Chapter 290: Thorne Is Furious

Draeven made a faint helpless sound that was almost a laugh.

Morgana giggled.

She couldn’t help it. It bubbled up in her chest, giddy and light, and she tucked her face into Kaelen’s neck and shook with it. His arms came around her. Draeven’s mouth pressed against her shoulder blade. And she lay there, sandwiched between two kings, warm and full and utterly undone, and she thought, I have never been so happy.

It was a strange, startling thought. She turned it over, and it did not go away.

They moved her carefully.

Draeven withdrew first, with such gentleness that she barely felt it. She heard him murmur something low and tender, and felt a warm cloth, and the slow clean wipe of water. Then Kaelen eased out of her, and she sighed, and they lowered her between them on the pillows. Someone drew the covers over her hips. Someone kissed her hair.

She did not know who.

She was drifting. She was warm and heavy and half asleep, with Kaelen’s arm under her head and Draeven’s hand resting on her stomach. She could hear their breathing. She could feel their hearts. She was safe, and she was spent, and she thought she might sleep for a week.

"Still awake?" Kaelen murmured.

"Mm."

"That’s a lie."

"Mm."

"She’s talking in her sleep," he said, delighted.

"I am not."Morgana replied weakly.

"You said mm."

"That’s not talking."

"It’s the most eloquent thing you’ve said all morning."

She smacked his chest, without opening her eyes. He laughed. She felt the rumble of it under her cheek.

"Rest," Draeven said quietly. "You’ve earned it."

"I don’t want to." She protested weakly.

"Why not?"

"Because...." She yawned, enormously. "Because I think if I sleep, it’ll be over."

"It won’t be over." Draeven said and kissed her head.

"It feels like it might."

His hand moved on her stomach, slow and warm.

"It isn’t over," he said. "I promise."

"Promise?"

"On my crown."

"You don’t wear a crown."

"On my dragon, then."

She smiled.

Her eyes were closing. She could feel the world drifting, the warm dark rising. Kaelen’s thumb was stroking her cheekbone. Draeven’s breath was warm against her hair. She thought she heard one of them say something, a low soft murmur, but the words slid by without meaning. Her body had stopped asking questions.

She thought, just a little more.

And then, because she was greedy, and because she was a little drunk on happiness, and because she did not want it to end, she rolled onto her side and nuzzled into Kaelen’s chest and said, in a voice thick with sleep:

"Again."

There was a pause.

"Did she...." Kaelen began.

"She did."

"She wants more."

"So it seems."

"She’s insatiable."

"She is a very thorough woman."

"I love her," Kaelen said, with feeling.

Draeven didn’t answer. But the arm across her waist tightened, and she felt his lips brush the nape of her neck, and he whispered, so quietly that only she could hear:

"So do I."

She smiled into the pillow.

And then she was gone.

She did not decide to go. She simply slid, easily, like a boat leaving a shore, into a deep warm darkness full of golden light. Her last conscious sensation was of hands stroking her hair, and a heartbeat, or two heartbeats, or three, steady and strong beneath her ear.

The door slammed open.

It hit the wall with a crack like a thunderclap.

Morgana did not wake. She stirred, with a small distressed sound, and burrowed into Kaelen’s chest. But Kaelen’s head came up, and Draeven’s, with a snap of identical alarm.

Thorne stood in the doorway.

He wore a long black coat buttoned to the throat. His dark hair was damp, as though he had come straight from the bath, and his face was a thundercloud. Shadows boiled around his boots, thick and black and moving. His eyes, usually so cool, were blazing.

He looked at the bed.

He looked at the tangled sheets and the scattered pillows. He looked at the fallen lamp, and the papers across the floor, and the ring of frost still melting on the window.

He looked at Kaelen, naked and flushed and wide-eyed, and at Draeven, bare-chested and disheveled, and at the small dark head lying between them.

The silence was absolute.

"Thorne," Draeven said carefully. "It isn’t what...."

"Do not."

The word cracked across the room like a whip.

"Do not tell me what it isn’t." Thorne’s voice was low and shaking. "I have been standing outside this door for twenty minutes. I could hear her from the end of the corridor. I could hear her from the stairs. Half the east wing could hear her. There are servants on the landing who have not breathed in a quarter of an hour."

"Thorne...."

"Look at her."

Kaelen looked down.

"Look at her."

They looked.

Morgana lay curled on her side between them, her face slack and pale and flushed, her hair a wreck. Bruises marked her hips in neat dark rows. Her lips were swollen. Her breathing was shallow and slow, the breathing of someone far down in sleep. She had not stirred at his voice. She had not moved at all.

"She is asleep," Thorne said. "She is exhausted. She was feverish yesterday. She was carried through the halls the day before. She had dinner with you last night, Kaelen, and you poured wine into her until she laughed, and I let it happen because she was happy. And then...." His voice broke. "And then I lay awake in the dark and felt her go to him, and I thought, good. She chose. Let her have this. And I let it be."

"Thorne," Kaelen said, quieter.

"And this morning I woke to a bond that rang through my bones like a church bell, and then another, and I felt her screaming. For an hour. And I thought, what are they doing to her?"

"We didn’t hurt her," said Draeven.