The inn room is Jötunn-scale. Bare stone walls, a wide bed built from timber and hide, a window that faces the mountain. It smells like strangers and tallow candles and nothing like home.
None of it matters. She’s here.
Eseld closes the door behind us. The latch catches. She turns and leans against the wood, looking up at me. Road clothes. Her hair in a rough knot. Her face drawn and tired and her eyes clear.
She chose me. In front of a crowd of strangers, with alternatives lined up and an exit in every direction, she said my name and walked down the steps and pressed her face into my chest and held on.
“You followed me,” she says.
“I will always follow you.”
“That’s not a promise you can keep.”
“I kept it today.”
She looks at me. I look at her. The room is spare and the space between us is warm the way the space between us is always warm now. My body runs hotter near her. It has since the day I carried her out of the snow.
She reaches for my shirt. Pulls at the laces. Her hands are quick and sure and she doesn't ask permission because she told me what she wanted in the hall and the answer hasn't changed. She gets the laces free and pushes the fabric over my shoulders and puts her palms flat on my chest.
My temperature spikes.
This is not the hall. In the hall she was in control. She set the pace, read the gauges, managed me the way she manages every system. Hands steady. Voice steady. Telling me when to move and when to stop.
I am not being managed tonight.
The air in the room goes hot. I feel sweat break across my back. Her palms press harder against my chest and she doesn't pull away from the heat. She pushes into it.
“You're burning,” she says.
“I know.”
“Hotter than the hall.”
“I know.”
She starts to pull her shirt over her head. I take it from her hands. Pull it off myself. She goes still. Looking up at me.
“My turn,” I say.
I have spent weeks being careful. Holding still. Gripping stone and cracking wood and locking every muscle against the need to move. In the hall she guided my hands. Showed me where to touch. Set the pace and kept it.
She ran. She left the hall and walked into the cold and tried to disappear and I tracked her across the Wastes and found her on a market platform choosing between me and a creature who would never touch her at all.
I'm done being guided.
I pick her up. One arm. She wraps her legs around my waist and her arms around my neck and her mouth finds mine and the heat between us flares so hard the window fogs.
Her mouth is hungry. Urgent. She kisses me like she’s afraid I'll disappear if she stops touching me.
“I'm here,” I say against her mouth. “Minän.I'm here.”
I carry her to the bed. Set her down on the edge. Her legs are still wrapped around me and I have to unhook her ankles gently. She doesn't want to let go.
“I'm not going anywhere,”
I say. “Lie back.”
She lies back. Her hair spread across the furs. Her body pale against the dark hide. Looking up at me, her face stripped of every guard. Not careful. Not measuring. Just open.
