A Baron of Bonds (Conduit of Light #2)

28. Karus

Chapter 28

Karus

Watching Rev’s reaction as I admitted who had woken me from seven years of knowing nothing of who I was, tore at me just as much as I guessed it would.

His lips pursed and he brought his hand to his mouth, covering any raw emotions he felt.

He could no longer hide from me, though. We were now bound, and though I couldn’t explain why our companion bond was so strong, it was blatantly obvious to me that his reaction was confusion, fear, and anger.

Confusion for how it was possible, fear for what I had gotten myself into, and anger that I did not tell him earlier.

I squeezed his hand and turned back to the Queen, not ignoring him, but needing to see her reaction.

She was too still in hearing me speak about a woman who should have been long dead, and I frowned.

“You know, don’t you?” I shook my head, recalling what the Blightress had casually mentioned about excursions funded to her land by the Queen. More and more I understood the countless number of details about my life and its origins that had been hidden from me.

Nodding slowly, she took a breath and answered, “The Blightress lives. Yes, I am aware of this.”

Rev pulled his hand from mine and bent forward on his knees, rubbing his face.

“ You are aware of this ?” I laughed in disbelief. “Tell us, Your Majesty, what else do you know that could change the world we live in? What else have you hidden from me about my past and my parents?”

“I hid things from you to protect you.”

“Oh, how ironic.” I nodded toward Rev who continued to rub his face while listening to us bicker. “Is that not the same thing you’re putting the Baron on trial for?”

The Queen sighed at my short temper and spoke softly, “I have decided to not proceed with a trial.”

Rev barely looked at her before turning to me, his hand back over his mouth, his eyes black as obsidian.

I cringed. I knew there was much he wanted to say to me, but not in the Queen’s presence.

She continued her inquiry. “How, Karus? How do you know it was the Blightress who woke you?”

I swallowed, my throat suddenly dry. If I was going to relive what I’d been through and heard, I might as well do it now. Rev would have to know eventually, and the Queen apparently knew plenty about the Blightress already. “Because that’s where I’ve been for two weeks. I followed the Blightress to her lands where I…discovered some things. Things I did not know were there to find. She told me things about myself and my past.”

Rev shook his head, his hands gripped so tightly in front of him, his knuckles turned white. “You found the Blightress in Felgren and decided to follow her around for two weeks ?”

Oh, I was in trouble.

His voice came low and dangerous. I shivered, part of me infatuated with his anger, part of me dreading the talk we would have later.

I wasn’t angry in retaliation. I deserved every emotion that was flitting off his body, and I had spent my last few days thinking about how I’d bear every bit of his rage if only I could be with him again.

I opened my mouth to answer, but the Queen spoke first. “I was unaware that she could travel outside of her domain. All of my reports say that she never leaves the confines of the Northern Steppes.”

I replied quickly. “She wasn’t so much in Felgren as she was…under it.”

“ Karus .” His eyes darkened further toward me, and I fidgeted my hands in my skirts.

“Let her speak, Baron Revich. You can scold her later,” the Queen spat.

He bent his head in defeat, running his hands through his hair. When he looked up, he sat back in his chair, quiet, black eyes locked on me, gesturing for me to continue.

The Queen nodded in my direction. “Go on, Karus. I must know exactly what happened and everything she told you.”

I slipped my fingers under my legs, sitting on my hands to ground them as best I could. Revich worked hard to keep his emotions in check while I told my second story of the morning.

I told them of the hole in the forest and how the lumens had fallen in and broken their legs. I spoke of the tunnel encased in blight and the portal she led me to. “It was a difficult choice, Rev,” I confessed to him, his dark eyes continuing to pierce my skin. “I knew you’d be angry, and I knew you’d be scared, but I felt like I needed answers and there they were, right in front of me. She knew so much about me that I did not. She spoke to me in my mind, and I knew there was something there between us. I knew I’d only find out what it was if I followed her.”

His expression didn’t change. I was hoping he’d soften a little when he heard why I had chosen to leave.

“Did you find your answers then?” The Queen asked. “You were there for so long, I’d imagine you and the Blightress would be friends at this point.”

