13. Zarek
Zarek
THOSE FOUR LETTERS
Igrab a towel with shaking hands and clean up the mess of my seed on the blankets as best I can before collapsing next to my wife. Her gaze is soft and unfocused as she stares at the rafters. I drape my arm over her waist and try to catch my breath.
“I didn’t know,” she finally whispers, “it could be like that.”
Neither did I.
I take her hand in mine and link our fingers together.
I used to laugh at the poor saps who told me that fucking their wife, or girlfriend, or boyfriend, was different.
That it was better than fucking anyone else.
I thought those assholes were delusional, that it was all a lie to make themselves feel better about denying themselves the chance to enjoy any other lovers.
But I was wrong.
Because that was the best sex I’ve ever had.
Gods. I send a mental apology to all the bastards I used to tease. It really does feel different when it’s with someone you care about. Someone you—
Love.
I freeze as those four letters ricochet through my brain.
But that’s the word, isn’t it? That’s how I feel about the woman I was forced to marry.
Fuck me. Malrik’s plan worked beautifully.
And I can’t even find it in my heart to be mad about it.
Because here I am, with the woman I love breathing softly in my arms, listening to rain beat against the roof.
And the rest of the world can burn for all I care.
I have her now and, gods above, it’s enough.
I press my lips to her neck, tasting the salt of her sweat, breathing her in.
And then I whisper my name. My true name, the gift given to me by my mother and father when I was born in the shadows of the palace of Dungal.
My wife turns to meet my lips, kisses me, and smiles. She whispers it back to me, like a secret. Like something precious and wild.
“It suits you,” she says.
I wrap my arms around her and hold her close, this beautiful woman who has my heart.
Silence wakes me. It takes me a moment to realize what I’m hearing: the absence of rain against the roof. I roll over, moving as gently as I can so I don’t wake my wife, and stare into the gloom of the inn’s hayloft.
The lamp went out in the night, so all I see is the pale glow of moonlight on the far side of the hayloft’s railing. I drop my feet over the edge of the makeshift bed and run my hands through my hair. It’s still damp.
“Shit,” I whisper into the darkness.
I don’t want to get moving. Hells, my body aches in dozens of new and interesting places, thanks to riding a godsdamned horse for days, and I’m so exhausted that the memory of the past few days feels like an actual weight balanced on my shoulders.
I’d like to spend the next week in this hayloft, on these ratty blankets, fucking my wife.
No, make that a month. Two months. Hells, make that the rest of my godsdamned life.
That low whisper of intuition dances across the back of my neck. The rest of my godsdamned life will be fairly fucking short if we don’t get moving. Sure, no one recognized us in a crowded, dimly lit common room where everyone was drunk and we were soaking wet.
But in the daylight? In public? At a wedding?
I shiver, then come to my feet. It takes me a few attempts to fumble in the darkness for a match and to light the lantern, but I get there.
Lilias makes a sleepy moan of protest, and I almost lose every last bit of my resolve when she sits up and the blanket slides off her shoulders to pool at her waist.
“Is it morning?” she asks, rubbing her eyes.
I shake my head. “We should get going,” I say.
She frowns.
“The innkeeper thinks we’re here for the big wedding,” I say. “We should leave before we have to explain otherwise.”
Lilias pouts, but she climbs out of bed. We pull our wet clothes on in silence, and something in my heart breaks when we climb down the ladder and leave the hayloft.
But that’s ridiculous, surely. We’re riding to the hunting lodge to meet her brother and suggest an alliance with Ethiria, and possibly Lisal.
Prince Elrick knows who I am. Hells, Lilias’s servant, Anura, insisted on giving me my own room the last time we were there.
And I can fuck my wife on that bed just as well as I fucked her on a pile of hay covered with blankets, right?
Still, my chest feels tight as we saddle the horses and lead them out of the barn and into the thin, gray light that comes before dawn. I remember the guard telling me not to look back when I left Dungal for the last time.
But I look back anyway.
We left the lantern burning on the little table in the hayloft. Somehow, that tiny lamp is bright enough to cast a thin golden halo of light across the muddy road behind us.
And when the road turns, blocking my view of the barn and its hayloft, I can’t help feeling like I’ve just lost something I might never be able to capture again.