He closed his eyes again, a smile settling on his features.
She was humming from the direction of his bathing partition—the canvas screen in the corner, behind which sat the tub he had occupied last night.He heard water still.
Then he heard her steps and his heart made a decision of its own to accelerate without his permission.
He kept his eyes closed.
She moved through the tent with her characteristic silence—he had noticed, months ago, that she made almost no sound when she chose not to, that her footsteps were a deliberate choice rather than a natural consequence.She wasn’t even trained; perhaps in her last life she had been a deadly assassin like Nyraxa.
She paused in front of him.
He could feel her looking at him.
He breathed evenly, hoping she didn’t see his pulse in his throat.
After a long moment, she moved away.
The tent flap shifted.
She was gone.
He waited and counted to ten.
Her side of the bed smelled of hemlock.The same scent that had haunted him in dreams, in the dark of his own tent when sleep wouldn’t come and his imagination had entirely too much unsupervised time.
He pressed his face into the pillow.
This was beneath him.He was aware of this.He was the Great Khan of the Valthorne, commander of ten thousand men, a blade of Ukhel’s will.
He breathed in.
The sound that came out of him was not something he would ever be permitting her to hear.Low, involuntary and deeply, catastrophically undignified.His fist closed in the furs beside him.His eyes, already shut, pressed tighter.
It wasn’t a dream this time.She had been here, in this bed, with her hand over his and her voice speaking like it was his fault —
It was entirely his fault.
He turned his face further into the pillow.
Her scent pressed against every rational thought he possessed and dismantled them catastrophically.Ten years of campaign discipline.A decade of maintaining the composure that kept men alive and armies moving and tribes from falling.All of it was gone.He wanted to feel more of her, his hands moving, stroking.
She was there.
Right there, within reach.
And he was too fucking sick to do anything but sleep.His mind had betrayed him so thoroughly his memories of her felt like a dream.He couldn’t even savour the moment.
His other hand found the furs on her side, closing around them.
He made another sound.Worse than the first.Muffled entirely by the pillow, which was the only mercy available to him at this moment.
You’re watching me.Liar.
He rolled onto his back.
Forearm over his eyes.Hand flat on his chest.
His heart hammered against his ribs.
