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Lore nodded, and the acquiescence felt echoed, mirrored, everything within her agreeing to stay here with him for the night.
Even the parts that didn’t feel wholly like her.
There were no overtures of sex, despite the kiss. Bastian slid into bed, and she got in the other side; they chose their sides like they’d been doing it for years, natural as breathing. She smoothed the sheets as best she could. They smelled like him, red wine and cologne, the musk of sweat.
Bastian rolled over to face her back, throwing an arm across her middle, pulling her to press against his chest. His breath stirred her hair, slowing, evening.
Lore stared into the dark. Eventually, the dark became the back of her eyelids, oblivion creeping up on her.
A ghost of words in her mind, just before she tipped over into sleep. Almost a confession.
I missed this.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Some bonds don’t break. They only bend.
—Caldienan proverb
She woke facing him, having somehow twisted in her sleep, her head cradled beneath his chin, his arms wrapped around her back. Lore stiffened when her eyes first opened, her mind taking a moment to catch up with last night, with why she was here.
She stiffened further as she waited for the voice, sure it would have something to say. But her head was silent, empty of all thoughts but her own.
It wasn’t quite dawn—outside the window, the sun was slowly rising, painting the indigo of the sky in violet swaths, inching into pink and orange. The light reflected in the pool of water on the floor, the vase of roses neither of them had bothered to clean up.
Lore craned her neck to look into Bastian’s face. He was awake, looking down at her with an expression of… of loss, almost. It made her brow furrow, made questions she didn’t have words for swirl in her head, looking for an outlet to her mouth.
He put a finger to her lips. “I don’t know how safe it is,” he murmured. “How much of what I know stays my own. Better to not talk.”
Her brow furrowed further, an awful understanding blooming. “Bastian, we have to—”
He shook his head. Gently, he kissed her forehead, as the sun rose fully into the sky.
When he pulled back, something was different. It was subtle—a coldness around his eyes, the angles of his face somehow more austere. Subtle, but there, and Lore had to fight not to jerk away from him.
If he noticed, he didn’t comment. Bastian rolled out of bed and stretched, making the muscles on his chest stand out in sharp relief. Last night, he’d been just as near-naked as he was now, but there hadn’t been anything overtly sexual in it—at least, not any more than there always was with Bastian, who was too handsome for it to be ignored. But now, he watched her watching him, a self-satisfied curl to his mouth.
Lore got up quickly, crossing to a table holding a crystal pitcher of water with lemon and two glasses. Her cheeks heated. The lemons were fresh; a maid had undoubtedly brought this in while they were asleep. There was no reason to be embarrassed at being caught in her betrothed’s bed, but she felt the same needle of shame she’d felt that time Mari walked in on her with some girl she’d met the night before, whose name she’d never asked. Unearned intimacy, baring parts of yourself to someone you didn’t know.
Because the man she fell asleep with seemed completely different from the man watching her now.
“What’s on your agenda for today?” she asked as she poured, mostly to dispel the aura of expectant silence. She gulped down one glass, poured another.
“Our agenda, more like.” She heard Bastian stand up, heard his closet doors open. “You’ll be accompanying me.”
That was enough to make her turn away from her careful examination of the blank wall. “Accompanying you where?”
Bastian grinned at her over his shoulder as he pulled a white shirt—his staple—out of the closet. “To the harbor,” he said, as if it was the most natural answer in the world. “With our good friends Maxon and Caius and most of the court. We have to christen the new ship, remember.”
She did, vaguely. The new naval ship he’d been discussing with the admiral the night of his coronation, an answer to the increased oceanic presence of Kirythean war vessels near the Burnt Isles—one of the only projects of August’s that Bastian hadn’t halted. The party on the docks had been part of her social calendar for weeks, but the days all seemed to blur together lately.
“Who knows, maybe we’ll get a chance to show off our magic some more.” His eyes flashed, the brown of them flecked in gold. “Two birds, one stone, and all that.”
“I won’t.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t think it’s a good idea, not today. The consequences—”
