I laughed then and felt him smile against my hair.
He reached back without looking and turned the water off and we stood in the quiet dripping steam of the bathroom and I thought that this was the most at home I had felt in my own skin in longer than I could remember.
Maybe ever.
Getting dressed presented an obvious problem since my options were the gala gown or nothing and I was choosing neither. Kael went to the old wardrobe without being asked and came back with an armful of options.
The sweatpants with a drawstring were enormous on me and I pulled on the string as tight as I could finally getting them to settle into place. The shirt was soft and worn and smelled like the cedar lining of the wardrobe mixed with something underneath that was just him.
Then he held up a cardigan, that was old and slightly stretched at the cuffs, a deep forest green that had probably been his at some point in the distant past. He held it out with the particular expression of a man who understood exactly what he was offering and why.
I put it on and it swallowed me completely in the most delicious way possible. The sleeves fell past my hands. The hem hit mid thigh. I pulled it around myself and something in my chest settled in a way that felt embarrassingly significant for a piece of knitwear.
I caught my reflection in the mirror above the dresser.
My hair was curly and damp, and my face was bare. The bite mark set prominent and visible on my neck while I drowned in a cardigan that belonged to a dragon prince.
I looked at myself for a long moment, waiting for the familiar instinct to find something wrong, but it didn't come.
Kael appeared behind me in the reflection, dressed in simple clothes of his own, his hair still damp, the scales a quiet goldin the morning light. He met my eyes in the mirror and said nothing.
He didn't need to.
I nodded once, more to myself and then turned away from the mirror. He took my hand when we reached the door.
The sound of voices carried up from somewhere below, multiple of them, overlapping and warm, punctuated by what I was already beginning to recognize as Ryker's laugh. My stomach did a slow nervous revolution.
"I'm about to have breakfast with your entire family," I said. "In your cardigan. With a bite mark on my neck."
"You are," Kael confirmed.
"That's terrifying."
"They already love you," he said. "Ryker has been rooting for you since the tux fitting."
I looked up at him. "You told them about me at the tux fitting?"
He had the decency to look slightly pained. "They smelled you on me."
I stared at him for a full three seconds and then laughed despite everything, the nerves loosening just enough, and he smiled down at me with that particular smile he saved for moments when I caught him off guard in the best possible way.
We walked through the door together.
The dining room was everything I expected from a house like this. High ceilings, long table, morning light coming through tall windows onto a spread that suggested Celestine Solas did not believe in a small breakfast. Four faces turned toward us as we entered.
Ryker's expression was immediate and completely unsubtle. It was on of pure delight.
Damon raised his coffee cup in a small dignified acknowledgment that managed to communicate both welcome and approval simultaneously.
Caspian stood and quietly pulled out the chair beside him without a word, which was somehow the thing that got me right in the sternum.
And Celestine looked at me from the head of the table with warm green eyes that I recognized from her son's face and said simply, "There she is. Sit down, sweetheart. Coffee's hot. I have a feeling you don’t like it with sugar, just black.”
Kael’s mother’s words got the biggest smile out of me and he just shook his head as we sat down to eat.
Ryker lasted approximately thirty seconds before leaning across the table toward me with barely contained glee. "So. The whole east wing, Amara. The whole east wing lit up gold. I've been waiting twenty six years to see that happen to one of us and it happened to him." He jerked his thumb at Kael. "The baker. Of course it was the baker."
"Ryker," Kael said.
