"Later."
Nkiru hesitated, then nodded, retreating with her bowl.
Ragnar glanced at the sleeping figure, a picture of innocence.Anyone who failed to see death in her eyes was bound to lose.
Truly, hearing that Somadina had taken her, his heart squeezed tightly as though he were on the verge of losing something important.She knew he would come straight for her.And he knew she saw it as mere usage of the privilege he had given to her.
She hadn’t made him do anything he hadn't chosen, but his choice was a problem.
A deeper problem—the one he was less willing to look at directly—was that he didn't want her to stop.
He wanted her to use his name again.
He wished for her to be a tyrant and throw his power around; it brought him such a strange sense of accomplishment, one he couldn’t quite understand.
A man who couldn't see the trap might stumble out of it by accident.
But Ragnar could see this one from every angle and kept walking towards it anyway because some part of him had decided that being used by her specifically was preferable to being left alone.
He wanted her to bring him her problems.To look at something that needed destroying and turn those gold eyes on him and saymy Lordin that register and let him be the thing she reached for.
He wanted to be her instrument, which was either the most honest thing he had allowed himself to admit in years or the most catastrophic.
He took one more look at her, and his heart stopped.
She was awake.
He didn't hear her wake.No shift of the mattress, no change in breathing, no sound at all.He simply looked down from the ceiling and found her eyes open, watching him, and had no way of knowing how long they had been.
Cold.
That was the first thing he thought.
He didn't move.
She didn't speak.
She had read him, he realised.In the time between opening her eyes and now—seconds, no more—she had read the room, read his position, and read the hardness pushing against his pants; all of it.He could see the moment she finished, the slight settling of her expression as the calculation resolved.
The room was quiet, and she seemed to be waiting for something, for an offering.
He was willing.
Slowly, he sank to one knee, eyes never leaving hers.
A soft rustling of clothes and his breathing, which had been controlled in her presence through sheer discipline, found itself erratic.The warmth under his mask had spread considerably.Every prayer he had ever offered Ukhel had been for clarity, for stillness, for the silence of want, and every single one had been declined, and this one was going to be declined too, and he knew it, and he prayed anyway because he had nothing else to do with himself.
A sound escaped him as he stroked.
She watched him; he wished she would never look away.
Low, involuntary.Discipline had located its absolute limit and found it closer than expected.
He pressed his fist hard against the floor.
Her lips parted and stretched, eyes squinting as if she were laughing at him.
His breath came laboured, the mask misting.He wasn’t sure why her smile scared him so, sending a thrill through his entire body, pushing him over the edge.
