Chambers

He came at the tenth bell. He knocked on her door and she said enter and he entered and the room was not what he expected.

It was her bedchamber. The queen's bedchamber. Larger than any room she had occupied before. A bed with a canopy. Silk hangings. A fire in a hearth of carved stone. Tapestries on the walls. A desk. A chair. A table with a decanter of wine and two cups.

She stood by the fire. She wore a nightshift of white linen. Thin. The firelight came through it the way it had in Greyhollow. The way it had in the palace. Her hair was down. Her feet were bare.

She looked at him and her face was not the queen's face. It was not the mask. It was not the cold clarity. It was the face from the room. The face from before the throne. The face he had been seeing in his dreams for six weeks while he pressed his fingers to the letter on his chest.

"Close the door," she said.

He closed it.

She looked at him. She did not speak for a long time. She stood by the fire and she looked at him and her eyes moved over him the way they had moved over him the first time in the hall at Greyhollow. Reading. Measuring. Finding the places where the damage was.

"Six weeks," she said.

"Yes."

"I could not summon you sooner."

"I understand."

"Do you. The court watches. The council watches. Every movement I make is observed. Every person who enters this room is noted. I have spent six weeks making sure that the note made when you enter this room is unremarkable. A queen summoning her guard for a briefing. Routine. Ordinary. Nothing to report."

"And now."

"Now I have made it ordinary. And now you are here. And the door is closed. And I have been waiting for this for six weeks and the waiting has been worse than the tower."

She crossed the room. She came to him and she put her hands on his chest. Over the shirt. Over the letter. She pressed and she could feel it through the fabric. The ridge of scar tissue. The shape of her name.

"Take off your shirt," she said.

He took it off. She looked at the letter. The E. White and raised and permanent on his skin. She touched it. Traced it with her finger. The way he had traced it every night. The same motion. The same path. As though she had known how he touched it in the dark. As though the connection between them ran through the scar and the scar was a thread and the thread vibrated when either of them touched it.

"It healed well," she said.

"Yes."

"I thought about it. Every day. Every night. Sitting on the throne with the court watching and the council talking and the kingdom needing decisions. I thought about this. My name on your chest. The fact that it is there. The fact that it is permanent. The fact that no matter what happens to me or to you or to the throne this mark exists and it says that you are mine and nothing can change that."

She leaned forward and put her mouth on the letter. On the scar. She kissed it. Gently. The way she had kissed the scars in the palace. The way she had kissed his forehead on the last night in Greyhollow. With a tenderness that was worse than the knife because the knife was what they were and the tenderness was what they could never be.

Then she bit it.

The scar split. The pain was immediate and enormous and he gasped and she bit harder and the blood came and she made the sound. That sound. The sound that said his pain was her pleasure. The sound that had been absent for six weeks and was now back and it filled the room and it filled him and the six weeks of absence collapsed into the sound and the sound was everything.

She pulled back. Blood on her lips. His blood. On her mouth. She looked at him and her eyes were dark and her breathing was fast and the emptiness that had sat on her face for six weeks was gone. Replaced. Filled. The hunger was back and it was worse than before. Six weeks of starvation. Six weeks of the throne and the mask and the nothing. Six weeks of being the queen when what she was was the woman in the room with the knife and the blood and the need.

"I cannot do this carefully," she said. "I cannot be what I was in Greyhollow. The tower took that from me. The throne took the rest. What is left is this. And I need you to let this be what it is."

She took the knife from the table. The small knife. The one that had traveled from Greyhollow to the palace to the tower to the King's chamber and back. The blade that had cut him more times than he could count. The blade that had carved the letter. She held it and the firelight caught the steel and her face was the face of the woman he had always served and the woman he had always feared and the woman he had always loved and they were the same face and they had always been the same face.

"Kneel," she said.

He knelt. The floor was stone. Cold. Hard. The same surface. Every room. Every time. The floor was where he belonged. The floor was where she put him and where he stayed and where the world made sense.

She came to him. She stood in front of him and she set the knife on the bed and she reached down and she lifted the nightshift over her head and she was naked and she was the queen and she was the woman from the room and the two things stood in front of him in the firelight and the two things were the same body and the same skin and the same scars that the tower had left and the same hands that had cut him and held him and killed for him.

She knelt in front of him. She straddled his knees. She sat on his lap and her body was against his and the blood from the reopened letter was between them. On her stomach. On her chest. Her skin against his scars. Her warmth against his cold.

She put her hands on his face. She looked at him and her eyes were wet and the tears were there and she did not hold them. They fell. On his face. On his chest. On the letter. Her tears and his blood mixing on his skin.

"I love you," she said.

The words were in the room. They existed. They had been spoken. The thing that could not be said had been said and it was in the air and it was real and it changed nothing and it changed everything.

"I love you," she said again. "And I am going to hurt you. And I am going to enjoy it. And you are going to let me because that is what you are. And I love you for it. And I hate myself for it. And both of those things are true and neither of them matters because what matters is that you are mine and I am yours and we are in this room and the door is closed and the world outside does not exist."

She reached for the knife. She held it in front of his face. He looked at the blade. At her hand. At her face behind the blade. At the tears and the hunger and the love and the need all tangled together on her features.

"I love you," she said. "Do you believe me."

"Yes."

"Then let me show you what that means."