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“Oy, there are children out here!” Rikard cried.
Agnes and Faustina whistled.
Ana laced her hand in Tyreste’s and looked around at the gathering of people she wished, desperately, could be her own. “Thank you for a night I’ll not soon forget.”
“You won’t have to,” Fransiska said softly. Her warm, knowing smile passed over them both. “For we expect to see you at the next one as well.”
“I would love that,” Ana said, her voice breaking, and let Tyreste lead her away.
Tyr added logs to the fire to bring it back to life. He had one eye on Ana, who was perusing his sparse cabin with her arms crossed over her torso in a protective hold.
She’s nervous,he realized. He was nervous too. Though he’d dreamed of bringing her back to the place they’d made so much magic before, with each passing day it had felt more and more like fantasy.
But Anastazja was very muchnota fantasy. Her blonde curls were a tangled mess from the wind, quite the opposite of his imagination, where she always appeared without a hair out of place. He’d seen her as thus in his dreams because that was what she’d always been to him: a dream.
Seeing her dress wrinkled, her boots coated in mud, and her hair affright... Ahh, he lovedthisAna because she was real. She wasn’t a dream or beyond his reach at all. She was there because she wanted to be, and though he didn’t know how to help untangle her from the bonds of her evil stepmother, that seemed a problem for another day.
“Ack,” he muttered as his boots veered too close to the fire, in his daze.
“Everything all right over there?”
“Fantastic. Almost lost a foot. And you? Anything new on the empty wall that wasn’t there before?”
Her laugh had a smoky edge. “Just eyeing this crack here in the board, trying to decide if it was a few inches longer than before.”
Something else is a few inches longer at the moment,he thought and then cursed himself for assuming she’d come for that. “I think they’re all spreading, truth be told. Gonna send a nasty letter to the architects when I get around to it.”
“I thought Evert designed the cabin?”
“Designed.I built it and, ah, didn’t really followallof his advice. Hence...” He gestured around, and her giggle in return made him weak. He didn’t know how he was going to last a night without pulling her on top of him.
“Say no more.” Ana clicked her tongue. “Did I ever tell you Niko and I built a fort in the forest behind the keep?”
Tyr turned and leaned against the bricked hearth, crossing his arms. “All by yourselves?”
“Well, mostly. Grigor was in town, and he stopped by every few hours to grunt at us about something we’d done wrong.”
Tyr chuckled. “Sounds like your onkel.”
“Onkel?” Ana arched a brow. “Your Vjestikaan is improving.”
“I know a few words, like all stranjak.” He shrugged. “Wasn’t good enough to translate the letters.”
Ana’s soft smile froze, then faded. “It was safer for you not to know.”
Tyr pushed off of the hearth. “The first one...” He had to tread carefully. The last thing he wanted was to scare her away. “Was translated correctly though, wasn’t it?”
Ana cast a thoughtful look toward the side and nodded. “It was foolish to leave it like that, but I wanted to... to do something for you. To help you. Only after did I realize how dangerous the letters were, and I regretted... I should have changed the message the first time, but by then, it was too late. And I knew as soon as I’d placed the fake ones on your table that you’d know that’s what they were.”
“Then why did you?”
“I don’t know, Tyreste.” She tilted her head upward and pressed her mouth tight. Her irises sparkled with fresh tears. “I don’t know anything anymore.”
Though what he most wanted to do was pull her into his arms and love her, he peeled her cloak away instead. “Go on, have a seat by the fire. I can heat up more cider and then... then I’ll take the cot Addy sometimes sleeps on, and you can have my bed.”
Ana turned partway and craned a hand up. She cupped one side of his face and slowly breathed out, drinking him in. Her mouth formed a small, desperate O. “Or you could take me to bed, and we could pretend, for one night, that this is how it was always meant to be.”
Her invitation shattered his resistance. He leaned down and kissed the inside of her palm, breathing her in before scooping an arm underneath her and lifted her. Her light whimper made his cock so hard, he almost speared her through his pants.