My anger flared. I was glad I had chosen to sit on my hands. “No.” I turned to face Rev. “No, I did not choose to be with the Blightress for two weeks. The portal I stepped into…it slowed time and wouldn’t let me leave. What felt like only a few hours in the portal was fourteen days outside of it.”

There.

Finally, a slight movement in his jaw. I breathed a sigh of relief.

“How did you escape?” The Queen’s questions were more hurried now.

“I remembered the portal to Viridis. It wants your true name, the one that truly belongs to you before it will let you through. I thought this portal might want something as well. So, I started speaking. Telling the black void that I needed to get back to you.”

Rev squinted as if a dagger had sliced through his chest.

“I told the portal that I was leaving to find you and that nothing could stop me. I was angry. I screamed and yelled and when I showed that anger, it spit me out.”

“And you saw the Blightress and her land?”

I paused. The truth was, I didn’t know anything about how Queen Rina knew the Blightress existed. I didn’t know what those excursions she was accused of funding were, and I didn’t know how much she knew about my parents. “Yes. I fell out of the portal and found myself in her land.” I did not describe the cave, the beating heart that hung there like a pustule, pulsing and red. Later, after Rev scolded me, I would tell him about the beating heart that fueled the Blight.

“What is her land like? What creatures did you see there?” she rushed on.

“It was a swamp land. A forest of infested puddles and overgrown fungus. There was one creature…” I trailed off remembering the trees that came to life and their earth-shattering roars as they chased me on the back of Parvus.

“Yes? What was it? How did you escape?”

She leaned in closer to me now, and I narrowed my eyes. “What do you know? Why do you assume I was in danger?”

She replied, “I know of the syphoners, Karus. Many channeler souls of Hyrithia have fallen to them. She keeps the channelers alive and takes their magic to fuel her own.”

Syphoners . I shuddered to think of what that creature would have done to me had Parvus not shown up just in time.

“Have you heard enough for one morning, Your Majesty?” Rev spoke quietly, turning his gaze to the Queen.

She scoffed. “Not nearly enough, Baron, and I should think you’d feel the same.” She turned back to me. “What did the Blightress tell you of your parents?”

“She—she said they had come to steal her power. She said you funded them to travel into her land.” I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “She said she tore out my father’s heart in front of my mother.”

Rev let his grief for me fly in the space between us, and I looked his way with a small smile.

“He is dead then.” The Queen spoke slowly, looking just past me in a daze. “I did not know that at least, Karus. I did not know your father’s fate, and your mother was too delirious to tell us anything. She didn’t know about you before they left. Arah never would have gone.”

A cold sadness welled in my heart hearing those words from the mother who raised me about the mother who bore me. I had gone all my life knowing very little of my parents, and I had accepted that a long time ago. “I would like to know more about my parents, but not now, Queen Rina.”

She nodded solemnly.

“Why didn’t the Blightress kill Arah as well?” Revich asked. “Why did she leave Karus’s mother alive? What are these excursions you’ve been funding and why?”

“I will explain, Baron Revich. I will wait, however, until my fellow leaders arrive. There is much to discuss, and all of the rulers of the isle should be there.”

She looked up at him as he rose from his chair to pace then turned back to me, pressing for more answers. “How did you escape her? How did you leave her lands?”

I stood as well, ready to leave. I needed to speak to Rev alone. “She let me go. That was our deal when I followed her underground. I would listen to what she had to say, and she would let me and the lumens leave safely. She promised not harm us and would let us go as soon as I asked her to, which I did when I realized how long I’d been gone.” I grimaced and glanced at Revich. “I just didn’t think to specify where.”

He shook his head, his hands shoved in his pockets, radiating anger and more prominently, fear. We both stood with the table between us and did not speak.

Another one of our wordless conversations passed through our gaze until finally, the Queen cleared her throat. “I believe that is enough for this morning. Karus, Baron Revich, I request you do not leave the city until the Lady of the Spire and the Madame of the Mountains arrive. They are due here tomorrow evening, and we will continue this discussion then.” She rose and stepped closer to me. “It is good to have you back here, Karus. We all have missed you. Philius has missed you.” She took my hand in hers and patted it gently. “I have missed you, my daughter.” She embraced me, and I patted her back, still unsure of how to feel in her presence.

