He felt her body arch against his, her breasts pressing to his chest. He was rock-hard now, fighting the urge to explore her body with his hands. They were both awkwardly turned towards each other, seated in the furs before the fire but pressing tight. Ayla’s other hand buried into his hair, cupping the back of his head. Niel clamped down on a groan that nearly escaped him, and Ayla laughed silently into him.
“Well?” Ayla whispered, pulling back slightly so that he could still feel her breath on his skin. “Is kissing nice?”
“Yes,” Niel rasped, still tangled in with her. He could feel the pressure in his cock as it pressed against his trousers.
She laughed louder, but not unkindly, and straightened. Reluctantly, he let her go. He felt he could have kept kissing her for quite a long time. But then Ayla turned to a more comfortable position and leaned against him, her body no longer contorted. She rested her head on his shoulder. Barely daring to breathe, Niel wrapped an arm back around her, his hands splayed on the narrowing on her waist.
“Didyouthink it was nice?” he asked quietly.
She lifted her head from his shoulder, and pressed a small, soft kiss to the edge of his jaw, and Niel felt like light had stabbed through his heart and pinned him to her like an arrow. She rested her head back against his shoulder, and he tried to think over the pounding of his heart in his ears. Her hands were on her lap, and he could see a faint tremble in them.
“Was that a yes, Ayla?” he whispered. “Please, do not make me guess.”
Ayla laughed silently, her shoulders shaking.
“It was a yes,” she said. “Now stop overthinking and hold me, please, if you do not mind.”
He tightened his arm around her waist, and rested his head against her own, and let the fire bathe over them both.
To Parley
He woke in the pre-dawn dark, as suddenly as if he’d been roused by a call, and lay there with his heart pounding, listening to the silence of the castle. He could hear the wind outside, and a distant jangling bell that hung around the neck of one of the castle’s cats.
And, beside him, the soft breathing of a woman.
It wasn’t the first time they had spent the night with each other, nor the second or the third; they’d done so all through the grippe. But it was the first time they had shared a bed. Nothing more had happened beyond the kiss, but after supper she had started to fall asleep against him, and in the easy logic of night it had seemed simpler that she stay in the already fire-warmed room rather than going back alone to her own cold chamber.
He wondered if it was the first time he’d ever shared a bed through the night, but a memory he hadn’t recalled in years slipped in, of him and Corin as young children, bunking together overnight at a traveler’s wayhouse on the way to visiting theiruncle and older cousin Hark at Ironcliff City. Long before their father had started talking treason. Even before Niel had come to hate his brother and fear his violence.
It was a stupid thing to remember, of a time that felt like a different life. Niel turned his head slowly to the side, and made out the dim outlines of Ayla’s shape, barely visible in the dark to his eyes. His mouth felt dry, and suddenly he was too conscious of the sound of his own breathing. He did not fully understand how they had reached this point, where his heart ached at just the thought of her. It seemed as though it must be happening to some other man, one he shared a body with. Surely this type of happiness was not meant for him. Or perhaps this time his curse was not to be miserable from the start, but instead to know misery was coming for him, a doom that stalked him through the cold winter. Because this was going to end, and it was not going to end well.
He resisted the urge to reach a hand across the bed and trace the outline of her body. Moving slowly so he wouldn’t wake Ayla, he slid silently from the blankets. Cold flooded his body as he left the bed. She stirred, turning over with a soft mumble. He waited, watching her until she quieted, then changed his clothes and left her to finish her sleep.
He ate, exercised, and stood morning sentry. In afternoon he took a turn in the laundry, churning clothes through herb-infused water and scrubbing at them until his fingers ached from the icy water. Footsteps clattered downstairs at what he thought was mid-afternoon, though in the lantern lit room there was no good measure of time.
“There you are, my lord,” the soldier on the stair said, sounding slightly breathless. It was Toved, who’d helped move the woodpile with him during the last attack. “You’re wanted on the wall.”
Two other soldiers were down there doing washing with him, and Niel felt their eyes on him as they all looked up.
“Trouble?” Niel asked, straightening his back as he dried his hands on the damp rag beside him.
“Mayhap. They started doing something out there.”
He did not like the thought of his brother ‘doing something.’ Niel grunted and made for the stairs, taking them two at a time and passing Toved, who followed him back up all the way to the wall.
It was quiet outside, a few sparse snowflakes dancing on the breeze as they fell, and his sentries remained spread out at their posts. He and Kerr had impressed on them the importance of not letting any distractions pull them away: even if the Queen’s army rushed the castle, Corin might send a smaller number of men to sneak around the other side with ladders. But a small group of off-duty soldiers, Kerr among them, were clustered in one spot and squinting past the army encampment.
Niel shouldered through them and peered at the small, distant figures. As far as he could tell, his brother’s men were busily stripping a pile of firs of their branches.
“What am I looking at?” he asked.
“They’re building something,” Kerr told him. He stood beside Niel’s left, his arms crossed and his expression grim.
“They look like they’re chopping firewood,” Niel said flatly, and wondered if this was what happened to men who’d been cooped inside a single castle for too long, waiting for an attack to reach them.
“No. They’ve been measuring the logs and comparing them,” Kerr said. “Look. That fellow, over there.” Niel followed the point of Kerr’s finger, to the small figure moving back and forth, movements indistinct over the distance.
“What?”
