What She Gives

Caswell and his men left at dawn. Harren rode out without looking back. Aldric watched them go from the wall and when the last horse had disappeared into the Ashwood he felt something loosen in his chest. Not relief. Just the absence of pressure. Like a hand releasing a wound it had been holding closed. Or holding open.

He did not go to the hall. She had told him to wait. He went to his room and he cleaned his armor and he sat and he waited. The keep was quiet. The men were resting. The servants were cleaning. Normal sounds. Ordinary sounds. Nothing about what was coming was ordinary.

She sent for him at midday. The boy came and said "The lady wants you in the hall" and Aldric stood and went downstairs.

The hall was empty. The tables had been cleared and the benches pushed to the walls. The tapestries had been taken down. The floor was bare stone swept clean. The hearth had a small fire burning but no other light. The shutters on the windows were closed. The room felt like a chamber that had been prepared for something specific.

Elara stood in the center of the hall. She wore a plain dark dress. Her hair was down. Her feet were bare on the stone. She looked smaller without the red dress and the formal posture. She looked like a woman and not a lady and the difference was dangerous.

"Close the door," she said.

He closed it. The latch fell into place with a sound that was very loud in the silence.

"Take off your armor."

He looked at her. She looked back. There was no ambiguity in her face. No room for interpretation. He reached up and began removing his plate. Piece by piece. Pauldrons. Breastplate. Faulds. Greaves. He laid each piece on the bench by the wall. Underneath the armor he wore a padded gambeson that was stained with sweat and old blood. He removed that too. Underneath was just a man. Scarred across the arms and chest. Thin. Hard. The body of someone who had fought for twenty years and never had enough to eat.

She watched him undress without expression. When he stood before her in nothing but his breeches and his bare feet on the cold stone she walked around him. Slowly. She looked at the scars on his back. The ones on his arms. The old burn mark on his left shoulder.

"How many men have you killed," she said from behind him.

"Twenty three."

"And how many have hurt you."

"More than that."

She came back around to face him. She reached out and touched the scar on his shoulder. The burn mark. Her fingers were cold and light and the touch went through him like current.

"Who did this."

"My first lord. When I was nine. I dropped his sword in a river."

Her fingers stayed on the scar. She pressed. Not gently. Her fingernail dug into the old tissue and it hurt but it was the kind of hurt that existed in a different place than normal pain. It went somewhere deeper.

"You have been hurt by everyone who has ever owned you," she said.

"Yes."

"And now I own you."

"Yes."

She took her hand away. "Kneel."

He knelt. The stone was cold and hard under his knees. She stood above him and he looked up at her and her face was very far away and very close at the same time.

"I told you that you would take what I give you. I told you that in this hall after the first feast. Do you remember."

"I remember."

"This is what I am giving you."

She stepped closer. She took his hand and raised it and pressed it against her again. Like she had before. Above her heart. But this time she moved his hand lower. Across the fabric of her dress. Over her breast. Over her stomach. Down to her hip. She guided his hand along the line of her body and her breathing changed and her eyes stayed on his and she did not let go.

"You may touch me," she said. "Only where I put your hands. Only for as long as I say. You do not move them on your own. You do not try to take more. If you do this ends and it does not begin again. Do you understand."

"Yes."

She moved his hand back up. Over her breast. She held it there and he could feel her heartbeat through the fabric and through his fingers and it was fast and it was strong and it was the most alive he had ever felt. She closed her eyes and her mouth opened slightly and she pressed his hand harder against her and she breathed out and the sound she made was quiet and private and it went into him like a blade.

Then she pulled his hand away.

"Put your hands behind your back."

He did. She stepped back and looked at him kneeling there with his hands behind him and his chest bare and his eyes on her and whatever she saw in his face made her breath catch. Just slightly. Just enough for him to notice.

"Do not move them," she said.

She reached down and unbuttoned the front of her dress. Slowly. Not performing. Not teasing. With the deliberate precision of someone unveiling something they had been keeping hidden. The dress opened and she pushed it off her shoulders and it fell to the floor and she stood before him in nothing.

She was not perfect. She was real. There were marks on her body that spoke of a life lived hard. A scar on her hip. The lean muscle of someone who did not eat enough. The body of a woman who had survived things that had tried to kill her and who carried the evidence of that survival on her skin.

She stepped forward and took his face in her hands. She tilted his head up and she looked down at him and her eyes were dark and wet and fierce.

"You do not get to have me," she said. "You get to be near me. You get to see me. You get to feel what I allow you to feel. But you do not get to have me. No matter how much you want it. No matter how much I want it. You do not get to have me. Say it."

"I do not get to have you."

"Again."

"I do not get to have you."

She released his face. She stepped back. She bent down and picked up the dress and put it back on and buttoned it and the body that had been there a moment ago was gone behind the fabric and Aldric knelt on the stone floor with his hands behind his back and his breathing ragged and his body aching and nothing in his life had ever cost him this much.

"You can go," she said.

He stood. His knees were stiff from the cold stone. He walked to the bench and began putting his armor back on and she watched him do it and neither of them spoke. When he was fully armored he turned to her.

"My lady."

"Ser Aldric."

He bowed and left the hall and climbed the stairs and went to his room and locked the door and leaned against it and his hands were shaking again and his body was taut with something that had no release and he stood there in the dark and he understood now what she was. She was not just his lady. She was the wound and the blade and the hand that held it and the thing that made him bleed and the thing that stopped the bleeding and he could not separate any of those parts from each other because they were all her and she was all of them.

He did not sleep. He did not eat. He lay on the bed and stared at the ceiling and felt the ghost of her body under his hand and the sound she had made and the words she had said. You do not get to have me. He said those words to himself in the dark until they lost their meaning and then he said them again until they got it back.