His thumbs moved in slow circles on her hips. "What about it?"
"What my life is going to look like there."
She felt his breath stir her hair. Felt his hands close, just slightly, before easing again.
"What do you want it to look like?"
"I don't know." She kept her eyes on the far wall where the pale blue hangings caught the thin dawn light. "I've never had to think about it before. What I wanted. There was always just what needed doing. The next task. The next charger. The next pot."
She felt his chest expand against her back. A long breath, held, released.
"Then I'll tell you what I want it to look like," he said. His voice was still rough and unhurried, like he had nowhere to be. As if thirty armed warriors weren't loading horses in a courtyard below them. "You wake when you wake. You eat until you're full. You find work that's yours, if you want to work."
"And if I don't want to work?"
"Then you don't." His fingers found a tangle in her hair where it spread across the pillow and worked at it. "But there's a kitchen at Northwatch, and a grumpy old cook named Kira who could find use for you. If you want."
She turned in his arms, rolling onto her back and then her other side until she was facing his chest. He let her resettle. His arm came back around her, and she pressed her forehead against his sternum, the coarse hair there rough against her skin.
"And if Kira doesn't want me?"
"Kira will give you a fair chance," he said. "What you do with it is yours."
She turned that over. A chance. Not a guarantee. Just a door, held open long enough for her to walk through it.
The doubt was still there. She could feel it underneath, simmering like a pot with the lid pressed down.He'll tire of you. Kira will take one look and see what Iris saw. You'll end up at someone else's trough, washing someone else's chargers, and the only difference will be that you'll know what you lost.
She didn't push it away. She let it sit there, ugly and familiar, and looked at it clearly. It was old. It was Iris's voice and the kitchen yard and the ribbon cut from her hair in the dark. It was every sideways glance she'd ever slid past a mirror, every time she'd hunched her shoulders to take up less space in a doorway.
It was real. It might always be real.
But it wasn't the only thing that was real. There was also this. His hand on her jaw, his thumb moving against the hinge of it, his breath warm on her hair in the gray light. There was the bruise on her hip that she'd pressed in the dark and felt sweetness. There was the way he'd saidthis is what I wantwhile his palm covered her belly, and meant it.
Two things could be true. The doubt and the door.
She could walk through it anyway.
"The dog," she said suddenly, because it was easier than anything else she could think of.
His brow furrowed. "Dog?"
"There was a gate dog who used to be tied at the post by the kitchen yard. She had puppies recently. Five of them. Annie wants to bring them."
"A dog," Varek repeated.
"And five puppies." She bit her lip. "They won't survive the winter without us."
"Then we bring them. But you're explaining to Drogga why there's a nursing bitch in his saddlebag."
The laugh surprised her. It came out rough and unpracticed, more breath than sound, and Varek's arms came around her and held her while it shook through her chest. She pressed her face into his chest and laughed until the sound died.
"Come," he said against her hair, after a moment. "We need to dress. The sun's nearly up and my men are waiting."
Mab pressed her palm flat against his chest. Felt the slow beat of his heart under her hand.
"One more minute," she said.
He settled back against the pillow and pulled her closer.
