Chapter 270: Did You At Least Kiss Her?

"I should go," she said.

"Of course," said Draeven.

None of them moved.

She stood. The chair scraped. Kaelen rose, too, and his eyes were soft and a little foolish, and she realized he was a little drunk. He took her hand and bowed over it with enormous ceremony and kissed her knuckles.

"Good night, Morgana," he said.

"Good night, Kaelen."

"Thank you for coming."

"Thank you for the wine." She smiled. "All three glasses."

"Two!"

"I counted."

He looked wounded. She laughed, and slipped her hand free.

Thorne rose, too. He did not touch her. He stood a pace away with his hands behind his back, and his dark eyes held her face, and when he spoke it was quietly.

"Sleep well, little ward."

Her heart did a small, stupid skip. "I will."

"If you need anything....."

"Silas will know where to find you."

"Anything at all."

"I know."

"Good." He bowed his head, a half inch, almost shy. "Good night."

***

It was Draeven who walked her to the door.

He did not ask. He simply crossed the room as she turned toward it, and fell into step at her side, and they went together across the worn rug. The fire hissed behind them. Lysander waited in the corridor beyond, a dark shape against the torchlight, politely studying the opposite wall.

Draeven opened the door.

They stood on the threshold, in the draft between the warm room and the cold passage. The torch flames were low and gold. The corridor stretched empty and echoing in both directions, and for a moment neither of them spoke.

She did not want to go.

She had not known that until now. She stood with her hand on the door frame and felt it, a small, plain, ridiculous ache. The room behind her was warm and full of laughter. The corridor ahead was long and cold and led to a bedchamber she would sleep in alone. Her feet would not move.

"Morgana," Draeven said.

She looked up.

He was very close. In the half dark, his eyes were deep gold, and there was something in them she had only seen once, on a ridge, with the wind in his hair. His hands were at his sides. He did not reach for her.

She spoke before she could lose her nerve.

"Will you come and find me again?"

It came out small.

She felt her face go hot. She hadn’t meant to ask it like that, soft and a little shaking, a question a child might put to a parent leaving a room. She dropped her eyes to the stone floor.

"I only mean," she said, "that I’d....you found me today. On the ridge. You didn’t have to. I had gone, and you came, and I...." She swallowed. "I’d like to know that you would. If I went again. Not that I will. I only....."

"Morgana." Draeven called.

She stopped.

He had not moved. But something in his face had changed. The mask of the king, the long careful composure, had slipped, and what lay beneath it was very young and very plain and utterly unguarded.

"Yes," he said.

"Yes?" She asked.

"I will always come and find you." His voice was rough and low. "Wherever you go. However far. I do not need to be asked."

A pulse beat in her throat.

"But that," he said, more softly, "is not what you asked."

"It isn’t?"

"You asked if I would find you again." His gaze held hers. "I think you meant something else."

She could not breathe.

"I think," Draeven said, "that you meant tomorrow. Or the day after. A door opened, and a candle lit, and a man who comes because you wish it." His mouth moved, not quite a smile. "Is that what you meant?"

She stood there with her heart going wildly. She thought of the ridge and the wind and the touch of her hand on his, and the warm bright thread that had run between them when she did it. .

She nodded.

It was a small movement. But he saw it.

"Then I will," said Draeven.

Something in his chest seemed to settle.

"Not tonight," he said. "You are tired. You have had a day that would fell a soldier, and you carried it well." He drew a slow breath. "But I will come. When you are ready. Or I will wait until you say the word, and I will come then."

"What if I never say it?"

"Then I will wait."

"For how long?"

"For as long as it takes." He said it simply, as a man says the sun will rise. "I am very patient, Morgana. I have had two hundred years of practice."

A laugh escaped her, soft and a little wet. She pressed her fingers to her lips.

"Good night, Draeven."

"Good night." He replied back.

She turned. Lysander straightened from the wall with a polite cough, and she went to him, and they began to walk. The torches threw their long golden shapes across the floor. Her slippers made almost no sound.

At the first turning, she looked back.

Draeven stood in the open doorway, tall and dark against the firelight. He had not moved. He was watching her go, his hand resting on the frame as though it were all that held him upright.

He lifted his other hand, very slightly.

She lifted hers.

Then she rounded the corner and he was gone.

***

Draeven stood a long time after she had vanished.

Behind him, in the dining chamber, his brothers had fallen silent. He could feel them there, Kaelen sprawled in his chair with a goblet cradled in both hands, Thorne at the fire with his back to the room. Neither of them spoke.

He closed the door.

He leaned against it, and for a moment he simply breathed.

INFERNUS stirred in his chest. Not restless.Awake. It uncoiled slowly in the dark, and he felt it reaching, down a thread so fine it might have been a hair, to a girl walking away along a torch-lit corridor. He could feel her heartbeat. He could feel it racing, and slowing, and settling, steady and warm.

"There," said the dragon.

"I know." Draeven replied.

"She wants us."

She wants something. We will see what. Draeven repiled again.

"She asked."

"She asked for company," Draeven said. "Not for fire."

A long, quiet pause. The dragon turned this over, slow and heavy, as it turned everything.

"Then we will be company," INFERNUS said at last. "And then we will be fire."

Draeven let his head fall back against the wood.

"Well?" said Kaelen, from the room behind him. His voice was thick with wine and something gentler. "Did you at least kiss her?"

"No."

"Coward." Thorne said and shook his head.

"Patient."

"Same thing."

"It is not." He turned. His brothers were looking at him, one sprawled, one still, both with the same expression, which was the look of men who have watched a thing they have wanted for a very long time finally, carefully, begin.

Draeven allowed himself a smile.

"Go to bed," he said. "Both of you."

"It’s early."

"It is not."

"I’m not drunk."

"You are monumentally drunk, brother." He crossed the room and plucked the goblet out of Kaelen’s hand. "Bed."

Kaelen sighed.

Thorne extended a hand to haul him upright. They went out together, bickering in low voices, and the door closed, and Draeven was alone in the dining chamber with the cooling fire and the half-burned candles and the empty glass at the place where she had sat.

He picked it up.

The rim was still cold.

Just there, along one edge, a thin sliver of frost had refused to melt.

He held it for a long time looking at it and wondered if she had even noticed she could do something like this.