But the thought of kneeling beside her chair, of being at this angle where I must look up to meet her eyes, where she is above me not through dominance but through geometry...
I want that. I want to kneel for her.
The realization is startling. Unsettling.
"I prefer to kneel," I hear myself say. "If you don't mind."
Her eyes widen slightly, and through the bond I feel a flutter of something warm. Pleased, perhaps. Or surprised.
"Okay," she says softly. "Whatever makes you comfortable."
Comfortable. That is not the word for what I feel as I lower myself to kneel beside her chair. But it is something. Something I have not felt in a very long time.
"Before we do this," she says, and I force myself to focus on her words instead of the pulse beating in her throat. "I wanted to ask... will you tell me about yourself? About before?"
I almost stop breathing. "Before?"
"Before the bond. When you were human. Alive." She is looking at me with open curiosity, no judgment in her expression. "I want to know."
"Masters don't ask," I say automatically.
"I'm asking." She reaches out slowly, carefully, and takes my hand. Her fingers are warm against my cold skin. "Please."
That word again. That impossible kindness.
"What do you wish to know?"
"Everything." She smiles. "But we can start small. Were you really a knight?"
"Yes." The memory is old, dusty, but still there. "I was the youngest son. No land inheritance, so I went to the lists. Won my first tournament at sixteen."
"Were you good?"
"I was adequate." A pause. "No. I was very good."
Her delighted laugh surprises me. "There's that dry humor."
"I am simply stating facts."
"Uh huh." She is grinning now. "What else? What did you love? What made you happy?"
No one has asked me this in two hundred years.
"Spring," I hear myself say. "I loved spring. The way everything came back to life after winter. Flowers. My sister used to make chains of them for her hair." The memory surfaces, crystalline and sharp. "She had the brightest laugh. Like bells."
"What was her name?"
"Eleanor." I have not said her name aloud in centuries. It tastes like grief and love and everything I lost. "She was four years younger than me. Married a merchant's son the year before I was bonded."
"Did you ever see her again? After?"
"Once. Thirty years later. She was old. I was not." The memory is ash in my mouth. "She did not recognize me. I did not tell her."
Iris's hand tightens on mine. "I'm sorry."
"It was a long time ago."
"That doesn't make it hurt less."
