Three sharp strikes. The outer perimeter alarm — the breach pattern Vuldren's hunters use only when something has broken through. A servant drops a ceramic pitcher and the crash sends movement rippling through everybody in the room.
I'm up before the second strike ends. All I can think of is Elowen, alone. The thought strips everything I've maintained sitting here. I pulled the guard rotation to cover this room. Whatever breached is between the outer wall and wherever she is right now. I grab my bow, and head to the east wing.
Her door is open. The room is empty. Bed untouched. Gone. My pulse slams through my palms as I face back toward the hall.
My return is short, but each second costs me. I round the corner and stop dead in the archway. The beast fills a third of the hall, broader than the others, its fissured hide weeping black and its jaw warped beyond anatomy.
Elowen stands between it and the banquet guests with a fire iron — wrenched from the nearest hearth bracket. She must have heard the alarm and come through the servant passage, because she was there before me. Behind her: everyone. The beast's bulk blocks the only exit they could have reached.
I run to her side as the beast swings. Elowen drops beneath the strike, one hand bracing against the flagstone, and drives the fire iron into the warped joint of its foreleg. It is not enough to wound it properly. It is enough to turn its weight. Enough to make the creature expose its throat.
My world compresses. I drop the bow, dart into the opening she made, and aim for its head. My blade is out. I open its throat, then keep cutting long after it falls. Green-black blood coats my arms before I realize my hands are shaking.
I glance at the guests who are untouched. Fenra is crying, and the servants grip each other. Ardent's attendants are appalled. I turn to Elowen. She's on both feet, torn fabric at her hip. I walk toward the exit with my hands by my side to hide the tremors. The image of her on the floor has seared itself behind my eyes where permanent things live.
Vuldren stands in the doorway, staring at Elowen with open awe, as if he has watched her earn something no rank couldpurchase. I shoulder push him, and the force rocks him. I don't slow, don't look back, don't care that I nearly put him on the floor.
"Clean that up," I call back. My voice carries nothing but instruction.
The corridor to my chambers stretches ahead and I take it at a pace that refuses to be called running. I reach my door as footsteps behind me close in. Purposeful in the rhythm I have memorized without meaning to. It's Elowen.
I try to shut her out, but her shoulder forces the door wide. Her eyes lock on mine with an intensity that tells me she has decided this confrontation is happening regardless.
"Get out." I bellow.
"No."
"I am not capable of this conversation right now?—"
"Good." She kicks the door shut behind her. "Because I'm not here for conversation. I'm here because you butchered that beast past killing, walked out shaking, and thought I'd let you stand alone in the dark rebuilding whatever wall you're reaching for. I won't."
"What I am feeling right now is not something you should be near." The rawness surprises me. "What I wanted to do after I saw you on the ground is not something you want to see."
"It was obvious you lost yourself. Because it touched me." She is close enough that I can smell the iron on her hands. "That is not weakness, Draekir."
"It is the definition of it." My back hits the wall, but she's still advancing. This woman who is half my height and carries no weapon makes me feel as though my territory could be exchanged for her being unharmed. "You're becoming my greatest weakness. Every decision I make runs through whether it keeps you alive. I saw you fall and became something with no strategy."
Her eyes soften. The combative edge is there but underneath it, there's a recognition, a warmth that she's not trying to show.
"Then stop fighting it." She reaches out and pushes me. "Stop treating what you feel like a flaw in your defenses."
"Elowen—" My rage settles and rises at once. I grip her jaw, then kiss her like the last nothing happened, hauling her against me. Gripping the back of her neck and her waist with my other hand, I haul her against me.
She reciprocates, biting my lower lip, not gently either. The sting of it shoots through me making me growl. I lift her, both hands beneath her thighs, pushing her against the wall with my hips pinning her in place. Her legs wrap around me and the heat between her thighs hits against the front of my trousers where I'm already hard — have been since she walked in, since the adrenaline found somewhere else to go.
I drop her to the bed without breaking the kiss. The torn dress comes off first — her brown skin flushed, her breasts rise with every rapid breath. I admire her skin, and trace my finger only slightly around her cheeks.
"Don't stop." She requests.
I lift her arms above her head and, drag my mouth down her throat. My lips cover one nipple with my fingers teasing the other. I suck hard enough to feel her spine arch off the bed, and her hips roll up against nothing.
I pull back to strip. She watches me with an attention that is evaluative and hungry at once, tracking my torso to where my cock stands thick and hard, the head already slick.
I drop back over her, and her hand wraps around my length immediately — firm, deliberate pressure, her thumb dragging across the wet tip and spreading it down the shaft. I thrust into her grip involuntarily and the sound that comes from my chest is guttural, stripped of every pretense I maintain in front of other people. She lets it into her mouth, tightening the base with herhand and easing as she pulls back to the head. Her eyes are locked onto mine as she does.
I catch her wrist. "If you keep doing that, this ends too soon."
"Then don't wait."
