Page 91 of Beds and Blades

Then his gaze moved to Cato.

“Begin drafting the protocol. Signal points, response routes, horn patterns, beacon configurations. I want something we can test before nightfall.”

Cato gave a short nod.

Then Skip looked around the table again.

“If Morvanna is testing the spaces between our walls, we stop thinking like five separate fortresses and start answering like one line.”

No one argued.

Skip caught my eye across the table.

I felt the warmth first. Then the satisfaction, deep and unmistakable.

He had expected me to be clever. I could feel that. But this was something sharper than expectation. This was the pleasure of watching me step into his domain and become more than even he had known to anticipate.

Then the other thing arrived. Wanting. Raw need.

It moved beneath the satisfaction, controlled but unmistakable, a slow heat he was managing with notable effort and not entirely succeeding in hiding from me.

The High Commanders were still talking. Skip was still listening. I knew he was listening because command was too deeply built into him to abandon.

Part of him was entirely with me.

His expression did not change.

He was very good at keeping his expression exactly where he wanted it.

Through the bond, however, the wanting deepened with pronounced clarity.

***

The meeting broke apart slowly, the way these things did. The other High Commanders had outposts to return to and decisions to carry back with them. Cato was the last to leave, bent over the map with Skip for a final exchange about the Stonegate disposition.

After Cato left, the war room held only Skip, me, and the smell of tallow candles burning low.

Skip did not say anything at first. He stood for a moment with his hand flat against the wood.

“Come with me,” he said.

We walked to his quarters without speaking.

I could feel the wanting in him, no longer managed now that there was no room full of commanders requiring his attention. It moved under everything, steady and warm and growing less patient by the step.

He closed the door behind us. The fire had been maintained in our absence, and the room was warm, gold light moving across the stone.

When the door was closed, he looked at me.

“Do you know what you did in that room?” he asked.

“I proposed a signaling system.”

“You walked into a room of five High Commanders and a Line Marshal who did not want you there. By the time you finished, they were seeing the line through your logic.” He stepped closer. “Cato has not conceded a point in a strategy session in the six years I have known him. He conceded yours. He hated it. He conceded it anyway.”

“He still doesn’t like me.”

“No,” Skip agreed. “But he respects your logic. With Cato, that is an achievement.”