Chapter 43 Never Like This
Never Like This
We are warm with ale and victory and the rare, reckless ease of not performing for anyone but each other.
The cards lie abandoned between us, half-finished hands forgotten in favor of leaning back on our palms and letting the hearthlight paint the walls in gold.
My laughter still lingers in the room, thinner now, softer, but real.
He suggests we raise the stakes.
A truth, he says. Something we have always wanted to do and have not. I expect bravado from him. Or deflection. Instead there is something almost thoughtful in the way he studies me, as if this game matters more than the cards ever did.
I try to think lightly at first. Something harmless or something clever, but what comes to mind is not light at all. My smile falters before I can stop it. He notices. “I am learning to read your face,” he says. “You thought of something, then buried it.”
I look down at my hands. They are no longer trembling the way they once did, but they feel exposed all the same.
“Because I am happy,” I admit after a moment, my voice quieter than I intend. “And I do not want to ruin the mood.”
He watches me carefully, the light from the hearth catching in his ash-blond hair until it looks almost white, softening angles that are usually too severe. “You will not ruin it,” he says.
“How can you possibly know that?”
He considers the question with surprising seriousness. Then, almost reluctantly, “Because I do not think I have ever felt as good as I do right now.” The words are simple, unpolished, and entirely unguarded.
Heat rises into my face before I can stop it. I am suddenly aware of how close we are sitting, how the warmth between us is no longer only from the fire. “That,” I say faintly, “is not fair.”
“Why?”
“Because now I must answer.”
“Yes,” he says softly.
So I do. “I have never been fully undressed in front of another person,” I tell him, the admission feeling almost reckless once it leaves me. “Not even a lady’s maid. I always begin in a slip. I have always controlled what was seen and what was hidden.”
The air shifts.
I force myself not to look away. “I suppose,” I continue, cheeks burning, “I have always wanted to be intimate with the right person.”
He goes very still. “And that did not happen,” he says slowly, finishing the thought I am too proud to repeat, “because on your wedding night I had another woman in my chambers.”
The warmth does not vanish, but it shifts, tightening at the edges.
“Yes,” I say. There is no accusation in my voice.
He exhales, long and quiet. The arrogance he wears so easily in public is absent here. “I did not want you to attach yourself to me,” he admits. “And I did not want to attach myself to you.”
“So you made certain I would hate you.”
“Yes.”
The honesty of it stings more than denial would have. “That was effective,” I murmur.
His eyes do not leave mine now. There is no cold distance in them now, only something more complicated. “I did not expect you to look at me like that,” he says.
“Like what?”
“Like I had taken something sacred.”
My throat tightens. “You did,” I whisper.
The silence that follows is not empty. It is full of everything we have both refused to name.
“She has not entered my room since,” he says at last.
My breath catches despite myself. I hate that it does. “Is that meant to comfort me?”
“It is meant to be true.” The fire cracks softly behind us.
The palace beyond these walls might as well not exist. “You are my wife,” he continues, and there is no performance in the words, no courtly emphasis.
“If you are ever undressed before me, it will be because you choose it. Not because I take it. Not because I prove something.”
Something in my chest stirs. “Careful,” I murmur. “That almost sounded tender.”
“It was not,” he replies, but there is no conviction in it.
I lean closer before I can overthink it, just enough that the air between us grows thin.
“Liar.”
He does not deny it this time. The tension does not explode. It does not resolve. It simply deepens, heavy and electric and impossible to ignore.
“So,” I say softly, daring him now, “is that all?”
He studies me as though I am something he both wants and fears in equal measure.
“No,” he says.
And whatever he is about to confess feels far more dangerous than the first. He does not look away when I say it. He does not deflect. He does not hide behind arrogance. Instead, there is something there that I have never seen before.
“The truth,” he says quietly, “is that I have not slept with anyone since we were married.” He says the words carefully, like something fragile he is unsure how to hold.
I search his face for mockery, for strategy, for calculation. But there is none. “I was wrong,” he continues, and the admission seems to cost him. “Wrong to have her in my chambers. Wrong not to come to yours.”
He drags a hand through his hair, and for once he looks younger than he ever has. Stripped of prince and weapon alike, just a man who made a mistake and has replayed it too many times.
“On our wedding night,” he says, voice rougher now, “I was an immature boy.”
