The Room

She sent for him four days later. Not through the boy. Through a note slipped under his door in handwriting he recognized. Three words. My room. Tonight.

He waited until the house was quiet. The Thornes retired early. The servants went to their quarters by the tenth bell. He waited until the eleventh bell and then he went upstairs and knocked on her door.

"Enter."

The room was different from her room at Greyhollow. Larger. A proper bed with linens that Lady Thorne had provided. A writing desk. A wardrobe. A fire in the hearth. A rug on the floor. It looked like a lady's room. It did not look like the room of the woman who had cut him.

Elara stood by the fire. She wore a shift of white linen. Thin. The firelight came through it and he could see the shape of her body beneath it and he looked away and she saw him look away.

"Do not look away from me."

He looked back. She was watching him with an expression he had seen before. In the hall. In the moments before the knife. That hunger. That rawness. But there was something else now. Something new. A tension in her body that was different from control. Different from rage. Something that made her breathing shallow and her hands restless.

"Close the door," she said.

He closed it.

"Take off your armor."

He removed it. Piece by piece. The familiar ritual. He laid it on the floor by the wall because there was no bench. When he stood in his breeches she looked at him and her eyes went to the scars on his chest. The three lines. White and permanent. She came to him and touched them.

"I have been thinking about these," she said. "Every day since we arrived. I have been sitting in the court and smiling at my brother and talking to Renard and all the time I have been thinking about these marks on your body and the fact that I put them there."

Her fingers traced the lines. His body tightened.

"I have been thinking about the knife," she said. "About how it felt. The sound it made. The way the blood came. The way you looked at me while I did it."

Her voice had changed. Lower. Slower. Each word placed with care. Her fingers moved from the scars to his stomach. To the cut she had made below his ribs. She pressed it and he tensed and she inhaled sharply. The sound of her breathing changing was unmistakable. He had heard it before. In the hall. When she had put her mouth on his wounds.

"I need something from you," she said.

"Anything."

"Do not say anything. You do not know what I am going to ask."

"It does not matter."

She looked up at him. Her eyes were dark and her lips were parted and her chest was rising and falling with the shallow breathing and she was not the princess and she was not the lady of the court. She was the woman from the hall and she wanted something and the wanting was written on her body in every line and every breath.

"Kneel," she said.

He knelt on the rug. It was softer than stone. She stood above him and her shift was thin and the fire was behind her and he could see everything and she knew he could see everything and she did not move away.

She went to the desk and came back with a knife. Not the thin blade from Greyhollow. A different one. Shorter. Curved. The kind used for cutting parchment. She held it in front of his face the way she had before and his heart rate spiked and she watched it spike in his throat.

"Three weeks without this," she said. "Three weeks of smiling and lying and being someone else. Three weeks of not feeling anything real. Do you know what that does to a person."

"No."

"It makes them hungry." She pressed the flat of the blade against his chest. Over the scars. The steel was cold. "I am hungry Aldric. I have been hungry since we left Greyhollow and I have been starving since we arrived and I cannot eat and I cannot sleep and the only thing that fills the space is this."

She cut. A line across his chest. Parallel to the first three. The pain came and he made a sound and she breathed out and the breath was shaky and her free hand went to her own body. To her hip. She pressed her hand against herself through the shift and the gesture was not unconscious. She was responding to his pain with arousal and she was not hiding it.

She cut again. Deeper. Lower. Across his stomach and he gasped and his body jerked and she made a sound. A small sound. A sound that had nothing to do with pain and everything to do with pleasure. She was watching the blood appear and her hand was on her own body and her eyes were glazed and she was inside the moment completely.

"I tried to stop," she said. Her voice was barely above a whisper. "I tried to be what the court needs me to be. Controlled. Careful. Cold. But I cannot be cold. Not with you. Not with this."

