He was tired last night. You were convenient. A warm body in a cold room.
She took another bite of stew. Chewed. Swallowed.
You're wearing your real clothes now. Gray roughspun and a patched apron. Ugly. Fat. Human.
Mab set her spoon down. Picked it up again. She had never had this problem before. But then, she had never had anything to lose before. You couldn't fear abandonment when no one had claimed you in the first place. You couldn't lie awake wondering if someone still wanted you when no one had ever wanted you at all.
This was new territory. Uncharted and treacherous and she had no map for it.
He said mine. He said it into your hair while you were falling asleep. He said it in front of thirty warriors. He said it while he was inside you.
Yes, and men say things. Men say things when they're hard and they say things when they're tired and they say thingswhen a woman is soft and available and willing. That doesn't make the things true.
Mab picked up her bread. Tore a piece off. Put it down without eating it.
The voice in her head sounded like Iris. It always sounded like Iris, even when Iris wasn't there. A lifetime of commentary had worn grooves into her thinking, channels that her thoughts fell into without permission.
You know what you look like. You know what you are. A scullion in a borrowed bed, playing at being wanted.
She made herself eat the bread.
After the meal, she found herself in the lady's chamber again, standing at the window and watching the yard below. Warriors moved back and forth, loading supplies onto pack horses, checking straps and adjusting weight. Tomorrow they would leave. Tomorrow she would walk away from the only home she had ever known, toward a place she had only heard described in a child's excited whisper.
Hot springs. Mountain gardens. Orchards heavy with fruit.
A fairy story. And she was walking into it wearing her own clothes, carrying her own stockings, hoping the monster at the center of it still wanted her when the silk was gone.
Chapter 14
The day had been endless.
Varek rolled his shoulders as he climbed the stairs, feeling the tension knotted between them. Manifests. Disputes over pack weight. A messenger from Targesh requiring a written response. Two warriors who'd gotten into a scuffle over who'd claimed the better warhorse and needed their captain to settle it before blood was drawn.
He'd eaten standing up, twice, and couldn't remember what either meal had been.
But the work was done. The supplies were loaded. The route was planned. Tomorrow at first light they'd ride for Northwatch, and he'd have his woman on a horse in front of him for three days, her back against his chest, her scent in his nose, her soft weight settled between his thighs.
The thought had kept him moving through the afternoon. Every time his attention flagged, he'd let himself picture it: Mabwrapped in his cloak, her hair loose and tangled by the wind, her body warming his through the mountain cold.
He pushed open the door to the lady's chamber.
She was sitting on the edge of the bed. Not lying down, not undressing, not doing any of the things he'd been imagining for the last six hours. Just sitting. Hands folded in her lap. Spine straight. Wearing—
Varek stopped in the doorway.
Gray roughspun. A stained apron. Her hair bound up under a kerchief he'd never seen before.
"You're wearing entirely too many clothes," he said.
Mab's hands clenched in her lap. She didn't look at him.
Varek crossed the room and crouched in front of her, putting himself in her eyeline whether she wanted him there or not. "What is this?"
"My clothes." Her voice came out even, but her pulse was jumping in her throat. "My dress. My apron."
"I can see that." He caught her chin, tilted her face up. "Why are you looking at me like I'm about to throw you out a window?"
"I'm not—"
