Chapter 61 Perfect
Perfect
The next few days are nothing short of perfect, in the quiet, dangerous way that makes you forget the world is waiting.
There is no room in the house that remains untouched by us.
The bed. The rough-laid wall near the spring.
The water when the steam grows thick enough to hide us.
The terrace at dusk where the hills swallow the last light.
Even the floor in front of the hearth when neither of us makes it back to the bed in time.
He laughs more here. I do too.
We laze in the pools until our skin wrinkles and the water cools. We ride the horses from his stables in the mornings, racing along the riverbanks until I accuse him of cheating and he grins like he always does when I challenge him.
We find old paints and canvas tucked away in a cabinet that must have belonged to whoever owned the house before him.
“Whoever can paint the ugliest rose wins,” I declare.
He studies me as if this is a tactical question.
I lose. Spectacularly.
He claims his rose looks like a deformed cabbage. I argue mine resembles a wounded starfish. We leave both of them drying on the terrace like proof that neither of us should ever be trusted with art.
The house, predictably, is barely stocked with meat.
He claims he prefers it that way.
In the evenings he runs as a siakar. While he is out, he hunts.
I sit on the front porch with my knees drawn to my chest and wait for him, watching the dark swallow the hills, listening for the shift in the air that tells me he is coming back.
There is something grounding about waiting for him.
One night he returns with a small deer. Once with something I do not recognize, fur silver and eyes too bright even in death. We skin what he brings. Season it. Cook it over the open flame.
Often we eat in comfortable silence. It reminds me of the cave. Not the desperation and agony, but the closeness. At night we lie in the field and stare up at the sky. He rests on his back, one arm beneath his head, the other thrown loosely across my waist.
Eventually he finally asks what I know has been pressing against his teeth.
“Are you alright?” he says quietly.
I pretend not to understand. “With what?”
He does not indulge me. “The tavern.”
The word sits between us like something wounded.
I keep my eyes on the sky. “I do not want to talk about it,” I say honestly.
He nods once. He does not push.
There are parts of that night that slip through my mind when I am not expecting them. The knife in my side. The death. The heat of blood. And that voice.
I do not want you to die today.
Smooth. Controlled. I still cannot decide if I imagined it, or if something else was truly there.
During the day we test my power. He stands across from me in the field and tells me to breathe the way he does before he shifts.
“Control it,” he says. “Do not let it control you.”
I try, and for a few minutes at a time, it works. I can shape the air. Press it outward. Pull it inward. Thin it. Thicken it.
He shows me how he suffocates a man without touching him. It makes something inside me tremble with want.
My power frustrates me. When I push too hard, my nose bleeds. When I pull too much, my vision swims. “Fuck,” I snap one afternoon, wiping blood from my lip. “I wish there was someone who knew what this is.”
He looks at me for a long moment. “I will find out where you came from,” he says.
There is no hesitation in it, and I believe him.
By the third day, I learn something else about us.
We love to run.
Chasing him is pointless. He is too fast, too powerful, too sure of his footing.
But being chased by him through the woods, across the open grass, and over the low rock walls near the river feels wild and clean and entirely mine.
It almost always ends with torn fabric and breathless laughter and his hands finding my hips before I can escape.
On the sixth morning, I wake to him watching me, quiet and solemn.
I already know.
“We have to go back, Asha-bear.”
I roll onto my side and fold my arms across my chest in protest.
“You go back,” I mutter. “I want to stay here.”
He reaches out and brushes a strand of hair from my face. “You are not staying here.”
“Why?”
“Because,” he says mildly, “there is strawberry cake waiting for you.”
I narrow my eyes.
“And another surprise.”
I sit up slightly. “What surprise?”
He studies me, knowing I know the cake is not the real reason we must return. “I told them to begin preparing the Moon Chambers for us.”
I cannot stop the sound that escapes me. “That is supposed to be the most beautiful room in all the lands.”
“It is,” he says.
“I thought it was only for the King.”
“It is only for the King if he marries before his siblings.”
My mouth drops open. “What do you mean?”
“It is an old law,” he says, rolling onto his back. “Designed, I suspect, to encourage reproduction.”
I stare at him.
“The first royal child to marry receives first rights to the Moon Chambers. It does not revert simply because the King marries later.”
“So you just…claimed it?"
He shrugs slightly.
“Your brother is going to think you are intentionally provoking him.”
“He will,” Colsar agrees.
“And are you?”
“No.”
There is something almost boyish in the way he says it.
“I never cared about the room,” he continues. “But…”
“But what?”
“One of the chambers is an arboretum.”
I freeze.
“And I know how you feel about your plants,” he continues, the faintest thread of amusement in his voice. “And whatever rare fruit has currently captured your imagination.”
Heat rises to my cheeks at the acknowledgment. I have never been subtle about my love of plants or rare fruit, and the fact that he remembered affects me more than any grand gesture.
Something within me yields, though I school my expression into composure, unwilling to grant him the satisfaction too easily.
“And there is a healing pool,” he adds.
I narrow my eyes again. “And is it true there is a chocolate fountain?”
He almost smiles. “Possibly.”
I groan dramatically and fall back into the pillows. “Fine,” I say. “You win.”
He brushes his knuckles along my jaw. “We also do not know what the Threns are doing right now."
“It may become difficult to go out if matters worsen,” I finish. “At least this way we would not feel confined.”
He nods. “And there are many rooms,” he adds quietly. “I cannot sleep separately from you anymore. But sometimes…”
“Siakars need space.”
He smiles faintly. “Yes.”
I look at him for a long moment. “You are bribing me with cake and flowers.”
“Yes.”
I sigh theatrically. “Very well. Let us return to court and scandalize your brother.”
He huffs softly at that, though his expression remains thoughtful for a moment.
“And the Baron’s papers?” I ask.
“We place them in the royal archive,” Colsar says. “Quietly. The court does not need another spectacle until we decide how you wish to use them.”
I consider that for a moment. The Baron is already beyond reach, bound to a ship somewhere far from these lands. The papers are no longer about him. They are about what comes next.
He pulls me into him once more before we rise to dress.
The countryside has been perfect.
But perfection, I am learning, is not something that is allowed to last.