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A growl works its way up from my throat, and she shoots me a questioning look.
“I like you like this,” I say, placing the tray of untouched breakfast on her lap.
“Like what?” she asks, taking a bite of bacon.
I watch the casual, utterly normal way she does it, and it stirs something in me.
“In my bed, naked,” I answer, tossing my robe to the side and climbing in next to her.
Her eyebrow arches slightly, as if in a challenge, when someone knocks on the door again. I swear her bottom lip puckers in something like a pout when I rise to answer it. Wrapping myself back in my robe, I reluctantly oblige the intruder.
Gunnar is back with Khijhana and a note from Leif.
I scan it to be sure it’s nothing more than the usual daily rote of tasks that need to be done or approved before setting it aside.
Glancing at Zaina, I war with myself. I could climb back into bed, but the idea of her bare beneath my covers is more than I can stand. I should stay here, at least until she finishes eating. She examines my features for a moment, then throws my shirt over her head. The splayed laces reveal more than the shirt can cover.
If she was trying to make herself less appealing to solve my dilemma, she has more than failed.
“I’d like to renegotiate the terms of our arrangement.” I try for a change of subject.
“Oh?” She takes a bite of her biscuit, eyes narrowing. “I was just thinking the same thing.”
That sounds...dangerous, but I don’t ask yet.
“Very well. For my end, I would like you to start answering even the questions that youdon’tdeem relevant to the safety of my kingdom.”
“Such as?”
I smile and walk back over to the bed, lying next to her and snatching one of the sweet rolls off of the tray.
After finishing the thing, I finally speak.
“Such as, what’s your favorite kind of tea?”
Zaina rolls her eyes, but I don’t miss the way her shoulders sag in relief.
“Chai Masala.”
I nod, having just read about that very thing. I’m already mentally running through a list of the more exotic shops in Colby that might have wares from the Eastern Lands.
“And your new terms?” I ask her.
She swallows the bite of food in her mouth before stating her demands clearly.
“I’d like to start visiting Sigrid. That is, if she wants to see me.”
“Don’t you think seeing a ghost might do her in?” I know Sigrid knows the truth, but Zaina doesn’t.
“We both know she knows I’m not dead,” Zaina echoes my thought wryly. In her short time here, even she has caught on to the way that nothing can be successfully hidden from Sigrid.
I deliberate for a moment, weighing the risk of Zaina being spotted in the passages of the West Wing against the benefit of her and Sigrid seeing one another. There really is only one response.
Sigrid may not have long, and I won’t deprive her of seeing Zaina is alive and well.
“Done,” I say, pressing my lips against Zaina’s fuller, softer ones.
This may seem like a small thing to her, but the fact that she genuinely cares about Sigrid means everything to me.
