic plate of roasted almonds and dried fruits.
He scratched the back of his neck. “I’m actually a decent cook. ”
“I know,” she said with a laugh, though they’d had severely limited options on the road. She moaned around every bite, both to tease him and because she was hungry, and the warning looks he gave her only made her want to do it more.
“Drink?” he asked roughly.
“Yes, please,” she said with her mouth full. He opened her liquor cabinet, reaching for what she assumed was the bottle of mead, but he grabbed the whiskey Lennox had gifted her instead.
Caelan slid his thumb over the year embossed on the red wax seal. “This bottle looks older than ten years.”
“It’s from an Old Etellinian distillery. I was saving it for when I paid my debt. After all these years, it doesn’t seem real yet.”
He brought the bottle to the counter beside her, snapping up her ruby dagger to break the seal with an easy cut.
“This is real.” The cork came free with a pop, and he set down two glasses, pouring them each a knuckle’s length of amber liquid. He waited until she took hers. “I want to hear you say it.”
She clinked her glass against his, not breaking eye contact, and said, “This is real.” But she wasn’t sure if they were talking about her freedom anymore.
When they lifted their glasses, Reya paused, watching him swallow simply to soak in the wonder and joy of having him in her space. Pouring drinks in her kitchen, flipping through her books, commenting on the art on the walls. She was in the place she loved with the man she—
Did she love Caelan? Did she even know what love truly was?
The only time she was ever certain she’d seen it was on her parents’ faces.
And that had been years into marriage. It was too soon to love him.
Too soon to know. But then why did her chest feel like it was splitting open with all the things she was feeling?
An odd look crossed Caelan’s face. He looked down at the glass he’d drained, and then at the one she held to her lips.
“What is it?” she asked.
He crumpled to the floor.