Chapter 36
Elsedora
Emmerick had left hours ago to bring the soup to Angeline. I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t wanted to go with him, but he deserved the privacy to work through his emotions.
Yet another pitiful excuse to avoid seeing my bedridden friend.
Em insisted the sofa in the parlor would be fine to sleep on—that he couldn’t stand to see another bed for a long while.
I wouldn’t want anything to do with a bed again either, had I spent the last twenty years in one. I left the fire roaring and set out thick wool blankets and an abundance of pillows.
Stepping out of a hot bath, I dried myself and slipped into a silk robe.
My hair had grown quite long, and I contemplated chopping it to my shoulders again for convenience, but a more vain and reckless part of me wondered what the King’s hand would feel like if he wrapped my strands around his fist. As I combed it, I let my imagination wander further, and my core clenched.
It seemed my dry spell of wanting no one had ended. Though, this line of thought grew inconvenient since I knew that he’d expect more of me than I’d be able to give.
Letting out an exasperated sigh, I left the comb on my vanity and began turning down the cold linen sheets. In the kitchen earlier that day, I’d thought he was going to do what any other man would have—step between my legs and kiss me. Instead, he’d pulled away and kept cooking.
I’d fixated on him masterfully chopping roots, with heated cheeks and a growing girlish crush on my dearest friend. The way his fingers had dug into my hips to set me on the butcher block left me flustered.
Overly beating my pillows, I cursed my inability to remove the moment from my mind. I squeezed my thighs together; my hand would quell this ache tonight.
Movement caught my eye. On the wall above my headboard, there was the largest spider I’d ever seen. Or ever seen in my home—magical tombs aside.
It was the size of a bird. A furry bird.
I screeched and launched myself across the room. The distance that the down mattress put between me and that beastly arachnid was not enough, and I searched for something to throw.
Before I could find a shoe, my door sprang open. Emmerick burst through. He wore only unbuttoned breeches; the muscles of his shoulders were taut as he gripped the hilt of a dagger and raised it toward my foe. His brow furrowed in confusion.
“What’s wrong?” He shot out the question with such authority and violent intent to defend me. I almost forgot about the spider while watching him move—every edge chiseled, readied for battle. Delectable.
I hadn’t heard him come back through the Egress. “There’s a spider.” I pointed at the ghastly eight-legged monstrosity on the wall.
Emmerick’s shoulders relaxed, and his grip loosened on the dagger. “Else, are you serious?”
I nodded, fighting the warmth that spread across my cheeks.
He heaved out a relieved sigh and dropped the dagger at the foot of my bed.
“Woman, you’re going to give me a heart attack screaming over a little snow spider.
You’ve gone head-to-head with far scarier things.
” He turned toward my vanity, grabbing an empty chalice meant for water and a piece of blotting paper.
“It’s the size of a bird!”
“It’s the size of my thumb… at most,” he teased.
“Well, you have very large thumbs!”
He cracked a smirk. “Fine. I’ll get it, I’ll get it. Open the window.”
I watched the sculpted muscles of his back as he kneeled against my pillows to capture the vile thing in the cup.
My mouth went dry as icy-cold shock melted to something molten and wanting just from seeing him there, half dressed, kneeling on my bed.
He must have been preparing for sleep when he’d heard me, as his curls jutted out messily over his forehead, disheveled in a way that made me want to sink my fingers into them.
His shoulders quaked with silent laughter. I put my hands on my hips. “It isn’t funny,” I argued.
He crossed my room to the window, still chuckling. “It’s a tad funny,” he retorted.
“You won’t kill it?” I asked.
He shook his head. “Why should I? She’s just found herself in the wrong place at the wrong time. I can think of someone else who makes a habit of that.”
He narrowed a pointed and knowing stare over his shoulder at me.
When I’d first met him, he’d wanted to throw me in a dungeon cell because he thought I’d gone to Luz to assassinate Sybilla—an unfortunate misunderstanding. I’d only been looking for my brother.
“How do you know it’s female?”
“She has an egg sack on her back.”
I shivered, and he huffed out a laugh again. Once he’d released the creature and promptly shut the window against the frosty, snow-laden wind, he turned to face me.
It only just occurred to me that all I wore was damp silk, and I tried to tell myself the chill from my window had made my nipples pebble, not the delicious sculpture of the man that stood in my room saving me from a spider.
I pulled the robe tighter, though it only pushed my breasts together more. They weren’t large by any means, but I’d long ago learned how to position myself in ways to deceive the eye. I wondered what he’d do if I struck one of those poses now. Curiosity got the best of me.
His nostrils flared slightly, and his brows rose.
He’d noticed.
The trailing of his gaze gave him away, but he quickly corrected his attention.
