Chapter 32
When I surface, a fire is crackling, but otherwise the room is quiet. Alaris is in the sitting area, a large book in his lap.
His head lifts, gaze locking on mine.
“Hi,” I say shyly, suddenly awkward. Last time I woke I was hazy from the sedative. Now I’m all too aware that I’m in his bed. “How long was I asleep?”
“I’m surprised you’re awake.” He sets his book aside. “It is late afternoon. How is your pain?”
My whole body is stiff. My ankle aches. I push myself higher on the pillow and wince as the inside of my arm stings. It seems the dulling effect of the sedative has worn off. “Fine.”
“Hm.” He frowns. “The healer should be here shortly.”
I wonder if it’s the same healer who took the…“The hawks!” I lurch up. My head spins, so I sink back to my elbows. “Are they alright? They were sick.”
“They’re recovering quickly.”
“Are they eating? Drinking?”
“They’ll be better in no time.”
I ease back down, and my eyes catch on the far wall. Deep blue velvet hangs from a rail there, drawn shut around the section of the room where his writing desk sits.
“What is that?”
Before he answers, there’s a knock at the door.
Alaris rises fluidly and admits a young man in a healer’s cloak.
I tense as he comes to the bedside. I know this healer can’t be the masked man. The man who attacked me was taller, with a bigger frame. But my body does not care about logic. Every muscle locks as this stranger reaches for me.
“Could you tilt your head?” he asks, hovering his hand near the side of my neck.
I jerk away before he makes contact.
“I need to take your pulse.” He glances at Alaris, but Alaris’s eyes are on me.
I swallow. “Can…can you check my ankle first?”
The healer nods and folds back the covers. The room is cold even though the fire is blazing, or maybe it’s just me. My calf is nearly as pale as the white bandage around it. He prods the wrapping and I lie back, trying to calm my nerves.
He’s just a healer. He’s here to help.
“It’s still swollen, but it doesn’t need to be rewrapped,” he says. “Now I need to check your pulse.”
Jaw locked, I give him a short nod. My body tenses all over again. I force myself to bare my throat.
Without a word, Alaris takes the healer’s place at the end of the bed. He slips his hand onto my bandaged ankle. The gentle touch feels good against the swollen flesh, sending a pleasant buzz through me. I lie still, not wanting him to let go.
His thumb sweeps back and forth over the cloth. The hollow above my heel is sensitive. Each pass ripples up my leg. I flinch as the healer reaches for my neck, but I cannot look away from the long fingers wrapped around my ankle.
Alaris’s eyes are half-lidded, his face perfectly calm. His fingers drift over the top of my foot, stroking lightly across the bandages before retracing the same path.
I barely notice as the healer moves to check my arm.
Alaris runs a finger under the edge of the bandage and I inhale. My leg tightens.
He is watching so closely, I know he can see his effect on me. I love it. I hate it. I want him to touch me, and I don’t want him to know that.
I want to break his composure. To find a way to surprise him and make him the one who is breathless and flushed from a simple touch.
When his fingertips slip off the wrapping and slide over bare skin, a jolt that has nothing to do with pain sparks up my leg. I squirm before I can stop myself. The look in his dark eyes is lazy, but too intent to be casual.
Oh, this devil definitely knows what he is doing.
I want to push my foot into his chest and pull him closer at the same time. Tingles are turning into heat. His caress is making me think things I should not be thinking with another person in the room.
“I’m finished,” the healer says, startling me.
Alaris stands. “Anything new?” His tone is practical, as if he wasn’t just touching me in a highly impractical way.
The healer shakes his head. “The cuts and ankle are mending, but the blood loss is significant. The body needs time.”
“I feel much better now.” I force myself up onto quivering arms. The buzz of Alaris’s hand on my ankle has chased the cotton out of my head and I am about to jump out of my skin. Or jump Alaris’s.
The healer looks at me. “Too much activity could strain your heart. You need to stay in bed.”