She set the knife on the desk and came back to him. She knelt in front of him. Her shift rode up above her knees and her hands went to his chest. To the blood. She spread it with her palms the way she had before. Covering him. Painting him. Her hands moved over his chest and his stomach and the cuts and the scars and her breathing was fast and her body was trembling.

She pressed her body against his. Her chest against his chest. The blood on his skin soaked through the thin linen and she pressed against him and the contact was warm and wet and she put her arms around him and held him. Held him the way you hold something you are afraid of losing. Her face was against his neck and her mouth was near the scar she had given him and she was shaking.

"Put your hands on me," she said.

He hesitated. The rules. The old rules. Only where I place your hands.

"Put your hands on me," she said again. "I am placing them. Now. Everywhere. Put your hands on me."

He raised his hands. He put them on her back. On the thin linen that was warm and damp with his blood. He felt her body under his hands. The structure of her. The ribs. The spine. The muscle. She was real. She was solid. She was pressed against him and his blood was between them and she was breathing hard against his neck.

She moved against him. Not sexually. Not exactly. She moved the way a person moves when they need contact. When they need to feel another body. She pressed closer and her hands went to his shoulders and she dug her nails in and the pain was sharp and bright and she made that sound again. The pleasure sound. The sound that said his pain was doing something to her that she could not get anywhere else.

Her mouth found his neck. The scar. She bit it. Hard. The old wound opened and blood came and she bit harder and her body pressed against his and she was making sounds now that were not quiet. Not private. Sounds that came from deep in her chest and her hips moved against him and her nails drew lines of fire down his back and she was using him. She was using his body and his pain and his blood to take herself somewhere and she did not care if he came with her.

He held her. That was what he did. He held her while she hurt him and he held her while she used him and he held her while she shook and gasped and bit and clawed and took what she needed from his body the way you take water from a well. Without asking. Without considering the well. Just drawing.

She went still. Her breathing was ragged. Her body was limp against his. The shift was ruined. Soaked with blood. Her mouth was still against his neck and her arms were still around him and she held on.

After a long time she pulled back. She looked at him. Her face was flushed. Her eyes were soft in a way he had never seen. Not the calculation. Not the hunger. Something after the hunger. Something that came when the hunger was sated.

"You are still here," she said.

"Where else would I be."

She touched his face. Her fingers were bloody. She traced his jawline and looked at him and the softness in her eyes was terrifying because it looked like love and she had told him she could not love him and he believed her and he did not believe her and both of those things were true.

"I hurt you," she said.

"Yes."

"I am going to hurt you again."

"I know."

"And you will let me."

"Yes."

She closed her eyes. Her hand stayed on his face. "I do not deserve this."

"No."

She opened her eyes. The softness was gone. The walls were going back up. She was the lady again. The princess. The mask.

"Clean yourself. There is a cloth and water on the desk. Do not use the salve tonight. I want the cuts to stay open."

"My lady."

"Go to your room. Do not speak of this. Do not think of this outside this room."

"I cannot control what I think."

"You can control what you do. That is enough."

She stood and turned away from him and walked to the window and looked out at the city. He cleaned himself with the cloth and water. The cuts bled fresh when he wiped them. He did not bandage them. She had told him not to.

He put on his clothes and picked up his armor and went to the door. He stopped.

"Elara."

She did not turn around. But her shoulders shifted. She heard him.

"Goodnight," he said.

He left before she could respond. He went downstairs and locked his door and lay on his bed and the cuts throbbed and his back burned where her nails had been and his neck stung where she had bitten him again and he could feel all of it and he could feel her on his skin and he pressed his hand against his chest and felt the blood drying and he was hard and he was in pain and he was hers and there was nothing in the world that would make that sentence untrue.

He did not touch himself. She had not told him he could. That was not a rule she had spoken. But it was a rule he understood. His body was hers. His pain was hers. His pleasure was hers. She had not granted it and so it did not exist.

He lay in the dark and waited for the pain to fade enough to sleep and it did not fade and he did not sleep.