Ever the gentleman. Somewhere beneath that, though, I would put good coin on him enjoying the idea of stripping away all his manners in favor of something wilder.
I could be that something—if only for a night.
Bad, impulsive idea.
“Thank you.” I closed the distance between us.
He placed his palms on my shoulders, looking like he wanted to keep me an arm’s length away, and not let me gravitate any closer. “Of course. Sorry to barge in. I thought...”
I smirked as his cheeks grew a marvelous shade of mauve and his elbows bent, allowing me an inch closer. “You thought I was in mortal danger and rushed to save me, puppy?”
I glanced down at his exposed chest. I thanked the Sethe curse for preserving it. A mottling of scars formed faint handprints on either side of his sternum.
My fingers traced the lines. “Where did you get them?”
He swallowed hard. “When Firose captured me and Asterie and brought us to the Central Tower, she burned me.”
Seeing red, I gently covered the scars with my hands, wishing my touch could replace such an awful memory. If she hadn’t died in the crumbling amphitheater, I’d kill Firose. I couldn’t understand how she and Emmerick had made amends and ended up together in Sahlmsara, and he never spoke ill of her.
“Else.” It came out as a breathy warning. “I should leave you to your evening.”
I couldn’t help it. I trailed a finger down his torso, ending at the V shape at the waist of his breeches. “You should. Or you could stay.”
When I met his gaze again, it was smoldering. But instead of reacting to my touch, and giving in to what I offered, he answered, “That’s an awful idea.”
“What’s an awful idea?” I wanted him to say it.
“Fornicating with friends has never done me much good.”
“So you’re thinking about it?” I pressed.
He tilted his head, looking dazed with confusion.
“Fornicating—with me,” I clarified.
I reached up to press a hand where his cheeks reddened and felt the warmth spread beneath his dark stubble.
“Elsedora.” Now my name sounded like a plea. It was tantalizing. I could imagine him begging for other things.
“What?” I answered plainly.
“You have been my light. Through so much fucking darkness. Your friendship—it saved me from giving in. Those conversations, however frivolous they seemed to you, kept me breathing.”
My heart pounded.
I could handle dalliance, want, need. Could I handle being someone’s light?
“It is okay to desire a friendship that is more physical,” I tried to reason. “I wouldn’t think of you differently.”
Those were words I’d used before on a Moon warlock who had been my fiercest friend for centuries—they were wrong then. I felt the bitter taste of how wrong they sounded again.
He shook his head. “I’ve had that once before.
It isn’t of interest to me to repeat. Listen to me,” he said as he gently pulled my wrist away from his cheek.
“I owe you my life—more than that. I can’t make promises to stick around if we go down that path and things end poorly.
If a tryst is what you want as thanks, I’ll gladly give that to you. ”
He’d bed me in return for fighting to save him?
No.
This wasn’t a negotiation or a payment.
I shook my head. My tongue felt heavy and too big for my mouth.
He waited there, and the air stilled between us.
“I can’t lose you. If that’s the risk, then I’ll put all other ideas out of my mind,” I said with resolve. “You can’t blame a woman for trying when you show up to rescue her half dressed. Clothe yourself before bursting in next time.”
He huffed a silent chuckle, then leaned down and placed the most chaste kiss on my left temple, but I didn’t miss the way his throat bobbed before he said, “Good, then.”
He rubbed his palms up and down my arms twice, as though warring with how to part from the touch. “You smell nice,” he blurted. He’d noticed it once earlier that afternoon.
I smiled weakly. “I use the plum blossoms in my soap.”
“I really like it,” he admitted. “Goodnight, Elsedora.”
Damn his self-control.
He braced to step away.
“Why goodnight? Stay for a nightcap,” I encouraged.
One of his hands traveled up to embed itself in the wet hair at the base of my skull, and he tilted my head up. I parted my lips, waiting for him to lower his to mine.
Instead, he leaned in toward my ear and said, “Anything other than ‘goodnight’ tonight means I may lose you tomorrow. It isn’t a risk I’m willing to take either.”
I melted beneath the heat of his breath on my earlobe, nearly crumbling to my knees and telling him I’d give him anything he wanted. But he’d made a valid point.
I cared for him deeply. It wasn’t the fleeting sort of passion I’d experienced before.
“While I feel you’re thinking too much into physical intimacy, I understand,” I breathed out, closing my eyes and fighting the impulse to hold onto him.
“Good.” His stubble brushed my cheek before he released me and backed away.
Opening my eyes, I watched him step out of my bedchamber. He inhaled deeply, as though relieved or simply hanging onto the smell of plum blossom for later.
“Goodnight,” I said to the door before collapsing back onto my bed.
It took several minutes to convince myself not to run down the stairs after him. Only when I could no longer hear him moving about the lower level of my home did I let my hand slip beneath the silk of my nightdress.