“You heard him,” Alaris says, putting a pillow behind me and gently pushing me back against it. “Stay in bed.”
He gives me a serious look that makes me want to disobey.
His mouth twitches like he can tell.
“I’ll walk you out,” he says to the man in blue, escorting him to the door.
I deflate against the pillow. My ankle still hums where his fingers stroked the bandage. My fingertips are cold and slow to answer me, but I drag them back and forth on my stomach, trying to recreate the sensation.
The door shuts. I stiffen and glare as Alaris returns, daring him to tell me what to do.
He smirks. “You look like a wounded kitten who is about to scratch. Good thing I brought milk.”
Before I can snap back, he produces a tray bearing a spread that makes my mouth water. Fruit and olives gleam next to cuts of red meat, and a honeycomb oozes syrup onto bread. I reach for the cheese with a rind of black salt I’ve come to crave, but he pulls the tray out of my grasp.
“Meat first. You need iron.” He turns the tray, moving the medallions with cracked, charred edges and red centers into my reach.
“You are abusing your power because I’m injured,” I say, hunger beating pride as I accept a piece anyway and pop it into my mouth. Honeyed and savory flavors burst on my tongue and I stifle a moan. I chew, looking away to hide how much I enjoy it.
When I glare at him, I expect another smirk. Instead, his face is intent, his eyes on my lips, as if he wants to follow every chew. My neck flushes.
I swallow and purse my lips. “There. Meat.”
He reaches out with his thumb and wipes some oil left on my lips. They part, and my heart rate picks up. I want to catch that thumb in my teeth.
“Good.” He sets down the entire tray on the table beside me. “Keep eating.”
“So demanding,” I grumble, reaching for another piece only once his back is turned. The meat satisfies me in a way that makes me think maybe my body does need it.
He fetches a stack of papers from the low table in the sitting area. “Is it alright if I step out for a moment?”
I pause, a piece of cheese hovering on the way to my mouth. Embarrassment crawls up the back of my neck. “Yes!” I burst out.
He doesn’t even blink, seeming unaware of my flush of shame. He waits a little longer, eyeing me. “I’ll only be a second.”
As soon as the door shuts, I put down the cheese and cover my face. I’ve kept him hostage in his own room. I made pathetic pleas for him not to leave my side…has he even showered? I’m in his bed. Where has he been sleeping?
I have to get out of here.
The door swings open. He really was only a second.
I avoid eye contact. “I should go back to my room. I have taken your bed long enough.”
I slide out from under the covers and stand. The floor tilts. My vision fades at the edges and I grab for something.
He is beside me in an instant and catches me with an arm around my waist. “What are you doing?”
I’m mortified, gripping his forearm for balance. “Right, sorry.” My heart pounds too fast for someone standing still. My legs shake. I lock my knees and hold on.
“Lysandra.” The teasing is gone from his voice. “You were attacked last night. You are not well.”
“You’re right.” The words come through my teeth, breathless. “I’ll join the hawks in the healers’ wing.”
“If you really want to get out of my bed,” he says, slowly, “I will help you to yours.”
I nod. That is all I want. To get out of his way.
He scoops me up with an arm under my legs before I can protest. My arms go around his neck on instinct.
For once, we are the same temperature. I hold myself stiff instead of sinking into him, willing to endure this additional humiliation to get out of here.
But he walks the wrong direction, away from the door.
“What are you…”
He parts the new velvet curtains with his shoulder, revealing a second bed where his writing desk used to be.
It’s piled with blankets and pillows in deep blues and purples.
Dozens of the crystals are strung above it, catching the candlelight and scattering it across the velvet in small bright points.
He sets me on the bed before I find words.
“Your room isn’t safe.” He straightens, looking down at me. “You are staying here.”
“Here? With you?”
He nods.
“This is not necessary.” My hands curl in the blankets, my heart hammering.
