AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Damn it, this used to be so easy. It was as easy as breathing, bringing men and women back here, slipping them out of their clothes, and spending a few hours or days tangled together in my bedroom. Even if casual sexual adventures lost some of their allure after Shenarah, they never felt difficult.
They never felt like this. My heart is like a fist in my chest, and just looking at the curve of Alindra’s neck makes me want to scream. I couldn’t leave this woman behind, and now I’m the reason she’s trapped in a place that’s going to kill her. I want her so badly it feels like I’m drowning, but a damaged, low-born orphan from the kingdom she probably hates and fears is the very last thing this woman needs. And sex would pull this tangled knot of emotions between us even tighter, making everything worse.
I force my eyes away from Alindra’s hair, from the curve of her shoulders and the way she’s wrapped her arms around her waist as though she’s holding herself together. And I realize I’m staring at the kitchen. My kitchen.
“Thanks,” I force myself to say. “How about I make you something to eat?”
Chapter26
Alindra
COULDN’T SLEEP?
Ihave no idea what to do here.
My fingers tap the heavy blanket over my chest as I stare at the rough wooden rafters above me. It’s not that I’m uncomfortable, exactly, although it’s colder in this little room than it was by the fire. Still, I’m probably more comfortable than I’ve been since that portal ripped open in the middle of my bedroom and Phaedron crashed into my life. At least I’m in a bed for the first time since that portal opened.
I huff a sigh into the empty room. I’m in a bed. By myself. Again. And it wasn’t even that Phaedron and I had a terrible evening together. He cooked for me, roasting tiny red potatoes in a buttery sauce and creating some sort of stew with meat and spices that were warm and rich and at least as delicious as anything I’d had in the palace of the Kingdom of the Summer, accompanied by a dozen light, fluffy biscuits he let me roll out. Phaedron claimed the biscuits were overdone and the stew was too thick, but I was too busy eating to argue with him. Afterward, I helped him with the dishes, and then we settled at the table and he told me stories about the Lands Below that had me laughing so hard I worried someone would hear us.
No, we had a lovely time together. It’s just that I hoped he would reach across the table and brush his fingers over my hand, or lean down when we were standing next to each other over a tub of hot, soapy water and dirty dishes. I even changed into the cutest, smallest dress Arryn had to offer, a thin white scrap of linen that I hoped would pass as both a nightgown and an invitation.
I twist onto my side and frown at the strange uniform hanging on the wall beside me. No, it’s not that I’m uncomfortable. It’s just that I wanted to be seduced. When Phaedron went into this little room an hour ago and said he’d be out in a few minutes, part of me wanted him to come out wearing an illusion. Or wearing nothing at all.
Okay, a large part of me had wanted that. That seemed to be where things were headed, after all, with the kiss by the window in the Silver City and Phaedron sayingI can’t leave youas the Tower crumbled around us.
But apparently, Phaedron doesn’t feel the same way. All through dinner, dishes, and our conversation afterward, he was charming. Perfectly respectable. He came out of this room fully clothed and declaring the sheets were changed and the bed was ready for me. And he went out of his way to avoid touching me. At all.
I sigh again, then flip over onto my back. At least now I know that Arryn isn’t some secret wife Phaedron hadn’t told me about. The Lady Arryn Damoira from my world somehow ended up linked to Phaedron’s brother Rowan through heart magic, of all the stupid, risky things to try, and then Phaedron’s brother went off to fight a dragon or something. And apparently, my sister has a lover too, someone named Aloserin who serves in the Royal Guard down here and who Phaedron describes as uptight and boring.
Great. That just leaves me, here in an enormous, luxurious bed that smells like lavender. Alone.
I close my teeth over my lower lip and try to remember how Balmyr had done it, how he made his seduction seem so natural, like I had no choice but to end up on my back in the storage room, going from casual conversation to kissing to gasping and panting as if that were the natural course of things, as if seduction happened as easily as water running downhill.
But thinking of Balmyr kindles a different feeling, a slow, angry churn in my gut. I remember the look on his face when I told him I was pregnant, like I’d slapped him. As if it were my fault that his seed had taken root, that he’d sparked a new life inside of me.
I sit up in the bed and press my palms against my eyes. It’s all idiocy, all of it. As if I could seduce someone like Phaedron, someone brave and handsome and noble. We shared one kiss, damn it. Just the one. Sure, he said he wanted it to last all night, but that was before I knocked him through a portal into the Lands Below.
And besides, I am pregnant. I let my hands drop to cup my belly, and the new life that might yet decide to stay, and sigh. Why would Phaedron be interested in a woman carrying someone else’s seed? The impossibility of it feels like a stone in my gut, dragging me down.
Hells. There’s no way I’m going to sleep now.
I swing my feet out of Phaedron’s bed, then wince as they touch the freezing floor. Some part of me still can’t accept that Phaedron actually lives here, that he raised his brother here, that anyone manages to live here at all. I stretch my arms in front of my face and pad softly toward the door, that little rectangle outlined by the flickering golden light of the fire that opens with a sigh when I press on it.
It’s warmer out here, at least. I tip-toe toward the fire and stand in front of it, rubbing my hands up and down my arms as heat and light sink into my body. Slowly, I let my gaze drift around the shadowed room. Little swirls of color painted on the rafters seem to pulsate as the fire flickers. They’re beautiful in an inscrutable sort of way. I stretch, then brush my fingertips over one of the golden circles.
“Couldn’t sleep?” Phaedron asks from behind me.
His voice makes me jump. I spin around to see Phaedron standing in the doorway to the other bedroom, his brother’s room, with his arm wrapped around his chest. He’s wearing a shirt that’s too bright and white to be real, and the realization that he’s only covered by an illusion makes me shiver. I open my mouth to say something clever, something seductive and appealing, but no sound comes out.
“Me neither,” Phaedron continues, answering his own question. “Here, I’ve got an idea.”
Heat pulses across my skin as he leaves the doorway and crosses the small room, but he walks past me and into the little kitchen area. He opens a door, vanishes into the narrow, dark rectangle of his pantry, then reemerges with a dark bottle in his hands.
“It’s Rowan’s,” Phaedron says, almost like he’s apologizing. “But he won’t mind.”
I force myself to smile like my heart isn’t trying to climb the inside of my throat. Phaedron pulls two glasses from the cabinet and pours something into them that’s so potent I can smell it from halfway across the room. Phaedron recaps the bottle, lifts a glass, and then frowns as if whatever’s in there has personally disappointed him. He tilts his head toward me. I walk across the room to join him, taking the glass he’s offering. My body feels like it’s buzzing beneath my skin, humming and hissing like a beehive.
Phaedron raises his glass toward me, and I do the same. The glass is cool beneath my fingers, the liquid inside dark and oily. It smells like something a healer would apply to a wound to stave off infection. I try not to let my lips curl as I lift the glass.
