“Do I?”
She laid her fingers gently over the scars crossing his temples, thinking of her own matching ones across her ribcage. As a wide smile bloomed across her face, she said, “Take me home to the Baersladen and make me your wife.”
Cheers continue to fill the throne room at the announcement of Mars and Illiana’s wedding, but as Bryn pressed to her tiptoesto meet Rangar’s lips in a kiss, she felt the thrill of a bold new future for her and Rangar, too.
Together at last. No dungeon bars between them. No other engagements. It was simple: She belonged to him, and he belonged to her.
The Eyrie might still be on the eve of war, but her heart was finally at peace.
Chapter
Forty-Two
NEWS FROM HOME . . . a music box . . . clean sheets . . . an unwanted interruption . . . chaos
It felt strange to Bryn to have Rangar Barendur standing in her childhood bedroom.
She hung back in the doorway as she watched her prince move in a slow circle over the woven rug, examining the gilded decor that couldn’t be more different from Barendur Hold’s heavy oak furniture. In his bearskin cloak, with his back to her as he picked up her old music box from the dressing table, he looked every bit the shaggy bear she had once mistaken him for.
At six years old, she’d misheard “princes of theBaer” as “princes of thebear” and thought the three untamed brothers in their bearskin cloaks were like the creatures out of Nan’s story, animals who turned human beneath the full moon.
I wasn’t so wrong, she thought wryly to herself, watching him. Rangar, Valenden, and Trei all had possessed the qualities of a bear: strength, perseverance, and an uncultivated spirit she found intoxicating.
She strode into her room to join him, picking up the music box, an ingenious device that played a plinking tune and spun a mermaid carved of abalone shell.
“This was a gift to my parents on the occasion of my birth,” she explained. “From the Hytooth family in the Wollin.”
“The Hytooths didn’t send my father anything so fine on my birth,” he retorted. “Not even a basket of seashells: trinkets the ocean provides them for free.”
She set back down the box, closing it, and the tune ended. “They didn’t need to win your father’s favor. You were already allies.”
He slid open her dressing table drawer, looking over the silver combs and jewelry boxes.
Bryn felt herself blushing. “Such finery feels frivolous now.”
He lifted a crystal bottle of perfume to his nose, breathing in it. “I like seeing this side of you. Where you came from. You have no idea how, as a boy, I hungered for any scraps of information about your life. I would have traded a finger to have seen this bedroom. Touched your things.” He set back down the perfume and turned to her. “Laid down in the bed you spent every night in.”
She glanced at her four-post bed. Lisbeth had made it fresh that morning with crisp white sheets and a brocade bedspread. It was almost laughable how different it was from the humble bedroll she’d gotten used to at Barendur Hold.
She leaned back against the dressing table, lifting an eyebrow. “Perhaps you’d like to lie in it now?”
His eyes darkened as he closed the small space between them, running his hands through the hair at the back of her scalp. He murmured, “Only if you’ll join me.”
Bryn bit her lip as a thrill raced through her.
A devilish look crossed Rangar’s face, and before she knew it, he’d thrown her over his shoulder.
“Hey!” she cried, teasingly pounding her fists into his back.
He carted her over to the door, which he kicked closed with one foot, and then tossed her on the bedspread like she weighed nothing more than a load of clothes.
She lifted herself to her elbows, giggling.
He shed his bearskin cloak, letting it fall to the floor, and then climbed on top of her. She fell back down, her head supported by the soft mattress like she was lying in the clouds.
His weight pinned her to the bed, sinking her further into the soft covers.
“I’ve never made love in a bed so fancy as this,” he said as his gaze worshipped her lying beneath him.
