He finally accepted the cup with shaking hands and lifted it to his mouth. He sipped cautiously at first but then desperately tipped the goblet back, gulping down the cream like it was nothing but air.
He stared into the empty cup and licked his lips. “Reminds me of Mama.”
And he never even got to tell her goodbye.
I leaned against his shoulder. The melancholy harpsong played again as soon as my forehead touched the side of his neck.
Suddenly Derrick was not a killer, but instead the scared teenage boy I had met at Ravenwood Manor. Even though I had only seen him as ripe fruit on a low branch back then…I just could not coldly flail him open and control him. He was too vulnerable, it…it felt wrong.
Damn my heart’s desire! Why did my emotions have to drive my magic?
I gritted my teeth and held my breath. Regardless of how I felt, I needed to get through to him. Getting him off the floor would be a good start.
I rose to my feet and held out my hands. Derrick looked up at me with heavy eyes before glancing at the knife on the rug.
“Leave it,” I gently ordered. “You are safe with me.”
His face softened but he did not smile. His hands, tight and dry like he had spent hours scrubbing them raw, wrapped around mine and I pulled him off the floor.
His heartbeat pulsed in his wrist—a sign of life.
Derrick was getting better, but he needed to rest. “We need to get you to bed.”
His thumbs ran over the backs of my hands. “Does that mean you are staying?”
It was a question, not a demand. Even still, the obligation of a Duke’s mistress weighed on my chest.
But I chose this. Ichosethis.
As my answer, I stood on my toes and unclasped his cape from his left shoulder. Then his right.
I had already been with Derrick once. I could do it again if it meant Riyan got to walk the earth again, if Fraleigh could be free, if Brietta got her reformation…
The Hyton Blue cape fluttered down, pooling at his ankles. I held in a breath as I moved to unfasten the collar of his doublet.
He gently grabbed my hands before I could touch him. His shadowed eyes looked into mine. “I know what my new title means. What it means for us.”
That he owned me…and my mother. He could do whatever he wanted to either of us, regardless of whatever role I called myself.
He released my hands and unfastened his collar, not taking his eyes off me. “But I expect nothing of you. I could not evenwantthat after last time when we were interrupted…” He glanced to the side and let out a breath. “I just do not want to sleep alone. I hate admitting this but…I fear what I will see once I close my eyes.”
Riyan had told me something similar about the giants coming back in his nightmares. Derrick may have not slain actual giants, but maybe his giants were different.
Maybe they were even bigger than I could even imagine.
I crawled to the center of the massive bed and sat on my knees. I pulled on the thread at the edge of my sleeve and listened to the rustling of fabric as Derrick undressed.
A weight dropped in the bottom of my stomach. How many times had Mother done the exact same thing? In the exact bed?
But this was different. We were just sleeping—nothing like the Darkest Night.
My mind quieted when Derrick pulled the curtains of the canopy closed, casting us in complete darkness. The mattress shifting with his weight and the sound of his breath were the only evidence that he was even there.
I slipped under the blankets. He wrapped his arm around my waist and linen brushed against linen as my nightclothes rustled against his. He laid his cheek against my head and let out a low, slow breath.
I had left my Nordingaard crystal in my room, not wanting to risk Derrick finding it in case we had gotten…close with one another. Still, even though my reliable trinket was no longer on my skin, my heartbeat slowed down and my mind stopped spinning.
Derrick and I had clung to each other through sheets of parchment for seven years, what made sheets of a bed any different?
