Arrangement

Three days passed before she sent for him again. Three days of normal work. Drilling the men. Walking the walls. Inspecting the stores. Carrying messages. The life of a household knight doing his duty. But underneath the ordinary surface everything had changed. He could feel it in the way she looked at him when she gave him orders. A weight in her gaze that had not been there before. Or maybe it had been there all along and he was only now able to see it.

She sent for him on the third night. The boy came and said the words and Aldric went downstairs to the hall. The setup was the same. Door closed. Shutters shut. Small fire. Tables cleared.

She stood in the center of the room. Dark dress. Hair down. Bare feet.

"Take off your armor," she said.

He did. He was faster this time. He knew the order of the pieces and his hands moved without hesitation. He laid the armor on the bench and stood before her in his breeches and she looked at him and nodded.

"Kneel."

He knelt. The stone was just as cold. His knees remembered it.

"I have been thinking about you," she said. She did not move toward him. She stood five paces away with her hands at her sides. "I have been thinking about what you are and what I can do with what you are. And I have decided something."

She walked toward him. She stopped just in front of him and looked down.

"I am going to teach you what it means to belong to me. Not to the crown. Not to an oath. To me. And the first thing you need to learn is that your body is not your own anymore. It is mine. I decide what it feels. I decide what it wants. I decide when it has had enough. Do you understand the difference between that and what you have been."

"I think so."

"You do not. You think you understand because you have been obedient your whole life. But obedience is following orders. This is not following orders. This is surrender. You are not doing what I tell you. You are giving me the thing that decides what you do. You are giving me your will. And once you give it to me you do not get it back."

She crouched in front of him. Her face was level with his. Her eyes were very close and very dark.

"Give me your hands," she said.

He brought his hands from behind his back and held them out to her. She took them. She turned them over and looked at his palms. Calloused. Scarred. The hands of a sword fighter. She traced the lines on his palms with her fingernail and the sensation was unbearable. Not because it hurt. Because it did not hurt enough.

"These are mine now," she said. "These hands do not move unless I move them. They do not touch unless I place them. They do not hold a weapon unless I tell them to. Is that clear."

"Yes."

She placed his hands on her knees. She was crouching in front of him and his hands rested on her knees and the fabric of her dress was warm under his palms and she watched his face as he felt the warmth of her through the cloth.

"Do not move them," she said.

She stood and his hands stayed on her knees and then she stepped back and his hands fell away and were empty again. She walked behind him. He could not see her. He could hear her breathing. He could feel her presence behind him the way you feel a storm coming.

Her hand touched his back. The scarred part. She ran her fingers over the ridges of old wounds and he closed his eyes and his jaw tightened and she leaned close to his ear.

"Who did these."

"Different men. Different swords."

"Did you deserve them."

"Sometimes."

Her hand pressed harder. Her nails drew lines across his back. Not breaking the skin. Not quite. But the pressure was real and the pain was real and it sat in a place that was not just physical. It was the pain of being marked by someone who owned you. The pain of being written on.

"You will have more," she whispered. "From me. I will mark you and you will carry my marks and no one will see them but you and me. And every time you feel them you will remember that you are mine."

She came back around to face him. She was breathing harder now. Her control was still there but it was thinner. He could see the edges of it. She knelt in front of him and took his face in her hands again and this time she did not just hold it. She pulled him toward her and her mouth was close to his and he could feel her breath on his lips and his entire body was rigid with the need to close the distance.

"Do not kiss me," she said. "Do not move."

She held his face an inch from hers. Her fingers were in his hair and her thumbs were on his jaw and her mouth was right there and every fiber of him wanted to close that inch and he did not because she had said do not move and his will was in her hands now and she was holding it the way she held everything else. With grip and intent.

She moved her mouth to his neck. Below his ear. She bit him. Not gently. Her teeth closed on the muscle of his neck and the pain shot through him and he made a sound that he did not recognize. Something between a gasp and something else. Something that came from the place where pain and need become the same thing.

She bit harder. He felt the skin break. A warm trickle down his neck. She released him and pulled back and there was blood on her lips. His blood. She looked at him with his blood on her mouth and her eyes were bright and her breathing was fast and she was beautiful in a way that was terrible.

"That is the first mark," she said. "There will be more."

She stood and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and looked at the blood on her skin and she did not seem repelled by it. She seemed interested. She seemed satisfied.

"Stand up," she said.

He stood. His neck throbbed where she had bitten him and he could feel the blood drying on his skin. She stepped close to him and put her hand flat on his chest. Over his heart. His heart was pounding and she could feel it and she looked up at him and her face was unreadable.

"Tomorrow I will send you to Thornwick again with a message for Caswell. You will ride hard and you will return fast and when you return you will come to this hall and we will do this again. And each time we do it I will take more. Do you understand."

"I understand."

"Say my name."

He hesitated. She had told him not to use her given name. She had told him to call her my lady. He looked at her and she looked at him and the blood on his neck was drying and her hand was on his heart and something in her face said that the rules had changed. Just for this moment. Just in this room.

"Elara," he said.

She closed her eyes. Her hand pressed harder against his chest. She breathed in and breathed out and then she opened her eyes and the moment was over and the walls came back up and she was Lady Elara of Greyhollow again and he was Ser Aldric her knight and the distance between them was the distance it had always been.

"Go," she said. "Clean your neck. Sleep if you can. You ride at dawn."

He put his armor back on. The bite on his neck throbbed under the gorget. He bowed and left the hall and went to his room and cleaned the wound with water and a cloth and he looked at it in the small mirror he kept on the shelf. It was deep enough to scar. She had meant it to scar. He touched it and the touch sent pain through him and under the pain was something else. Something warm. Something that felt like being held.

He lay on his bed and he did not sleep and he pressed his fingers to the wound on his neck and he thought about her mouth and her teeth and her hand on his heart and the sound of his own name in her voice and he understood now that he was lost. Not in the way a man is lost in a forest. In the way a man is lost at sea. There was no path back because there was no land in any direction. There was only her and the distance she kept and the things she did across that distance and the knowledge that the distance would never close and he would never stop trying to close it and she knew that and she used it and it was the most real thing that had ever happened to him.

He pressed the wound one more time and then he lay still and waited for dawn.