Chapter 60 Peace
Peace
Ileave dinner on the table where he will see it.
The house is quiet by the time he returns.
I am already in bed when I hear the door below and the slow movement of someone who has been traveling too long in silence.
Water runs for a while. When he finally comes upstairs, the scent of soap reaches me before he does.
The mattress shifts as he climbs into bed beside me, his hair still damp.
“I could get used to this,” I murmur.
“Which part?” he asks quietly. “Selling your father, or us in bed together?”
“Both.”
He huffs something that might be a laugh. For a while we simply lie there, breathing in the quiet of the room.
“Thank you for the dinner,” he says suddenly.
“Do not thank me,” I murmur. “Simply expect it.”
His arm slides around my waist, drawing me closer. “Expect what?”
“That if I am feeding myself, I am feeding you,” I say. “Unless I know you have other plans.”
For a moment he says nothing.
“That is what I want too,” he answers at last. “Maybe it is what I have always wanted.” His hand tightens slightly at my waist before he continues. “And when…if we have children one day, they will sit with us as well. We will eat together, all of us.”
I turn my head slightly on the pillow.
“That is something I have never had before,” he adds.
“Me either,” I say.
The silence that follows feels easy rather than uncertain.
“Why did you stumble when you said children?” I ask after a moment.
He exhales slowly. “Because until now it was only an idea. Even though you have said you want them, we have never spoken about it since we have actually been in a position to make one.” His fingers drift along my arm.
“And the world speaks of your Mark of Forizan,” he continues, thoughtful now.
“But I do not truly understand what it means.”
“I do not understand much either,” I admit.
“Only that it increases the likelihood of heirs, and of having more than one with power. And the power itself does not have to match ours. Even though you are a siakar and I have lightcraft, a child could be born a feeder instead, or something else that runs somewhere in the bloodline. That sort of thing, I think.”
The words leave my mouth, and a sudden thought slips through me. I glance back at him. “Unless you would prefer that we do not have them yet.”
“Why,” he asks slowly, “would I be sharing your bed this often, without caution, if I did not want children?”
“I do not know.”
“Then I will answer,” he says. “I love you. And suddenly I see a future that I want badly. One with laughter and safety and, yes, children. I do not care whether they are powerful or not.” His voice lowers slightly. “Every time I have been with you, it has been with that thought.”
For a moment I cannot answer him. Something in my chest loosens and tightens at the same time, as though his words have reached a place inside me that has never quite been touched before.
His fingers drift upward along my spine, unhurried, until they pause midway between my shoulders. “Your glamour,” he says, his voice close to my ear. “It is back.”
I draw a slow breath. The illusion has returned without my thinking about it, smoothing the raised ridges and seams into unbroken skin.
“Yes.”
His thumb traces the place where one scar lies hidden beneath the magic. “You hide them again.”
“I do not like being looked at as though I am something damaged,” I say. “And they are…unattractive.”
He shifts closer, his chest aligning with my back, the warmth of him against me. For a moment he says nothing, and I can feel him thinking rather than reacting.
“In the cave,” he says at last, “you let me see them.”
“That was different.”
“It was,” he agrees. Then, more softly, “Show me.” There is no force in it, just a quiet insistence that feels more intimate than any command.
“You have already seen them,” I say, though my voice thins despite me.
“I know.” His hand slides down, closing gently around my wrist, holding it as though testing whether I will pull away. “Before, you endured me. Now you come to me. That is not the same thing.”
I can’t help myself. “Or come for you. Or on you,” I murmur, the words softer than the laugh that follows.
His fingers tighten at my wrist, not enough to hurt. “Do not tempt me to make you demonstrate.”
I turn my head and kiss him, slow and unhurried, letting my mouth linger.
“Show me,” he says against my lips. “No illusions. Not with me.”
I nibble his lower lip before turning over.
The glamour loosens at my will. It does not vanish all at once.
It thins. Unravels. Slips away like breath against glass.
Cool air touches the raised ridges across my back, the uneven lines at my shoulders, the pale webbing that trails down my arms where magic once tore and healed and tore again.
Silence gathers between us.
“Now I wish we had killed him.”
His palm hovers first. Then lowers. He does not trace the scars delicately, as though they might break.
Instead, he rests his warm hand flat over them, claiming even this.
Then his hand returns to my spine, moving along the longest scar with measured care.
He does not flinch. He does not hesitate.
He leans forward and presses his mouth to the place just beneath my shoulder blade, his lips warm against the ridged skin.
He kisses another mark, then another, unhurried, as though each one deserves acknowledgment.
“You are not damaged,” he says against my back.
I close my eyes.
“They tried,” he continues, his voice low, certain in a different way now. “They failed.”
My throat tightens. “They are ugly.”
His arm slides around my waist, drawing me closer against him.
“They are part of you,” he answers. “And I will not have you ashamed of surviving.” He kisses the edge of a scar near my shoulder, then rests his forehead lightly against my back.
“Do not hide from me,” he says. There is no demand in it, only a quiet promise that he will not look away.