Page 112
“Ready?” He asks.
“Fuck, yes.” I exclaim.
He starts moving in a rhythm that’s deep and measured, a steady roll of his hips that keeps him going in and out, deep every single time. He holds my ankles, and my breasts bounce with each thrust.
“Those breasts, Fiona.”
He leans over, my legs still braced at his shoulders, and his mouth envelops a nipple. His tongue circles one nipple while his hand finds the other, his fingers matching the slow rhythm of his mouth. The multiple stimulation sends me wild. I reach up, scrambling for something to grip, and fist a handful of wool as he drives into me. The moss cushions every thrust as our bodies rock together, the heat of his skin, the quiet flex of muscle, and our breaths mingle.
My eyes start to roll, and he shifts his angle, lifting me higher so he can sink farther, and the new pressure makes me cry out softly.
“There,” I whisper. “Just like that.”
He keeps the pace, never rushing, never taking more than I offer. He comes to my lips and kisses me, his groans vibrating against my mouth, my moans increasing in volume. I drop my head back as my climax begins to build, gradual and inevitable. It gathers low, a slow tightening, I fist the moss, a loud scream leaves me that I can’t hold back, and he immediately moves faster.
I feel his cock twitch inside me, he’s close too. I open my eyes to find him gazing down on me, and I pull him into me, kissing frantically, and I moan into him as I come. He immediately comes with me, burying himself deep, with short tiny thrusts as the explosion takes over us. Magic sparks around us, fading almost as soon as it appears.
Our bodies tremble, my pussy flutters, and his cock is still twitching as we finally come down from the climax. Staying joined, he strokes a strand of hair behind my ear, and briefly kisses me on the cheek before easing out.
He drops to the side of me and draws me against his chest, a heavy arm draped over me. The glass roof above us has grown darker; evening is settling in. Moss cushions my cheek. His heartbeat is a steady drum beneath my ear.
I trace idle circles over the dark skin of his forearm, feeling the residual warmth of spent desire and the quieter warmth of simple closeness.
"The seedlings," I say eventually, without moving.
"Will survive the night."
"You don't know that. You're not a healer."
"I know that if you get up to check them, I will have to let you go, and I have decided against it." His arm tightens, proving the point. "The Lady of Morwen'thir can neglect her herbs for one hour. I'll issue a decree."
"You'll issue a decree about my plants."
"I have issued decrees about worse."
A star falls past the glass, a thin white scratch across the dark, gone before I can point to it. He watches it with me.
"The Arbiter teaches that all things find their balance," he says quietly. "Weight against weight. Cold against warmth. I spent two hundred years believing that meant holding still. Refusing to lean either way." His hand comes to rest at the small of my back. "I was wrong about what balance is."
"What is it, then?"
He is quiet, choosing the story he will keep and the words he will spend on it.
"This," he says. "Two things that should not hold together, holding anyway. Not because they are the same. Because they are not." His voice has gone rough at the edges. "I have found mine, Fiona. It took me two centuries and a royal edict and a flower on a war table. But I have found it."
I don't have anything clever to answer that, and for once I don't reach for it. I press my palm flat over his heart and feel it beat, and let the silence say what I am not ready to name out loud.
Above us the sky wheels slowly on, keeping its own count of the centuries, and neither of us moves to leave.
20
RHYSANDIR
One week later, a karasu strikes the study window with its beak.
The sound interrupts my review of northern patrol reports. I look toward the perch fixed outside the glass. A black bird waits beneath falling snow, feathers raised against the wind. A narrow copper band encircles its left leg.
It pecks the window again.
