Caspian
The room they gave me held a narrow bed, a low lamp, and a shallow rectangle cut into one wall where a window should have been. No glass. No view. Only a paler square of stone and the sound of water moving somewhere behind it.
I stood in front of the false window with my coat still on. My bare wrists felt conspicuous without the cuffs my father had sent for the formal. Refusing them had been easy while he was watching. Alone, I could still feel the weight they would have added.
I had been taught that Ashford men wore their inheritance without complaint. That morning, I had left mine in its box.
The door opened behind me.
Astra stepped inside and closed it. The Tower had given none of us locks, but she tried the latch anyway. When it failed to catch, her fingers stayed on it a moment too long.
“How is Kieran?” I asked.
“Hale got him into bed. I tried to stay, but Kieran told me to stop looking at him as if I expected him to die tonight.” Astra stripped off her coat and dropped it over the foot of the bed. “The reader said there was nothing she could do before review. Hale promised he’d call if anything changed.”
“Do you think he’s going to die?”
She looked at me then. Her hair had dried badly after the tunnel, caught in loose tangles around her face.
There was dirt at one temple and a faint gray smear along the side of her dress.
She had crossed the bridge in that dress, holding my hand while Kieran struggled behind us and Hale carried more of his weight with every step.
“I don’t know what I expect anymore,” she said.
I understood. Since the formal, we had been moved from one threat to the next without enough time to understand any of them.
Astra came farther in. Her gaze went to my wrists.
“Do you regret it?”
“Refusing the cuffs? No.” I ran my thumb over the place where the metal would have rested. “I regret that part of me still wanted him to approve.”
“That part of you spent nineteen years learning to want it.”
She said it without judgment. The tension in my shoulders eased enough for me to feel how tired I was.
“I would refuse them again,” I said.
“I know.”
Her certainty reached me through the bond before her hand did. She laid her palm against my chest, directly over my heart. Her fingers were cold.
I covered them with mine.
For several breaths, neither of us moved. The lamp gave off little heat. The room smelled of damp wool, tunnel dust, and the mineral water that ran through the Tower. Beneath it all was the familiar warmth of her skin.
Her palm shifted under mine as my heart struck against it.
“I thought the bridge was going to give way,” she said.
“So did I.”
“You didn’t look afraid.”
“I was holding your hand.”
That had been reason enough to keep walking. It still was.
Astra rose onto her toes and kissed me.
There was nothing tentative in it. Her cold hand slid beneath my shirt, and I pulled her against me hard enough to feel the full length of her body. The bond opened with the contact. Fear was still there, threaded through her exhaustion, but so was relief. She was warm and breathing against me.
She pushed my coat from my shoulders. It caught at one elbow, and I dragged it free without letting go of her. One of us struck the lamp table. The flame shuddered behind its glass, throwing our shadows against the false window.
I broke the kiss long enough to look at her.
“Don’t start thinking now,” she said, breathless.
“I wasn’t.”
“Liar.”
She kissed me again before I could defend myself.
Her fingers worked at the buttons of my shirt while mine found the hooks at the back of her dress. Neither of us was patient. Fabric caught, buttons slipped, and once Astra laughed against my mouth when I nearly pulled the dress over her head instead of down her body. The sound startled both of us.
Then she laughed again.
I put my mouth against the pulse in her throat and felt it beating hard beneath my lips. Her hand slid into my hair. She held me close while I kissed the dirt from her temple, the line of her jaw, the place beneath her ear that made her breath catch.
She drew my face back to hers. “Caspian.”
I knew what she wanted. I wanted it too.
The backs of Astra’s knees met the bed. She sat and pulled me between her legs, and the frame scraped across the stone beneath us. I froze, looking toward the unlocked door.
She took my face between her hands and turned me back.
I knew we might be heard. Astra knew it too. Her hands stayed on my face.
I kissed her until the room beyond the bed stopped mattering.
Her hands moved over me with none of the uncertainty of our first night.
She knew where I held tension and how to make me release it.
When her fingers closed around me, my head dropped against her shoulder and she smiled into my hair.
I touched her in return, learning what had changed and what had not, taking my time only when taking my time made her pull me closer.
The bond stayed open between us. Fear moved through her, and her grip tightened on my shoulders. My father’s face surfaced with the memory of the formal, and I pressed my mouth to hers until it passed.
Astra rolled me onto my back and came over me, her hair falling forward around us. I ran my hands up her thighs and watched her settle above me. Her Mark showed dark against the inside of her wrist, all three lines still present.
She guided me into her.
We both stopped.
Her eyes closed, and her forehead lowered to mine. I held her hips without moving, feeling the tremor that passed through her and the answering strain in my own body.
I touched her cheek. Her eyes opened.
Astra moved first. I met her, lifting into the next slow stroke, then the next. The narrow bed shifted beneath us. Her hands braced on my chest, directly over the place where she had felt my heart beating. I covered one with mine and let her set the rhythm.
Her pace quickened. She bent to kiss me, her breath catching against my mouth each time I met her. My free hand moved between us. Her body tightened around mine, once and then again, until her rhythm faltered and she pressed her face into my neck.
I held her through it. When she began to move again, I followed her with what little control remained. The bond drew tight and bright between us. I felt her relief break through the fear, sudden enough to pull mine with it.
I came with both hands at her waist and her name against her shoulder.
For a while she stayed over me, our breathing loud in the small room. I ran my palms along her back. Her skin was damp and warm under my hands.
“We’re here,” she said.
I held her tighter.
I rolled us carefully onto our sides. Astra tucked herself against my chest, one leg caught between mine. Our clothes lay across the floor among the coat she had dropped, and both our wrists were bare.
The quiet that followed was different from the silence on the bridge. I could hear her breathing. I could feel the occasional movement of her fingers against my ribs. When I put my mouth to her hair, it still smelled faintly of the tunnel.
Astra’s body softened against mine. Her fingers drifted from my ribs to her wrist, tracing the lines there without looking at them. When she reached the green-gold line, they stopped.
She lifted her head and looked down at it.
The relief left her face so quickly that I felt the loss of it through the bond.
She sat up and reached for her dress. I helped her find the hooks she couldn’t reach, fastening them with hands that had begun to steady.
“I should go,” she said.
I finished the last hook and rested my hand briefly between her shoulder blades.
“I’ll come in a little while.”
She nodded and pulled on her coat. Her hand tightened around the latch before she opened the door.
The door closed behind her.
I sat on the edge of the bed and listened to her footsteps cross the short corridor. Then I dressed and gave her a little time before I followed.