“No.”
“I’m not a good person, Thyran.”
“I spent seven years in a chair because my brother came looking for me and died on the trail. I don’t think either of us gets to decide who’s good.”
I almost laugh. The sound comes out wet and real.
He sets me down. His hands linger on my waist. Neither of us steps back.
“Come here,” I say.
He shifts from his knees to sit on the floor beside me. I slide down next to him. My head finds his side, pressed against his ribs. His hand goes around me. We sit in the firelight and don’t speak.
His heart beats under my ear. Slow. Steady. The heat of him soaks into my side. His hand rests on my hip and stays there.
I told him my worst thing and he didn’t move his chair back across the hall.
I climb onto the platform. The furs are warm. I close my eyes and listen to the hall settle.
He doesn't go back to his chair.
I hear him moving in the dark. The heavy sound of furs being pulled from a chest, spread on the stone floor beside the platform. The creak of his weight settling. Close. Not touching. Just there.
I fall asleep to the sound of his breathing below me.
ESELD
The tension has been building for days since the kiss. Every accidental touch. His hand on my back when I pass him near the fire. His fingers brushing mine when he hands me a plate. The shrinking distance between us in the night, his breathing on one side of the dark and mine on the other, the space between us measured in inches that neither of us is trying to widen.
I've been lying awake. Listening to him not sleep. Feeling the heat of him radiating from his furs beside my platform, warming the air between us.
I decide on the morning I wake up and find his hand on the edge of my platform. Palm up. Fingers open. Resting on the fur an inch from where my hand was while I slept. He’s still asleep. He doesn't know he reached for me in the dark.
I look at his hand. The size of it. The scars on his knuckles. The way his fingers are curled slightly open, like he was holding something that wasn't there.
I put my hand in his. His hand tightens on mine without waking.
That evening, he’s sitting by the fire, his back against the base of his chair. I cross the hall and stand between his knees. Evensitting on the floor, his head is level with my chest. The scale of him fills the space between us.
“I want this,” I say. “I want you.”
His mouth opens. Closes. His hands are flat on the stone at his sides. His fingers pressing into the rock. His whole body still. Locked.
I know this posture. It’s not reluctance. It’s control.
I reach for his shirt. Work the laces with steady hands. My hands are always steady. The fabric parts. Gray skin underneath. I push the shirt off his shoulders.
I put my palms flat on his chest.
He’s warm. Warmer than usual. Under my hands, his temperature climbs. A surge, not a slow build. The air between us shifts.
“Eseld.” His voice is tight. A warning.
“I know.” I leave my hands where they are. “I can feel it.”
I spread my fingers across his chest. Where his ribs sit. Where the muscles layer. Where the ridges of old scars change the texture of his skin. The heat of him presses into my palms, up through my wrists. Not pain. Something my body leans into instead of pulling away from.
I pull my shirt over my head.