Rev held a hand out to me across the table, and I moved to it eagerly. I wanted to get through the harsh words he undoubtedly had to say so that we could begin to move past what I had done.

The Queen gestured toward the door. “The Prince will be awake soon, and I have some things to discuss with him before you speak to him again. Why don’t you show Baron Revich the market, Karus? He would enjoy seeing Hyrithia in all its beauty. You have not walked our streets before, I believe?”

Rev wound his fingers through mine and my heart jumped in elation. He couldn’t be too upset with me if he was willing to still hold my hand. “Actually, I have, Queen Rina. But I was not able to truly admire your city at the time. There was something to distract me.” His smile lifted to one side but did not last long.

We left the study, and he led the way back down the stairs. Instead of heading toward the room we shared, however, he walked us right out of the castle doors, nodding to the guards posted there as if he knew them.

I was surprised to see they nodded back and addressed him respectfully. “Baron.”

“Just how many friends have you made here in two weeks?” I inquired, remembering Rev’s charm never did fall solely on me.

He pulled me into the dusty cobbled streets, loud and busy with the mid-morning hustle of merchants and traders coming from all over the isle. The air was filled with shouts and laughter and an autumn chill that made me wish we had stopped for our cloaks. The copper dress I had chosen to wear for our companion binding was not meant for walks through the open marketplace, and the laced bodice was a bit too formal for such a casual stroll.

But casual was not at all Rev’s pace. He seemed to have an idea of where he was going, his long legs and stride dashing under the two bridges that connected the most prominent inns in the city.

The inns of Hyrithia were always full, packed with traders and inventors, people who came to the hub to let their ideas be heard and their plans be seen to light.

“Are you going to speak to me at all, or are you going to lead me silently along until you think I’ve had enough?” I huffed, my breath billowing in a white cloud in front of me as I rubbed my arm for warmth with my free hand.

He turned his head back to me at that, his black waves threatening to unbind from the piece of gold ribbon tying back his hair. At least he wore the clothes of a Baron: long pants, boots, a cream shirt, and black vest. He was layered. Raising a single brow, I got the sense of annoyance from his face, so I shut my mouth and remained silent.

Fine. If this was what he wanted, I’d give it to him. I didn’t like it, but I didn’t get to choose how he felt about my leaving with a woman who wasn’t supposed to exist, let alone still be living after centuries. Not to mention a woman who had murdered my father, captured my mother, and was legendary in her wrath.

Instead, I let him lead us around to different stalls on the busiest market street. He held my hand tightly at each one he stopped at, never acknowledging me there, but not letting go either.

At one point, I tried to yank my hand from his, but he seemed ready for the attempt and held it firmer still.

At least his hand was warm.

I sighed and studied what he purchased. So far, he seemed to be gathering supplies. He slung a satchel of fruit and bread over his shoulder. We stopped at a dairy shop built into the street where he bought three different kinds of cheese, talking friendly all the while to the full-bosomed woman at the counter who didn’t seem to even notice me.

Irritated, I was pulled out from the shop’s entrance and pulled into another, this time filled with dresses and women’s undergarments. More curious than frustrated now, I watched as he caught the eye of the clerk and whispered something in her ear.

She grinned and looked at me, her brown eyes alight with what I could only call vulgarity. I pursed my lips and frowned at the back of his head, wanting to yank him around and demand he speak to me and explain what he was doing.

I huffed loudly, my attempt to gain his attention and favor unsuccessful as he ignored me. He brushed his free hand against several different warm, wool dresses as if he was considering their purchase, and I wished I was wearing one of them.

The woman returned from a back room, bringing a package wrapped in thick, brown paper and bundled in twine. He took coins from his pocket, depositing quite a few of them into her hands, and her eyes gleamed with excitement.

“What is that?” I couldn’t help but ask as we left, curiosity buzzing far more than the vexation I was signaling to him loud and clear.

