Chapter Twenty-Eight #2
Before she could even consider settling, she pulled her damp braid over her shoulder, brushing through the frizz forming near her temples. She stepped up to the fire as she redid it, shivering from the warmth she greedily soaked in.
Her body was exhausted, and now that they’d stopped moving, she felt the soreness of every muscle. The aching of her feet, the numbness of her fingers and the tips of her ears.
Light, when was the last time she’d had a proper rest? She doubted she’d be able to function if not for her bonds; even so she felt as if she were clinging by a thread.
Aurelie crouched to undo the laces of her boots, only to knock her head into Yuri’s when he bent to do the same. They both said fast apologies before shifting to set their belongings by the fire, removing each item and hanging it meticulously before simultaneously moving on to their weapons.
Severin watched with a quirked brow as Aurelie drew her dagger at the same time Yuri drew his blade, both frowning at the beads of water that clung to them.
“Are you going to braid each other’s hair next?” Severin scoffed. “What is this, synchronized soldiering?”
Both their heads whipped up, and Aurelie’s heart leaped to her throat as she met eyes with the angel.
Her skin immediately went hot, but the angel only smiled.
“Here,” he said, offering her a dry cloth. “Use this.”
She took it gratefully, wiping down her blade.
She hadn’t realized until then just how at peace she felt in her routine.
Yuri, too, had been settled by it, relaxing as he polished his sword.
They were both soldiers, after all, and though Aurelie knew it should have made her glad to share this moment with her bonded, she felt like an impostor.
Yuri was an angel. He was good and pure and perfect.
She, on the other hand, was a liar who’d betrayed him by bonding to a demon.
Aurelie stood when she’d finished with the blade, setting it beside the bed. Then she peeled off her tunic, followed by her borrowed breeches, until she was left in only a chemise.
She tried not to consider how it clung to her body, partially translucent, as both the men stared at her in surprise.
“We’re soaked to the bone,” she told them, wringing out her chemise as best she could while still wearing it. “We should dry what we can before we set out again.”
Severin’s focus trailed down the length of her legs to where the damp fabric hugged her skin.
He didn’t speak, though his hunger buried itself deep in Aurelie’s lower belly, taking her by surprise.
Her body warmed as he turned away and began to undo the fastenings of his own coat, then his tunic.
His movements were slow and practiced, entirely unbothered by either of their gazes.
The fabric peeled from his skin like bark from a tree.
The rain had soaked through, and the linen clung to him as if reluctant to let go.
Aurelie tried not to watch, but her eyes betrayed her.
His torso was lean, all warm brown skin threaded with old scars that curled like script in a forgotten tongue. The firelight cast him in amber, shadows gathering in the hollows of his stomach and along the sharp lines of his hips, giving him the look of a statue half-drenched in dusk.
He was beautiful, and the bastard knew it.
Aurelie was caught by the flex of muscle as he hung his tunic near the fire, and while she knew it was the last thing she should be thinking, the memory of his night with Melisandre came unbidden.
The way his hunger had swallowed her whole.
The pleasure that had seized her, wanting so much more than she’d allowed herself.
Her mouth went dry.
Then she felt it—that flicker in the bond. Not Severin’s steady burn, but something sharper, cooler. Wind stirring in warning.
She turned, and Yuri was watching her.
He stood rigid by the hearth, and something shifted in the air between them. A flavor of jealousy, perhaps, but not quite. It surged through her like a current, difficult to name.
The angel’s eyes did not leave hers. Don’t you dare ignore me, they seemed to say as he lifted his tunic over his head, his movements languid and intentional.
You are my bonded.
Water caught in the dip of his collarbones. In the hollow of his throat. His skin was paler than Severin’s, marred by fewer scars, but no less striking. He tossed the soaked fabric aside and began to unfasten the leather at his waist.
Aurelie swallowed.
The message was clear enough. He wasn’t going to stand there like some humbled creature while Severin preened by the fire, soaking in the attention. He would show her that angels, too, were beautiful. That he was beautiful.
And Light, was he.
She hated how her eyes trailed down the hard lines of his abdomen, the subtle taper of his waist. Hated how it made her feel like she was seventeen again, trying not to stare at the knights training shirtless in the yard.
But these were not boys who stared back at her. They were men whose heated stares stripped her of titles and steel until she, too, was not a soldier or a Chantelune, but a woman whose entire body burned beneath their gazes.
The fire crackled, the air too charged. Heat warmed her neck, stifling until she cleared her throat, desperate for something else to focus on. Anything.
“How’s the lute?” she asked finally, shaking the feeling off as she looked toward Severin.
Come on, Aurelie, get a hold of yourself.
“Likely destined to become rubbish.” He took a seat in one of the chairs, bringing the instrument into his lap to inspect. “Shall I try a song?”
Yuri groaned, his feathers turned carefully toward the flames. “Do it and I’ll gut you.”
“No one asked you, Pigeon. Stick to your preening.”
“My preening?”
Aurelie sighed. For all her doubts about these bonds, she hadn’t anticipated just how annoying they’d be. At least that tension in the room had eased some.
She fetched a spare blanket draped over a chair and wound it around herself, careful not to let it slip as she peeled off her chemise and hung it near the fire. The slap of wet fabric against stone echoed louder than it should have, causing both men to still.
“I’m going to bed,” she announced, touching two fingers above her left eye, her right, between her brows, and then pressing them to her lips as she did each night. A thanks to the Divine.
Yuri mirrored the motion automatically as Aurelie threw herself into the thick quilt, limbs sprawling.
Without the cling of soaked linen, the heat from the hearth finally began to seep into her bones.
Outside, the storm hissed at the windows, relentless.
“There’s room for one of you up here, if you can agree amongst yourselves who gets it. ”
There was a beat of silence, then—
“I paid,” Severin said, already stepping forward. “Seems only fair that it’s me.”
Yuri caught him by the shoulder. “You paid because you dragged us both out here without coin. I’m the one who hasn’t slept in two days.”
“Tragic. Sleep on the floor.”
Aurelie groaned into the pillow.
“Isn’t it blasphemous for you to lie next to a naked woman?” Severin pressed. “Won’t your dick fall off or something? Besides, your wings are still wet. You’ll soak the bed, and not in a fun way.”
Irritation burned on either side of the bond, though it was Aurelie who felt it most acutely. It heated her blood, making her curl her fingers into the pillow.
She was about to hurl it at their faces when a knock sounded at the door.
Aurelie ignored their bickering and pushed up from the bed, dragging the blanket she was wrapped in with her as she stormed across the room barefoot and threw open the door.
The innkeeper stood in the hall, her narrowed eyes slow to assess Aurelie. She held a key in her hand.
“One of the travelers just cleared out,” she said, frowning at the quilt. “Left in a hurry.”
“In this weather?” Yuri asked from behind her, incredulous.
“I don’t ask questions. Do you want the room or not?”
Aurelie snatched the key right from her hand. “We’ll take it.”
“Two doors down on the right” was all the innkeeper said, leaving as Aurelie turned back inside to quickly grab her belongings.
“Shall we go together?” Yuri offered as she plucked everything from their place near the fire and bundled them beneath one arm.
“Certainly not,” she snapped at them both, knowing she must have looked half feral shuffling around in the quilt while she tried to squirrel all her items away.
“We can’t work together if the two of you never stop arguing.
You both are staying here, together, and you’re going to bond and work out your shit. Understand?”
Their stares prickled her back as she stormed off. “And if either of you wakes me up, I’ll have a Nyxaris piss in your boots.”
She slammed the door shut behind her.