“Arthur will have riders out by the afternoon,” he said, facing forward. “They’ll be looking for you, and you’re hard to miss.”
“They’ll be looking for a woman,” I said. “Not a farmer and his son.”
Corvin looked over at me finally, and he swallowed hard. There was something in his eyes I’d seen before: whenever he’d come to me in the middle of the night, after I’d awakened from a nightmare, he’d worn this same expression.
“We’re safer if we keep moving,” he said.
“We’re safer if you can stay in the saddle.”
He didn’t answer that but just looked down at his hands instead, turning them over once, and I watched the exhaustion move through him like a tide coming in. The set of his shoulders changed. Not much, but it was enough. I reached over and touched his shoulder, and he looked over at me.
“An hour,” he said again. But the words came out quieter this time.
“Fine.” I stood. “Take the bed.”
He didn’t argue, which told me everything about how tired he really was. He stretched out on top of the blanket, still dressed, one arm folded beneath his head. His eyes were already half-closed, but they still remained fixed on me.
I moved to the chair by the window.
“Guin.”
I stopped and turned to face him. He was looking directly at me, and a muscle moved in his jaw.
“Lay next to me.”
It wasn’t a command, but it wasn’t quite a question either. It landed somewhere between the two, and I stood there a moment with my hand on the back of the chair, deciding. Deciding what? I wasn’t sure. There was so much between us that needed to still be said, but now wasn’t the time.
Regardless, I crossed the room and lay down beside him.
The bed was narrow, so there wasn’t really a choice about proximity. My shoulder pressed against his arm, and I stared up at the low ceiling, at the water stain spreading from the corner like a reaching hand, and listened to the sounds of the tavern below.
His arm moved.
He pulled me into him in one slow motion until my back was against his chest. Then his arm was across me, heavy, warm, and anchoring. I felt him exhale against the top of my head, long and slow, like he’d been holding his breath for hours. I couldn’t remember feeling this safe. Actually, yes, I could: the last time he’d held me.
Then he pressed his face into my hair and breathed in.
My chest did that complicated thing again, but I didn’t say a word about it. I didn’t want to because he needed to sleep more than we needed to talk about whatever this was between us, whatever this had always been. And somewhere beneath itall, the pain I’d never gotten over after Lance’s visit still weighed against me.
Downstairs, someone laughed again, and the shutter in our room shifted in a small wind.
Corvin was asleep within three minutes. I could tell by the change in his breathing, the full weight of his arm, and the way the tension left his body all at once.
I lay there and stared at the water stain and didn’t sleep. Not even close. My mind was too loud, the warmth of him too unfamiliar, and too good to waste on unconsciousness. I pressed myself back against him instead, closing what small distance remained between us, and tilted my face up just enough that his slow, even breath grazed my cheek like something almost tender. He let out a little snore and pulled me even closer, burying his face into the side of my neck.
I didn’t know how long it was that he slept: maybe an hour and maybe less. All I did know was that his fingers moved first. They curled around mine where our hands had ended up tangled together at some point while he slept. It was the slow press of each finger finding its grip, one by one, like he was making a decision one knuckle at a time. I went still as I felt it again: that deep-seated sense of yearning, of need.
I turned to face him.
His eyes were already open, and they weren’t the bleary, slow-blinking eyes of a man just surfacing from sleep, but they were fully open. Amber, steady, fixed on my face with that particular quality of attention he reserved for things that mattered.
He’d been awake for a while.
“How long?” I asked.
“Long enough.”
I waited.