“It is necessary. I warded the room. No one can enter without my permission.”
Wards require powerful blood. Alaris has proven himself as strong as any divinial I’ve met outside my own family. If he says no one can get into this room, I believe him, which is a marvelous solution to my murderer problem. But staying here…with him…
“Won’t I be in your way? When you have”—I glance toward his bed—“visitors?”
He raises an eyebrow. “I thought I made it clear my visitors are all business associates.”
I never fully believed him. “Yes, but you’re still a…”
A man. An infuriatingly gorgeous man that women throw themselves at.
He cocks his head. “I’m still a what?”
I skip over the sentence I would rather die than complete. Blood loss is doing dangerous things to my control over my words. “Your reputation cannot be entirely fake,” I spout.
His mouth curls, shapely and wicked. “You should know whether at least one part of my reputation is fabricated.”
Heat floods my face. I can still feel his mouth on mine. He knew exactly where to touch me. His reputation as a lover is definitely earned. I swallow.
“But as for sharing my room.” His hand flexes. “You won’t be in the way of anything. I haven’t taken anyone to bed since I became the head of this house.”
His tone is sincere, conviction clear in his eyes. I think he means his words. But he and I were on our way to what I would consider a bedding when I was a black-haired stranger in a mask…
Unless he meant it when he said he was never going to let the night get so far. Or unless I’m so sheltered that we have very different definitions of abstinence.
“This is inappropriate, though,” I sputter. “I am your hawk keeper, or cartographer. What will the staff say?”
“That I’ve found a new lover.” He says it with the same cool expression as ever. “And I’m too attached to stay apart for even one night.”
“Do your lies always fall back on…sex?” The word sits in the air between us. I’m not sure if I have enough blood in me to flame red, but whatever is left for my heart to pump is trying.
“Only the most important ones.” His tone is calm, but the devil is back in his eyes. “Treason, a princess who needs hiding away, and the like.”
Princess.
He knows who I am now. He’s not going out of his way for Ly the hawk keeper. He’s put up wards and given up the corner of his room to protect the life of Princess Lysandra. And wards are a better solution than staying by my side all the time.
Between the teasing and the sex talk, my heart is doing something inconvenient. I can’t mistake duty for more, or I’ll humiliate myself beyond recovery.
“Keeping a princess here against her will also qualifies as treason,” I grumble.
“Add it to the reasons the emperor has to want me dead,” he says, lifting his chin. “Anything else?”
“Yes…” I let out a long sigh and fidget with the covers. “Thank you. I probably wouldn’t be able to sleep in my own room.”
“Sleeping is exactly what you should be doing, instead of spending every ounce of energy arguing with your lord.”
I pick up one of the smaller pillows and give him a whack. “I outrank you. Now go bathe.”
“Now who is demanding?”
“You have blood on your neck. And dirt in your hair.” I’m not actually annoyed, but I can’t take the fact that he didn’t even shower while I slept.
He does not move, looking me over in this bed. I raise my eyebrows at him until he exhales through his nose.
“Before I go.” He reaches into his pocket and holds out a dark stone on a silver chain. The voidstone. “Karns found this on your floor.”
I take it from his palm and loop it over my head. He watches the chain disappear beneath my collar. Then he turns for the bathing room, pulling the curtain closed behind him.
I sink down, the layers of blankets pressing me flat. The voidstone settles against my sternum. With the velvet curtains muting the world beyond, this corner could be a room of its own.
My eyelids are heavy. Behind these curtains, behind his wards, I feel safe.
A faint rush of water hisses through the air.
My tired, disloyal mind decides this is a fine moment to conjure up an image of Alaris, shirtless.
His wet curls against the back of his neck.
The arms that lifted me to this bed without strain.
Water streaming over his shoulders, his back.
The line of muscle from his ribs to his hips…
I do not know how I’m going to survive sharing this room with him.
Sleep takes me before the water stops.