"Are you alright?" I ask. My voice comes out rough.
"Yes." Soft. A little breathless still.
I should say something else. Something that acknowledges what just happened between us. But I don't have the words for it, and even if I did, I don't trust myself to use them right now. Not when I can still feel her pulse echoing against my skin.
"Get some sleep," I say.
She turns onto her side. Faces the door. Doesn't say anything.
I lie there in the dark and listen to her breathing even out. Slow. Steady. She falls asleep faster than I expected. Maybe she's exhausted. Maybe she's learned how to shut herself down on command, the same way I have.
My hand moves without permission. Settles on her hip, over the sheet. Heavy. Warm. I don't pull it away.
I don't sleep.
I lie beside my wife and stare at the ceiling and think about the sound she made when I first pushed inside her. The way her fingers dug into my arms. The way she said yes like she meant it, not because she was trained to, but because something in her wanted this as much as something in me did.
And I think about Gregor Malekonosh's hand on my shoulder and his eyes on Kira's stomach and the word soon falling out of his mouth like he owned us.
My jaw locks.
The council wanted proof. They got it. I did what was required. But lying here with the scent of her on my skin and the heat of her body beside mine, I know something shifted tonight that I wasn't prepared for.
I wasn't supposed to want her.
I wasn't supposed to notice the way she reads a room, reads me, with those quiet eyes that miss nothing. I wasn't supposed to care that she was scared but pushed through it. I wasn't supposed to feel my chest crack open when she caught my hand and told me she wasn't afraid enough to stop.
I grip her hip a fraction tighter. She doesn't stir.
This is a problem.
Because the council didn't give me a wife. They gave me a weapon they intended to use to keep me inline. A soft, sweet, perfectly trained weapon who just looked at me in the dark like I was something more than the cage they put her in.
And the most dangerous part isn't that she got under my skin. It's that I let her.
I finally fall asleep sometime around three in the morning. When I wake, the bed is empty and the sheets on her side are cold. Pale light filters through the curtains. It’s early. Maybe six.
I sit up. Listen.
From somewhere downstairs, I hear the faint sound of movement. Cupboards opening and closing. The quiet clink of dishes. A kettle.
She's in my kitchen.
I pull on a pair of sweatpants and go downstairs barefoot, following the sounds and the smell. Coffee. Something else too. Something warm and rich that I can't place until I round the corner into the kitchen and see her standing at the stove.
She's wearing a simple wool dress that hugs her curves in ways that stir my blood. Her hair is down, falling in waves past her shoulders. She's barefoot too, and she's stirring something in a pan with the kind of easy, practiced motion that tells me she's done this a thousand times.
Eggs. She's making eggs. And there's bread in a basket on the counter, and sliced tomatoes, and a small dish of butter that I didn't even know I had.
She turns when she hears me, and for a second, I see something unguarded on her face. Warmth. A softness that isn't rehearsed. Then she catches herself and the composure slides back into place.
"Good morning," she says. "I hope you don't mind. I wanted to learn your kitchen."
Learn my kitchen. Like it's a subject she's studying. Like making me breakfast the morning after our wedding night is a test she intends to pass.
"You didn't have to do that," I say.
"I know." She turns back to the stove. "Sit down. It's almost ready."