I blink.
He huffs out a humorless breath. “I was already… growing attracted to you before the ceremony. I did not like it. I did not plan for it. And then they unveiled you.”
I lean back in my chair, studying him across the small table. The candlelight thins as wax lowers toward the brass holders. Shadows gather at the edges of the room. The warmth of the fire has dimmed into a slower heat.
His throat shifts slightly. “You were…breathtaking.”
Heat unfurls low in my stomach despite myself.
“And every man in that hall was staring at you. Watching you. Wanting you. It made something in me turn feral.” His jaw tightens.
“I wanted you to myself. And that frightened me.”
He draws in a breath, slow and controlled. “We had a contract. An arrangement. I told myself I would keep it clean. Strategic. I have lived my entire life knowing that wanting things…” He stops.
The rest does not come easily. He tries again. “Wanting things always leads to hurt and disappointment.”
There is no anger in it, only a lifetime of conclusion.
“My mother’s absence from my wedding was a reminder of that.”
Something in my chest softens. “I learned young not to expect her,” he says. “Each time I hoped she would appear, she did not. She was absent when I was caged alone and suffering. When I was used. When I needed her. Eventually you learn to stop wanting.”
The air feels thinner.
“I waited for her,” he continues. “More than once. I thought if I endured long enough she would come. She did not.”
His voice lowers. “You learn to stop needing. You learn to stop wanting. It keeps you functional.”
“And me?” I ask.
“You were becoming something I could not remain functional around.” His voice is calm, the kind of calm that has been practiced.“So I decided I would not want you,” he finishes. “I would follow the contract. Keep it business.”
“And Jessamy?” I ask.
“I was drunk,” he says bluntly. “I shifted and went for a run. She followed. She is a kyvarin, they are not the same as siakars but they are creatures from Shalvar nonetheless.
I can’t help but show my surprise, I had no idea that she was a creature of any kind. The ability to shift was rare among females.
Colsar continues, “She shifted and ran with me. Afterward she was exhausted and lay down. I had pants on when you opened the door. I was not naked, even though I know it was dark and it would be easy to assume that I was.”
I replay the image in my mind. The angle of his body. The glimpse of skin that had made my stomach drop.
“She was naked,” I say.
“Yes.”
“After a shift, especially a run, exhaustion sets in quickly. Clothing is impractical when you are fur and bone and teeth one moment and human the next.”
“I knew how it looked when you opened the door, and I was sure to shift my position when I heard you approaching so that you would assume it was more than what it was,” he says quietly. “I wanted distance,” he says. “I wanted you angry. It felt safer.”
“And did she ask to stay?”
Color rises faintly along his cheekbones.
“She did,” he admits. “She asked to make it real. A long time ago we were more than just acquaintances, she wanted to…relive those moments, I suppose.”
My pulse kicks. “I could not,” he says quietly. “I could not get interested. Not after seeing you that night.”
Silence folds around us.
“I have not touched another woman since we were married,” he says. “That is the truth.”
“And the rest of it?” I press.
He hesitates. “I hurt you,” he says finally.
“Yes.”
His hand tightens slightly against mine. “I am ashamed. And I am…sorry.” The words do not flow. They are pulled from somewhere deeper than pride.
He swallows once, as if the words themselves feel unfamiliar. “I was cruel because I was afraid,” he continues. “Afraid of wanting you. Afraid of losing control. Afraid that if I let myself care, it would be taken from me the way everything else has been.”
His eyes hold mine, and there is nothing distant in them now. No armor. No calculation.
“And now?” I whisper.
He exhales slowly. Now the next part is harder. I see it in the tension of his jaw. In the faint tightening of his shoulders.
“Now,” he says carefully, as if stepping onto uncertain ground, “I am more afraid of losing you than I am of wanting you.”
I can tell that it costs him to say it, which is how I know it to be true. I swallow the last of my wine, the sweetness lingering on my tongue, and set the glass down carefully.
“Your turn,” I say lightly, though my pulse has not yet slowed from what he has just given me. “Something you have never done but want to.”
His brows draw together slightly. “That counted as my turn.”
I frown at him. “The Jessamy confession does not count. It was a truth that was…owed.”
A faint flush rises along his cheekbones, almost imperceptible unless one is looking for it. I am looking for it.