Private Dinner

The King's private chamber was not what Aldric had expected. He had expected grandeur. Gold and silk and the trappings of power. What he found was a room that was almost modest. Stone walls. A heavy table. Two chairs. A fire. Wine. Bread. Meat. Simple things in a simple room.

Aldous sat at the table and he wore no crown. He wore a shirt of white linen and a doublet of dark blue and he looked like a man who had been reading by the fire and had been interrupted by guests. He looked comfortable. He looked human.

That was more dangerous than the crown.

Elara entered first. She wore a dress of deep red. Not the red of Greyhollow. A richer red. A royal red. She moved into the room and she smiled at her brother and the smile was perfect and she kissed his cheek and he held her at arm's length and looked at her and his eyes did the thing Aldric had seen at the ceremony. The tracking. The measuring. Behind the warmth.

"You look well sister. The capital agrees with you."

"The capital is overwhelming. But I am adapting."

Aldric entered behind her. He took his position by the door. Hand on sword. Eyes forward. Invisible.

Aldous looked at him. Just a glance. A flick of the eyes. But in that glance Aldric felt himself weighed and measured and catalogued. The King saw the surcoat with the heron of Greyhollow. He saw the armor. He saw the sword. He saw the man inside the steel and he filed it all away and then he dismissed Aldric from his attention as easily as closing a book.

"Sit Elara. The cook has outdone himself. I had them prepare that dish you loved when we were children. Do you remember."

"I remember."

They ate. Aldric stood. The dinner was long and slow and the conversation was careful. Aldous asked about Greyhollow. About the east. About the people and the land and the weather. Elara answered with the practiced vagueness of a woman who has rehearsed every word. She spoke of the holding as though it were a pleasant country estate. She did not mention the walls or the men or the years of hiding. She smiled and she ate and she was the sister who had been ill and was now recovered.

Aldous listened to everything. He ate and drank and nodded and his eyes never left her face for more than a few seconds. He was reading her the way a general reads a battlefield. Looking for the weak point. The gap in the line.

"And your household," he said casually. "You brought only your knight."

"Ser Aldric has served me well. He is efficient."

"He looks efficient. Where did you find him."

"He was assigned to me by the household. I did not choose him."

"You did not choose him." Aldous smiled. "And yet you kept him."

"He is competent. I had no reason to replace him."

Aldous looked at Aldric again. This time the glance lasted longer. "Ser Aldric. Do you enjoy serving my sister."

Aldric bowed his head. "I serve where I am placed your majesty. Enjoyment is not my concern."

"Well spoken. You were trained in the household."

"Yes your majesty."

"Men like you are the backbone of the realm. You do not ask for much. You do not want for much. You simply serve." Aldous smiled at Elara. "We could use more men like him at court."

"He is a simple man brother. Simple men are best kept in simple places."

A simple man. She had called him a simple man in front of the King. She had reduced him to a function. A tool. She had done it to protect him and it worked because the King lost interest and turned back to Elara and the conversation moved on.

But the words sat in Aldric. Simple man. Simple places. She had said it for his safety and she had said it in front of the man who wanted her dead and the calculation was correct and the performance was flawless and he hated it. Not her. The situation. The world that required her to diminish him to save him.

The dinner continued. Aldous poured more wine and talked about the court and the upcoming season and the hunting parties he had planned. He was relaxed and warm and brotherly and every word he spoke was a move in a game that Elara had to play without showing her cards.

Near the end of the dinner Aldous stood and walked to the window. He looked out at the city.

"I want you to stay at the palace," he said. "Not at the Thorne townhouse. I have prepared quarters for you in the east wing. It is more fitting for a princess."

Elara paused. The moment was delicate. Aldric could feel it from the door. The King was making a move. Bringing her into the palace. Under his roof. Under his surveillance.

"Your generosity is overwhelming brother," Elara said. "But I would not wish to impose."

"Impose. You are my sister. This is your home. It has always been your home." He turned from the window and looked at her and the warmth was there and the cold was underneath it. "I insist."

The silence lasted three heartbeats. Elara smiled.

"Then of course I accept."

They returned to the Thorne townhouse that night and Elara closed the door to her room and she looked at Aldric and the mask fell and underneath it was fear.

"He wants me in the palace," she said. "He wants me where he can watch me. Where he can control the walls and the doors and the servants."

"We knew this might happen."

"I was hoping it would not happen so soon. I need time. I need space. I need rooms that are not his."

Lord Thorne was called and the three of them talked for an hour. The move to the palace would happen in three days. Elara would bring Aldric and one servant. The Thornes would remain in their townhouse as a point of contact. The information network would continue to operate but more carefully. Slower. The palace was enemy territory.

When Thorne left Elara turned to Aldric.

"Three days," she said. "Three days before we are in his house. Three days before I cannot scream without his servants hearing. Three days before the room disappears."

She crossed to him and put her hands on his chest. Over the scars.

"I need the room tonight," she said. "I need it now. I need to feel something real before everything becomes a performance."

"My lady."

"Do not call me that. Not tonight. In three days I will be my lady every hour of every day. Tonight I need to be her. The one from the hall. The one who held the knife."

