Flying. We were flying through the night, across an open plain on two steeds bred for racing. The wind whipped my riding cloak away from my face as we raced up a hillside. Moonlight peeked from behind thin clouds, casting the passing landscape in a wintery glow.
As regent, Rhazien didn’t need permission to leave the Hive, but I’d loved the game he’d made of our secret escape. Complete with military hand signals and all too convenient false alarms that resulted in him pressing me against corridor walls in the name of protecting me and completing the mission, of course. Now, we rode with abandon, not a chaperone or witness in sight.
At this speed, I was outrunning any worry or doubts. I felt like I was coming home to myself in the wind with no shackles, fences, walls or limits. It was a taste of freedom.
A whistle from my flank caught my attention as we reached the summit of a grassy hill and I pulled the reins of my mount.
I exhaled to the sky, blinking away the moisture that threatened to fall from my eyes.
“You’re no novice!” Rhazien yelled as he cantered to my side. I may have told a small lie back at the stable.
“That was medicine,” I said through a smile.
Rhazien dismounted, then gripped my hips as he lowered me to join him. He chuckled as he held me just above the earth long enough to kiss me beneath the waning moon.
“What else?” he asked, finally setting me down and letting his hands fall to the small of my back.
“Hmm?” I looked up at him, too distracted by his beauty to think straight.
“Gardening feels like home. Riding feels like medicine. What else?” He planted a kiss in the middle of my forehead and I melted beneath him. “Say the word and you’ll have it.”
I was at a loss for an answer. After a life of being trained to do one thing—be a good wife to a successful man— I didn’t know where those expectations ended and my own interests began.
I knew what I should want, but I’d never had space to explore what I liked or didn’t like. Years of practiced obedience had cultivated an internal voice that was now scolding me for considering exploring the ideas.
I frowned as I realized how little I knew about myself. Shame and embarrassment swirled in my belly because even though I’d tested boundaries, arguably more than other ladies of the human court, I’d still deprived myself of so much. I didn’t know who I was, or what I liked.
“I can tell you what I don’t want,” I chirped.
Rhazien’s attention floated from my wild hair to my bare neck to my parted lips. “Seems a good place to start.”
“I don’t want to sew, or darn, or embroider anything.” Somewhere back in Illica, my mother turned over in her grave.
“Done. Next.”
Elation simmered down my spine at the idea of living a life absent the activities I despised.
There was only one other thing I wanted to ask for. I bit my lip as I mustered the bravery to speak the words. “I don’t want to sleep alone.”
Cova and I had shared a room growing up. Our childhood home had enough rooms for us to have our respective spaces, but we preferred to be together. It wasn’t until I became pregnant with Lydia that I slept alone for the first time. Father sent me to our seaside cottage, far away from the prying eyes of society to witness the growing evidence of my poor choices.
With no company other than my lady’s maid—whom father paid triple for her discretion—and the child inside of me, I would often cry myself to sleep. The scene replicated itself again and again as the wife of Hollis Ashford, who was absent far more often than present. That is, until I urged Hollis to hire Beau.
Rhazien had said our life could be different—would be different. The truth was, Iwantedthis, and him. Iwantedhim to weigh the other side of the bed. Iwantedhim to choose me every day and every night. I never wanted to experience the suffocating loneliness again.
“Done.” He squeezed me tighter, as if sealing his promise with his embrace.
I smiled at him through the alluring, hazy hope that this time, this man just might be all he said he would be.
“If there’s anything else, tell me, and I’ll see it done.”
One consuming kiss later, Rhazien turned to his mount, pulled a blanket from the saddle, and laid it flat on the hillside.
“What’s all this?” I crossed my arms against the chill of his absence.
“Just making us comfortable.”
I muffled a squeal of surprise when he produced two small pillows for our hilltop perch. This wasn’t a random excursion. He had planned this.
