“Come with me, Rubi.”
30
Blake’s room was not at all what I’d envisioned it to be.
Dark stone walls were warmed by the flickering glow of an enormous wrought iron fireplace, its flames licking over split logs. Woven mats and thick pelts lay draped across the floor. A heavy rosewood desk sat against one wall, strewn with maps, tactical plans, and a handful of weapons polished to a gleam. A worn leather chair stood beside it.
The single bookshelf was filled with not just military texts but also stories, poetry, books bound in fine leather with gilded spines. His bed was large and covered in dark navy and black quilts, thick furs thrown over the foot of it for warmth, rumpled and unmade. The headboard was metal, but hand-cast, and I briefly wondered if he’d made it.
The scent of him was everywhere. Cedar, woodsmoke, something deep and rich that was uniquely Blake.
“You can bathe first,” he said, grabbing a coin off the side of his desk.
No, not a coin. Another heat glyph, just like the one he’d given me.
I didn’t argue or insist, just stood with my arms wrapped around myself, nearly too tired to consider bathing. But I was covered in blood and muck from the evening’s fighting.
Once the adjoining bathroom’s tub was heated with water—smaller and more common than my bathing room at the palace—Blake left me alone, going to wash up in a different room.
The water was warm, not as startlingly hot as I’d found I preferred, but enough to rest my muscles and release the tension I still carried in my body. It was only after I’d thoroughly cleaned myself and even washed my hair that I realized I didn’t have sleep clothes or anything but the filthy blood-soaked garments I’d been wearing.
So, I took the liberty of searching through the chest of drawers on the far side of the wall. It was mostly filled with black clothing—including several masks, exact replicas of the one Blake had been wearing mere hours ago as the Ravager. I ghosted my finger over all the swaths of fabric until I found the tunics.
I slipped one on before covering my shoulders with a thick fur off the end of the bed, settling there with one foot tucked up underneath my opposite thigh.
The door opened mere moments later, Blake reappearing.
My stomach churned again, like being tossed on an ocean wave, at the sight of him.
He was damp and naked from the waist up, where a towel was loosely wrapped and held with a knot at his side. Water droplets rolled down his chest, my eyes tracing them as they made patterns on the ridges of his abdominal muscles, swirling to the sharp cut of his waist.
He was looking at me, too, his eyes dark in the glowing light.
“Why is it you never have adequate sleep clothes?” he asked.
“You’re one to talk,” I shot back.
His eyes started to smolder then as he gathered a pair of soft fabric pants from one of his drawers and quickly shucked them on beneath his towel before tossing it into a pile of what seemed to be his dirty laundry.
It made me smile more, to see something somessyfrom the king of duty and responsibility. I wondered then if this version of Blake Axefire—reckless and boyish—was truer to who he had been before becoming the king’s Twin Blade.
He seemed younger here, different. The lines of his face not so stark. Something softer in his cheeks.
“I’ll take the floor,” he declared, before nodding behind me. “Mind handing me a pillow?”
Even covered in furs, the floor would be hard on his body, though Iknew, as Ambush Master, a soldier and warrior himself, Blake had slept in far worse conditions than the floor of his own bedroom.
But something in me stopped him.
“It’s fine,” I whispered, like I didn’t dare make my protestations too loud. “We can share the bed.”
His eyes flared, although he said nothing.
We both tucked into the soft mattress, Blake shucking up the furs around me, as if he wanted to tuck me in and make sure I was warm, but didn’t know how.
Exhaustion sawed through me, cutting down the distraction of the warmth of his body next to me, the dangers of him half naked, inches away.
I was asleep before he blew out the light.