His answer was to swing it over his shoulder and continue briskly ahead. His fingers on his right hand looped under the string while the fingers on his left still wrapped through mine.

I thought of lighting the paper on fire, just so that he would have to turn and speak to me, even if only to yell at what I had done.

At least I might be warmer.

“Don’t even think about it, Karus,” he said back to me, his voice casual and loud as he led me back down the street toward the castle.

The last stall he stepped up to was one of traveling supplies. There were knives, rolled blankets, canteens—anything one would need to cross the isle by horse or foot. I glared at the back of his head now, wondering how much longer he was going to punish me this way.

I thought he would want to sit and discuss what I had done. I thought he’d yell a bit or flash his black eyes at me a time or two, and I would have to console him and convince him that I was never going to be so rash again. I would kiss him and lean into him, and he would fall to my wiles as he always did and we could move past my mistake. But whatever this form of discipline was, it irked me to no end.

He knew very well that I was a curious soul and that this leading me around, buying the most random of items, hardly saying a word to me, was a punishment in itself.

He picked up a thin bit of rope and paid for it, chatting with the trader about its typical use and strength.

Rope?

Was he serious about a leash?

My cheeks burned at the thought. Surely, I was mistaken there.

He adjusted his grip on the bundled package, sliding the length of rope in between the twine, and striding off again, pulling me along with him.

This was not supposed to be our morning. This was not supposed to be how we spent our first day as companions, and I was fuming. I should have been leading him around. I should have taken him to my favorite stalls, ones I had recognized through this torturous walk.

I hoped my glare seeped right into that mass of black hair and hit him square in the face.

He paused on the street and looked back at me, grinning wide.

I stood straight and resolute, putting my free hand on my hip.

He tilted his head back and laughed, pulling me closer. He pressed his cheek to mine whispering, “I know how this irritates you, Karus.”

I shivered hearing his breathy words. He turned back around before I could reply. I bit my lower lip and thought of what he could be planning.

Was he going to take me on a trip somewhere? Did he gather supplies to take back to Felgren after we spoke to the rulers of the isle? And what exactly was in that paper bundle? And rope?

I pulled my unbound hair to the side and tangled my free hand in my skits.

It was more than irritation. I hated this.

Of course, only Rev would know how to get so deep under my skin and rattle me relentlessly after what I had done.

As he led us to one of the inns, I started to defend myself. How was I supposed to know that I would be gone for two weeks? I planned to be gone for only a few hours. And I left the rhyzolm there for him. I made sure he knew I was alive, and he could follow me wherever the Blightress led me to.

Also , I thought, indignation settling in, I had both Parvus and Rauca with me, so surely, he would have known I had some protection that was more than just my magic.

He was speaking to the clerk at the front desk of the inn. The man nodded and provided him with a piece of parchment, quill, and ink while Rev began to write with his free hand, his other still squeezing mine.

I rolled my eyes and turned to look elsewhere. My power was beginning to bud again at my fingertips as I stared at the fire in the massive hearth of the tavern room. A performer strummed a lute and sang jauntily for a small crowd at the tables. The patrons ate their midday meal, half of them drunk already.

The inns in Hyrithia were well-known for their entertainment and care of their guests. Some of the wealthiest people of Arcaynen came through these doors and this inn, The Spinning Wheel, was no different. It was one of four that bridged to each other over the busy market street, hosting some of the most famous inventors, writers, and people of commerce on the isle.

During the Black Fever, I remembered how quiet the inns and streets had been, how echoing a single sound would ring through the streets as the people stayed in their own homes, fearing catching the disease.

Thoughts of Heimlen creeped in like an itch that could not be scratched, and I watched as the fireplace burned brighter.

Rev finished speaking to the clerk and turned to me, watching the flames flicker in gusto as well. “Is that for me? Or from something else?”

I was running out of patience with his brand of punishment and tried to free my hand once more to no avail. “So, now you’ll speak to me, but won’t let go?”

He smirked again. I convinced myself it had no effect on me. “Is that what you’d like, Karus? You want to be free of my touch?”

I raised my chin, suppressing a shiver. “Yes.”

He released my hand. I wiped it on my copper skirts, the sweat from holding his so long stuck between my fingers.

