Page 117 of Beds and Blades

I would not survive it.

The statement landed without qualification. Something inside me gave way, and the tears came before I had decided how to answer, as though my body had understood him first.

“And Morvanna knows that,” he said. “She knows what you are to me. She knows the bond between us is something she can exploit. Every force she sends toward this fortress gives her another opportunity to observe us. What frightens us. What draws us out. What makes us abandon caution. She is looking for weaknesses, and she has all the patience in the world.”

He crossed the room and sat beside me on the edge of the bed. His warmth reached me through the cold that remained in my clothes.

“You went out there because you needed to know whether you were ready,” he said. “I understand that. You needed to learn what the training had made of you.”

His hand rose to my face.

“You are ready. You were ready. I felt it.”

His exhilaration moved beneath his touch, bright and entirely unmanaged.

“But readiness is not safety,” he said. “And neither is the same as being invulnerable. You are claimed to me. Morvanna wants you, and she has resources we do not fully understand. I need you to treat that as a tactical reality.”

“I do.”

“I am not asking you never to leave these walls. I am asking you not to ride beyond them after dark without warning me, without coordination, and without a plan designed for the fact that Morvanna knows who you are.”

I held his gaze.

Through the bond came everything he had been unable to conceal: fear shaped by love, anger born from fear, and the pride he had not yet allowed himself to speak.

I understood. He had opened himself to me after losing someone once before. Mira had been taken by the dark bond, and the possibility of the same thing happening to me lived inside him as something closer to terror than memory.

As much as I wanted to embrace every dangerous possibility available to the new Meghan, I could admit that the patrol had not needed me when it left Ely. I had gone because I needed to know what the training had made of me. That did not make my decision to save Varia wrong, or my presence meaningless. It only meant that the risk I had taken began as something personal.

“I agree,” I said. “I will not go beyond the walls after dark again without telling you and coordinating with command.”

He searched my face, making certain I meant it.

I did.

The tension in him eased by degrees. It was not something he announced. I felt it move through him, concern retaining its weight but losing its sharpest edge.

He brushed my hair back from my face. His thumb traced my jaw, his eyes holding mine.

“You are extraordinary,” he said.

“I know,” I said with a grin.

His smile was brief and unguarded, the kind that left warmth behind after it disappeared.

Then he kissed me.

His fear continued its slow transformation into something gentler. He had been holding himself together since the moment he felt my danger. Now, he allowed himself to release it.

Skip held me beside the window, his arms wrapped around me from behind and his chin resting near my temple. Together, we watched the snow fall over the white valley.

He did not hold me as he had after the claiming, or during the warm darkness of the pleasure soaked nights we spent together. He held me as a man held someone he had nearly lost. There was nothing possessive or urgent in it. Only certainty. His arms remained around me, quiet and steady, saying what words no longer needed to.

I did not move. I let him hold me for as long as he needed.

Outside, snow continued to fall. The garrison settled back into its nocturnal rhythm. Somewhere below us, Caen worked over the wounded soldier in the infirmary. The ring glowed with its quiet golden warmth in the dark.

Eventually, Skip’s hands found what they always found.