She pulled his shirt over his head. She looked at the scars. Four lines. She touched them and her breathing changed and the hunger came back. He could see it in her face. The shift. The softness leaving and the rawness replacing it.

She went to her desk and came back with a knife. The same curved blade. She held it and looked at him and her eyes were dark and her lips were parted and she was already breathing fast and he had not been cut yet.

"Three days," she said. "Three days and then this stops. Three days and then I am the princess in the palace and you are the knight in the hall and I cannot cut you because the walls have ears and the King is watching."

She pressed the blade to his chest. Below the four lines. A new space. She looked at him and her hand was shaking. Not from hesitation. From need.

"I need this," she said. "I need to do this. I need to hear you and see you and feel you break under my hands because in three days I will be breaking under his and I need to remember what it feels like to be the one holding the blade."

She cut. Deep. Deeper than before. The pain was a white line across his body and he made a sound and she gasped. The gasp was not sympathy. The gasp was arousal. Pure and unmistakable. Her body responded to his pain the way a body responds to touch. Immediately. Involuntarily. She was wet. He could see it in the way she moved. The way her thighs pressed together. The way her breathing became something other than breathing.

She cut again and he made another sound and she pressed her legs together and her free hand went to her own body. Between her legs. Through her dress. She pressed and she cut him again and he groaned and she moaned. The sounds were in tandem. His pain and her pleasure. The same rhythm. The same pulse.

She set the knife down and she pressed her body against his. Against the cuts. The blood soaked into her dress and she pressed harder and her mouth went to his neck. To the bite scar. She bit and he cried out and she shuddered against him. Her whole body shuddered. The contact with his pain and his blood and his sound had done something to her that was physical and immediate and she held onto him and shook.

"More," she said. "I need more."

She pulled back and looked at him and her face was flushed and her eyes were glassy and she was somewhere he could not follow. A place where his pain was her pleasure and the boundary between the two had dissolved completely.

She took his hand and placed it on her body. On her hip. Moved it up. Over her waist. Over her breast. She was using his hand to touch herself the way she had used the knife to cut him. He was the instrument. The tool. His hand on her body and his blood on her body and his pain in the air between them.

"Feel what you do to me," she whispered. "Feel what your pain does."

He felt it. Her body was alive under his hand. Warm and responsive and she moved against his palm and her breathing was fast and her eyes were closed and she was taking from him again. Taking his pain and turning it into this. Into heat and need and the sounds she made that went through him like the knife had.

She opened her eyes and looked at him and her face was so close and her mouth was so close and she was breathing his air and he was breathing hers and the distance between their mouths was the distance between what they had and what they could never have.

"Do not kiss me," she said.

She moved his hand lower. Down her stomach. Down between her legs. She pressed his hand against her and she was warm through the fabric and she moved against his hand and her eyes stayed on his and she used him. She used his hand and his pain and his blood and his devotion and she took herself to a place where her body arched and her breath caught and her fingers dug into his shoulders and she held onto him and she broke.

She broke against his hand. Her body convulsed and she made a sound that was not quiet and not private and it filled the room and it filled him and he held her while she shook and he did not move his hand because she had not told him to move it and so it stayed where she had put it and she rode the last of it against his palm and then she was still.

She leaned against him. Her forehead on his chest. On the blood. She breathed. He breathed. The room was warm and dark and smelled of copper and something else. Something female and raw.

"You did not move your hand," she said.

"You did not tell me to."

"I know. I was testing."

"What were you testing."

"Whether you would take what is not offered."

"It is not mine to take."

She pressed her face harder against his chest. "No. It is not."

She stepped back. She looked at the blood on her dress. On her skin. She looked at the cuts on his chest. Five lines now. She touched the newest one.

"This one is the deepest," she said. "It will scar the most."

"Good."

She looked at him. "Good?"

"If it scars the most then it will last the longest. And in the palace when I cannot feel your hands I will feel that and it will be enough."

Her face did something he had never seen. The mask did not just slip. It shattered. For three seconds her face was completely open and what was on it was not hunger and not calculation and not control. It was love. Naked and helpless and terrible. The love of a woman who had built every wall she could find to keep it in and it was coming through anyway and she could not stop it.

Then the walls came back. Piece by piece. The mask reassembled. The face closed. The eyes hardened. She was the lady again.

"Clean yourself," she said. "We move to the palace in three days. There is much to do."

She turned away from him. She walked to the window. She looked out at the city.

He cleaned himself. He dressed. He went to the door.

"Elara."

She did not turn.

"Three days," he said. "And then the room is gone."

"The room is already gone," she said. "It has been gone since we left Greyhollow. What we have now is memory. And memory will have to be enough."

He left. He went to his room and he lay on the bed and the cuts throbbed and his hand still felt the warmth of her and he held that hand against his chest and felt the scars beneath it. Five lines. Her map. Her claim.

Three days. And then the palace. And then the King's house. And then the room was gone and the memory was all he had and the memory would have to be enough because she had said so and she was right and being right did not make it hurt less.