“The Midnight told me I can speak to anyone.”
Her eyes widened.
She hadn’t heard him with her ears; she felt him inside the words—his presence a coolness that trickled down her spine.
“I hear you,”she answered—or thought she did—and the sound slid back through them like light over water.
His mouth curved.
Aloud, he barely breathed, “That’s it.”
She smiled into the dark. On instinct, she let one thought rise as if it were a feather she dared to release.
“Can you hear me, Tory?”
He smiled against her hair.
“Amerei…”
The syllables brushed through her like a hand smoothing silk. She bit her lip, giddy and aching all at once.
His laugh was quiet, rough at the edges.
“You speak to me just as easily as I speak to you.”
“Like we were meant,” she whispered, breath as light as air.
He kissed her brow.
“We were.”
Silence hummed.
She felt him weighing his next words, the same careful gravity he’d use to set a line of men before a charge.
“When you ride for Amethyst,” he said, “I go to ground. I won’t call to you unless it’s command or danger. If you don’t hear me, it means one thing only—purpose, not absence. Do you understand?”
“I understand,” she whispered. “Silence means you’re doing what you must.”
“And coming back to you.”
Her eyes closed as she breathed it in, then repeated softly, as if binding it as her own promise.
“And coming back to me.”
Quiet folded over them. The brazier whispered. Somewhere beyond the canvas, a watchman prayed, and far off, a drum tapped twice—the turning of the hour.
“Sleep, my queen,” he murmured into her hair, voice breaking low.
“At dawn, I’ll be your commander. Tonight…”
His mouth lingered against her temple.
“I’m only your husband.”
Chapter Ninety-Three
Under White Banner