He placed his hand on my back instead and gently, but determinedly, pushed me forward to an empty table where he pulled out a chair, gesturing for me to sit.

I realized he no longer had his parcels and glanced back to the clerk who was now gone from his desk.

I wouldn’t say another word. I wouldn’t ask what we were doing here, why he had purchased all of those things, or what he was writing.

I could be stubborn, too, but I was wary of how much longer he’d last than me.

Rev called over a young man, asking for the midday meal for us both as well as two tankards of apple ale.

I frowned and shook my head. He knew I had no real taste for alcohol and only sipped wine on occasion. He watched me with a lazy interest, then turned his chair to face the performer, tapping his hand on the table to the rhythm of the song. I ignored it and turned as well, crossing my arms and legs, my foot bouncing up and down, but not to any tune I heard.

“Listen did she to my songs of love,

Hear them did she and muffle my pleas.

’Twas in her room when she tore off my shirt,

and I slid…to…my…knees…”

The musician sang the last word long and low as he worked the crowd. Men and women cheered and held their cups in the air, splashing apple ale all around the tables and their clothes.

As he continued to strum, a woman sashayed from behind a curtain, plucking her own lute and joining him in song.

“‘What would you like?’ he whispered to me,

Knees on the floor, holding the key?—

To what I would have in just one minute more?—”

“—Or three!” The man chimed in and the crowd burst into laughter again.

I had not expected such a lewd song to be played so early in the day at The Spinning Wheel, but the crowd of guests seemed to have no complaints. The musicians faced each other and played their duet faster.

“I filled her request as best I could.”

“He did not disappoint, and stood over me.”

“I might have passed out.”

“He slid to the floor, felled like a tree.”

“And when I awoke, she was there still.”

“Loving this good, I’d…never…foreseen.”

She slowed the last line and sang the last note long and high as the crowd gathered around to sway. At the last strum, the two performers paused, stepping closer and letting their lutes fall to their sides, their voices harmonizing slowly together to end their song.

“What began as a dalliance,”

“I’d forever preserve.”

“For she holds my heart,”

“And he’s what I deserve.”

I gasped and glanced at Rev who was already staring at me across the table.

Guilt swept through me for the hundredth time since I had left through that hole in the ground and my gaze softened.

He lowered his eyes to his upturned hand across the table, then back up to my face. I placed my own in his and he swept his thumb across my wrist, turning back to the performers.

I followed and grinned as they kissed on the stage, riling the crowd in cheers and whistles. Coins were thrown onto into an enormous hat below them.

“Here you are, friends.” The young man returned, placing two wooden bowls of a shimmering cream soup and two mugs of apple ale on the table. His pale complexion did not match the black tips of his fingers, nor the dark veins that ran up his wrists. I looked back to his face. He could not have been more than twenty, which would have made him a child during the Black Fever.

I realized I was staring and swiveled my head back down to the food he brought. Fighting back the sadness and anger that threatened to spill out of me, I gave my thanks and took a long swig of ale. It bubbled and fizzed in my mouth like a crisp apple exploding on my tongue and, surprised to enjoy the taste, I kept going, filling my belly with bubbles. I drained the large mug and slammed it on the table, out of breath and holding back a belch as I hiccuped instead, sweeping my sleeve across my mouth.

Rev’s lips were parted as he gave me a look of bemusement. I shrugged, picking up my spoon and dipping it into the stew filled with potatoes, soft, sweet onions, and enormous clams brought in from the nearby sea.

We ate together in our own silence, though the room was hardly that at all. The performers began a new duet, this time about companions trying not to kill each other, traveling from city to city.

It was witty and amusing, inciting even more of a stir of laughter and shouts from the crowd, but I kept my head down and ate. The alcohol seemed to swim through my veins and my almost empty stomach. It traveled down my legs, making them fuzzy before settling into my head. I was no longer able to concentrate on much as the sound of the songs seemed to play right next to me, yet far away. I looked up at Rev in an awed expression, my eyes wide and blinking in realization.

“Are you alright?”

I nodded, the movement sloshing my brain back and forth slowly as my vision tried to keep up.

