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He takes it all in for a few minutes, but all he says is, “Sigrid?”
I nod. I despise this feeling of uncertainty, but it’s impossible to decipher his feelings on my invasion of his space. “Do you mind?” I finally ask.
He holds my gaze with his own inscrutable one. “Do you?”
“I asked you first,” I say, completely aware of how childish it sounds.
His eyes land on the braids in my hair then, and I have no trouble discerning the look in them now.
“I certainly don’t mind those,” he says.
Heat spreads to my core, but we can’t keep going on as we have, so I ignore it. Fixing him with a pointed gaze, I wait until he responds to my question.
“I have no problem with your things being here.”
Did he intentionally give me the most neutral response he could think of?
He still looks pensive. “It does make things a bit crowded, though. I would suggest moving into the master suites, but of course, people would notice.”
A pang goes through me, another reminder that it hardly matters how either of us feels about this situation.
I sink down on the foot of the bed.
“This,” I gesture around us, “is not sustainable.”
“I know,” he says, settling next to me. “I know.”
“Are we even still married?” I ask, settling down next to him. “If I’m...dead?”
“When I said until death, I meant the real thing.” He fixes me with a stare.
“But it’s not that simple,” I argue. “Even if I can feasibly hide here forever, we will spend our entire lives watching our backs. I don’t want that for you.”
“I’m already on her list,” he says wryly. “But even if I wasn’t, I wouldn’t abandon my wife just because she has a powerful enemy.”
I ignore the way it lights up something inside of me when he calls me his wife this way, not out of spite or obligation, but because he wants to.
“Even when your wife is a shut-in, presumed to be dead by your entire kingdom?”
“One thing at a time,” he says. “All I need to know is that you won’t leave again before we can figure it out. Promise me.”
I stare into his ice-blue eyes, the color of the Jokithan sky in the dead of winter, and slowly, I nod. “I promise.”
We both know I can’t keep that vow if I’m dead, but it hardly seems pertinent to bring that up now.
His eyes roam over my features and back up to my braids before a smile spreads across his face. “You know, in Jokith, it’s customary for a husband and wife to seal a promise...more formally.” He glances down at the bed, and I narrow my eyes, but I lean closer to him anyway.
“For the record,” I whisper against his mouth, “I know you’re making that up. But you really don’t have to convince me to be with you that way.”
His face goes slack with need just before he presses his lips to mine, running his hands over my braids.
There’s no more talking after that.
Chapter Forty-Seven
Einar
Iam lazily running my hands up and down Zaina’s bare side when she abruptly takes a deep breath, her features suddenly serious. “I want to tell you what happened that day,” she says. “The day I left you.”
