“I’m sorry.” She pressed her palms to her eyes. “I’m so... unfocused tonight.” She let her hands fall back to her sides. “Please distract me.”
He smiled his bright smile.
“Gladly.” He tugged on her hand, bringing her to the windowsill, and lifted himself into it. Roa crawled up after him, then sat against the opposite casing.
Capturing her hands, he began planting kisses on each of her fingers, then both palms. Roa closed her eyes, trying to go to the place his kisses normally sent her. But even as his lips moved up the insides of her arms, Roa’s thoughts were with the boy-king in the next room.
“I changed my mind,” Theo murmured against her skin. “Let’s not wait.”
“What?” Roa asked, coming fully out of her thoughts and opening her eyes.
Theo sat back, letting go of one hand and keeping the other. He traced soft circles on her palm. Roa stared at the movement of his thumb, willing it to soothe her.
“We can go to Odessa.”
Odessa was the woman who performed bindings and burnings in the territory of Sky, Theo’s home.
“She can marry us in secret. Tonight.”
Roa’s back was pressed firmly up against the casing as she stared at him, shocked. Their binding was only a month away. Their mothers had it all planned out already. She shook her head. “Think of how furious my father would be! He’d never forgive us.”
“He would. Eventually.” Theo’s kisses moved up her throat and along her jaw. “If you’re my wife, I can take you away from here. You wouldn’t ever have to see him again.”
Roa turned her face to his. Theo’s pale gold eyes, framed in dark lashes, now gazed intently—hungrily—into her own.
“Marry me, Roa. Tonight.”
She reached with her free hand to touch his face. But a sound issuedfrom the room beyond, like the scraping of chairs, and her attention was once again snagged.
What was Dax speaking to her father about?
“Roa?”
Through the wall, she heard Dax laugh at something her father said.
“Roa, are you even listening?”
Suddenly, the door to the study swung open, letting in the light from the hall.
Theo flinched.
Roa turned to look.
Dax stood frozen in the doorframe.
“Roa, I—” He glanced from her to Theo and back. “Oh. Forgive me. Your father said...”
His gaze dropped to Roa’s hand, still clasped in both of Theo’s.
“He said you were in here.” Dax stared hard now, his eyebrows knit in confusion, as if trying to make sense of what he’d walked in on. “I didn’t realize...”
And then, without finishing his sentence, as abruptly as he came in, Dax stepped out of the room and closed the door behind him.
The study plummeted into silence. Only the fire crackled in the hearth, spilling golden light across the carpets.
“Idiot,” hissed Theo, squeezing Roa’s hand.
She didn’t hear him, though. She was too busy wondering:What did he ask Papa for?