“This ale is stronger than I expected. I’m not surprised at this crowd, nor at you right now after downing the whole thing.”

I swear he was trying not to laugh at me, and I sat back and glared. “It wasss you…who bought it for me to drink so don’t say you’re surprised that I did.”

He brought his hand to his mouth and rested his face on his elbow, covering what I knew was a smile because his eyes lit with humor, creasing at the sides.

I took my hand back from his and swept it through my hair, leaning back in my seat to stretch. My belly was full and my body was suddenly exhausted and heavy.

He pushed his chair back and came to me, offering his hand again to pull me up from my seat. I shook my head once in a defiance I was determined to continue for the rest of the day and stood on my own, wobbly but upright.

He instead laced his arm tightly around my waist, pulling me close to his side, so close I almost fell into him, defiance suddenly be damned.

He walked and I stumbled out of the tavern room and not to the doors of the inn, as I expected, but instead to the wooden staircase that climbed up and over a good hundred floors. It seemed like a hundred floors, at least.

“Oh, no,” I muttered, my head falling back and squinting up at what I knew I could not currently climb.

“You’ll make it, love. Here—” He pulled my arm around his shoulder, gripping my waist even harder with his strong hands that I knew very, very well.

We began our ascent to what I could only hope was a room to rest in. I seemed to no longer care about anything but finding a place to curl up and sleep.

I think we climbed for an hour, patrons chatting as they passed us down the stairs. We were overtaken by many of them on our endless journey, some of them looking back at us to give a knowing smile.

On what must have been the eightieth landing, I fell back against the wall, slapping a hand to my forehead in need of collapsing.

Rev was in front of me immediately to keep me upright, and I swore I heard him laughing into my neck as he kissed my cheek. He turned around, pulling my arms over his shoulders and bending slightly, grabbing the backs of my knees from behind.

“You ken-not be s…serious, Baron Revich.”

“I am entirely serious, Karus, my love. Now hop on.”

I less hopped and more sprang too high, almost knocking him over as he laughed and stumbled, but caught my legs nonetheless. I rested my head on his shoulder, my arms hanging loosely around his neck as he carried me on his back up an unfathomable number of steps.

We reached the top. Me, a parasite of sorts, who made no effort to make the journey easier as my eyes lulled, and I struggled to stay awake. He, a panting strongman, his workout admirable and impressive. He set me down gently on the final landing and turned quickly to catch me if I fell.

He breathed heavily and grinned, wiping sweat from his brow, and I smiled, laughing at what, I couldn’t articulate.

“Do we live up here now?” I asked in confusion, my head lolling to one side as I fell into his arms, pressed against his chest. He smelled of warmth, and earth, and home, and I struggled not to cry then and there, though I wasn’t sure why.

“We do for now. Come,”—he kissed my hair and pulled me upright again—“let me show you where you’ll live for the next two days.”

Curiosity forcing its way through my drunken stupor, I let him lead me hand-in-hand to the room at the end of the hall. He pulled a silver key from his pocket and turned the lock.

When he opened the door and pulled me through, I sobered slightly, trying my best to concentrate as I squinted around the room that was so lovely and welcoming. I burst into laughter for reasons I couldn’t explain.

A table for two sat in one corner that led to a set of doors and a balcony that overlooked the city. His parcels lay on the table next to a vase of the same burgundy mums that he had found for our binding. The table also held two mugs and a kettle, along with a bag of what I assumed was styris tea.

A door at the back of the room led to a washing room and an ornately carved armoire stood tall against one wall next to an unlit fireplace. Even a bookshelf graced the room, filled to the brim with spines of varying colors and embossments.

I stepped toward the massive four-poster bed, lightweight cerulean curtains tied back on each side and draped in the top center, bowing slightly.

I laughed, the sound flooding the room as each note of it escaped my lungs rapidly in a hilarity only I would likely understand.

I turned to him in a sly smile. “But, my dear Baron…you’ve pro…you’ve procured a room with only one bed.” I chortled at the slur of my own joke, falling into his chest again.

