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I cried out, clenching around him as his name left my lips and echoed over and over off the empty walls around us. Stones rumbled. The walls shook. The flames flickered in their torches.
And then I felt him coming, too, sinking into me so deep, I never wanted us to part. The cry that left his lips was wordless. A sound of ecstasy as he shook and quivered, throbbing above me like a molten surge.
Much later, we walked in the dark side by side.
Draven’s cloak was around my shoulders. He carried the bundle of my tattered clothes under one arm.
We skirted the edges of the camp, watching the glow of the refugees’ fires as they burned bright against the shadow of the mountain.
I shivered, and Draven turned to me in concern.
“Are you cold? We can go back.”
“You mean because I’m completely naked underneath this cloak?” I moved the folds of the garment to give him a peek of my body.
With a groan, he stepped forward, slipping his hands under the cloak and wrapping them around my bare waist.
“Is it wrong?” he whispered, burying his face in my hair. “Wanting you this much? Doing what we just did when...”
I stroked his back, knowing what he meant. When they were dead and gone. When they could never love in such a way again.
“I don’t think it could ever be wrong. I want you. I love you. That doesn’t mean I’m not still thinking about Gawain and...” My voice hitched in my throat. “And Rychel.”
Silence. The incredible silence was a void that would never be filled.
My mate’s little sister was gone. I mourned her, yes, but it was also a heartbreak I could not come close to understanding.
Not unless I lost Kaye.
“I really thought we’d find her,” I said, bitter grief slipping back into my voice, unable to help myself. “And not like this. I mean, whole. Alive. The way she was.”
So vibrant. Rychel had been a bright spark amongst the Siabra court.
“I thought maybe she’d be imprisoned. I didn’t think she’d have an easy time of it, but I really thought...” I trailed off.
Draven was silent.
“Did you?” I asked him. “Think we’d find her?”
“I truly don’t know what I expected,” he said quietly. “But it wasn’t this.”
No. Not seeing his younger sister transformed into an aged crone. Without the wisdom or experience or well-lived life an old woman like that should have had.
Rychel had been hardly more than a child. A child who had saved a child.
“She died to save a life,” I reminded him. “She was extraordinary. Truly noble.”
He nodded. “That’s some comfort. I mean, I’ve always known she was stubborn. I should have known she’d never give up. Even if it meant giving everything she had.” He stumbled over the words a little, and I pressed up against him as if I could soothe his hurt with more of my touch.
He kissed my forehead. “You’re going to need a new sheath for that blade.”
He meant the sickle. I carried it in one hand. I didn’t want to think about how or why I had done what I’d done.
“There’s a leatherworker in the camp who Madoc introduced me to. She’s extremely talented. I’ll go and see her. She should be able to make something for you,” he said, glancing down at the curved blade pressed against the cloak.
“Before morning?” I asked in surprise. “She’d have to work through the night.”
“I’ll pay her well. She has children,” he explained. “The more she has when they reach Camelot, the better she’ll do with so many mouths to feed.”