His chest rumbled, and he wrapped his hands across my back, my palms pressed close between our bodies. I wanted to curl up into him and sleep for days, never processing what I knew he was angry about, never dwelling on what else about the Blightress I needed to tell him, and never once losing myself to the guilt of the disease that had caused so much death in this city.

He pressed his lips to my forehead for a long moment, breathing deep before sliding his arm underneath my legs to take me to the bed.

He sat me there gently, kneeling before me, pulling off my slippers one by one. I wiggled my chilled toes, wishing the fireplace was burning bright.

“ Incendo ,” he muttered, not even glancing at the fireplace laden with neatly stacked wood, its orange embers dying slowly from the last time it had burned. The logs burst into a flutter of fire, the first crackle of wood resounding in the room.

I grabbed his vest and pulled him to my lips, kissing wide and lazy, my head swimming through a vast ocean, but stopping to enjoy this.

He kissed me back, but not for long, pulling away with one of his incredibly heated side smiles that had my body aching and tingly.

I tried to bring him back, but he resisted, pulling away from my attempts to keep him close. He walked to the table, picking up the paper package there.

I squinted, doing what I could to focus, my mouth agape and curious as he unbundled the twine and so frustratingly slowly unbound the paper.

He lifted tiny silken straps of a green so deep, it mimicked the pines of Felgren on a moonless night. The nightgown slid swiftly off the table, and he held it high for me to see.

My eyes brightened at the cupped neckline trimmed in soft, black lace. The silky high waist cascaded into a shimmer of green with a hem lined in the same black material.

“You didn’t order that today.” I closed my eyes and shook my head, trying to gather my thoughts. “She didn’t just have that in the back room for anyone.”

“She did not.”

He brought it closer for me to touch, and I gasped when I slid my fingers over the silk, my conduit ring a brilliant emerald accessory to such a beautiful gown.

“Can I wear it?” I looked up at him standing over me next to the bed and a wave of desire hit my body, flooding me with heat and an ache to touch his bare skin. I didn’t know if its origin was me or the man standing over me, holding the most beautiful nightgown I had ever seen.

“I hoped you would.”

I shot him a delighted grin—a woman charmed by her lover. I picked at the ties to my bodice, wiggling out of my sleeves clumsily, standing to pull the rest of the dress and my undergarments off my waist.

I managed to fumble out of the dress and kicked it aside, unclothed and excited to slip the soft silk over my skin.

His eyes roamed over my body, and he clenched his jaw, filling his lungs fully.

“Oh,” I murmured, looking down at my bare breasts, my skin exposed and prickled. “I’m naked.” I giggled, the truth of it hilarious, though I wasn’t sure why.

He shook his head and huffed. “Yes, I see that, Karus.”

Grabbing the hem of the gown, he pulled at the opening, helping me slip my head and arms through, letting the full length of it fall to the floor above my toes. I looked down, my face jubilant seeing my curves accentuated by the cut and the detailed lace that showed my creamy skin through its pattern.

“It’s so beautiful. Thank you,” I managed to whisper in the firelight.

He said nothing while I swished before him.

He stepped away, back to the table and poured from a pitcher into a cup, bringing it to me. “Here. Drink all of this.”

“What is it?”

“Just water. You’ll thank me when you wake.”

“Are we going to sleep?” I mumbled, bringing the cup to my mouth. The water was cold and welcome, filling my belly with its weight and quenching the thirst from traveling at least one thousand stairs.

“Yes. You are going to sleep.”

I finished my drink and swept a hand over my lips, handing the cup to him and turning excitedly. Climbing into the bed, I slipped under the mound of white blankets and sheets.

The cool cotton slipped over my legs, and I moaned in pleasure. My head was suddenly too heavy to keep upright as it landed on the pillow.

He pulled the covers up to my neck, tucking them around me.

“You will not sleep with me in this great big bed?” I questioned, my eyes too heavy to keep open any longer.

“Sleep I would not want in this great big bed,” he whispered close to my ear, pulling my hair back from my face and kissing the base of my jaw softly.

I hummed and left him, falling into a place empty of thought or decision in a single bed at the very top of the tallest inn in Hyrithia.