Charlotte Kersten

I decided the timing wasn’t right in the book but still wanted to write/explore this part of Frauke and Kaourintin’s relationship a bit more!

1.
That first winter of my new life was a harsh one that stretched on and on, so Kaourintin and I learned how to keep our rooms at the castle as warm as possible. The chill did not seem to seep into him the way it did me, but he often  joined me when I settled on the rug close to our snapping fire, wrapped in a thick blanket. I had gotten into the habit of strategically nestling there with Ado on one side and Kaourintin on the other – whenever they would both accommodate me, at least.  

He still liked to read aloud, and I was better at listening, now, for the most part. But there was a night that winter when I felt him speaking far more than I heard what he said as I curled against him. An even breath, the click of his throat as he swallowed, the reverberation of the steady words that slipped past me as I shut my eyes and sank into the bliss of darkness and heat. 

Then he nudged me. “You are not paying attention.”

I cracked an eye open.  “I know.” 

He said nothing else, only shut the book and shifted where he sat, stretching out his legs with a satisfied yawn. The flames cracked and whispered, and something good in me answered from deep within, stirred awake by the nights like this and the days beyond them – so many of them good, and so many more to come. Sometimes it all felt real, and sometimes it did not. Either way, we were together, taking step after step into the unknown. 

The fire limned him with its rich light, burnishing his brown skin, shadowing the angles of his cheek and jaw as he stared into the flames. His dark hair was slightly rumpled, as it usually was, and he picked absently at the third button of his loose undershirt.  I had once been worse-than-mortified to admit to myself how handsome I thought he was; when I had said it aloud to him for the first time, it had been choked and only partially coherent. So much had changed since then, but I felt sure that he would forever be something of a wonder to me in that way along with all of the other ways that he had proven himself to be a wonder. 

 We had not yet returned to our ventures into any kind of closeness beyond kissing. I treasured those moments that had been part thrill and part caution, and as I leaned against him, I felt that heady tremulousness grow again for the first time since we had become truly free. I did not know what might come of it, could not decide whether I should even try to follow its lead at all, until Ado returned to Maelissen. As the familiar weight of my dog’s sleeping body against mine disappeared, I swallowed hard and sat up. 

Kaourintin glanced over, smiling, and it was his expression that made me brave. He looked happy in the way of his that was intent and thoughtful and somehow a little solemn – like he could not quite believe that he was happy but was sure that I had something to do with it. It made my heart ache wonderfully, and before I could decide that it was a mistake, I dropped my blanket and leaned in to kiss him. 

He kissed me back, and my hand settled at the curve of his neck so that I could carefully work my fingers through the curls and small tangles of his hair the way he liked. He cupped my other hand and brought it to his cheek as he broke the kiss with a soft laugh.

“So, you are paying attention now.”

My response was a light, quick press of my lips to the corner of his mouth, then his jaw. I paused after that, waiting to see what he would do next. Kaourintin stayed perfectly still with my breath grazing his skin for one moment – whether thinking or savoring or both, I was not sure – until he leaned forward the slightest bit to let me kiss him again. 

I obliged, and by the time he pulled back once more, I could feel myself trembling with the joy of vulnerability and daring. His arms had wrapped around me, but I could look up and he could look down. 

“I want to – what do you want to do, Kaourintin?” 

He studied me, rapt and hopeful. My words had been hushed, and he responded just as quietly. “I think we could try again.”

Bed, we decided; my fingers felt stiff and clumsy as I unbuttoned my dress, and the cold washed over me in my shift before I settled back into Kaourintin’s warmth, bringing him down to lie next to me and put his arms back around me. It was nothing new – we slept almost like this every night – but it might as well have been the first time I had ever laid like this for how strange it felt to me now. His hand moved slowly against my back before settling at my hip.

“I was thinking,” he said, voice still hushed. “What I want is for you to find out what you like-”

“I just want to know what you are like.” I said the words too quickly, but I refused to be embarrassed by that. When I had conjured up that imperfect memory of him in Maelissen to touch for the first time, I had ultimately decided that I wanted the real him – whatever uncertainty or awkwardness or fear that meant. 

“For now, then, can I tell you if I want you to try what you did before?” 

“Yes.” He had flinched away from my exploratory touch the last time I had tried it; it might be different this time, or it might not. I took a breath that caught in my throat. “Just tell me if I…”

“Me too. It’s what you told me, Frauke. I’m glad for all of it, whatever that ends up being.”

I knew that it was just as true when he said it as it had been when I had said it, and the relief of this certainty made me feel light and dizzy. My heart was pounding by then, my body taut, and I realized that I was clinging to him fiercely. Neither of us could reach much of the other’s body that way, to be sure, but it was only that I was not entirely sure what would happen if I let go. 

“Tell me a memory. Please.” The words tumbled from me, muffled by his neck. He was silent for a moment while he thought, thumb brushing against my back.

“You woke me up when you came here that morning, knocked on the door and told me that you wanted to kiss me. I thought I might still be dreaming at first, but I decided that it was something only my real Frauke would do.”

“Because it was strange, you mean.”

I felt his stomach hitch as he laughed. “Not strange, just…you. Another memory – I barely knew you when you brought me to meet Ado. It was the first time that I had seen you look like you could be happy, and I thought that you deserved to feel that way as much as you could – I thought that if I could…”

I forced myself to loosen my grip on him and draw back so I could see his face. “You did, and you do, and you always will.”

“And I want to try now.”

I nodded, head pressed back into his neck. We still did not move for a while after that beyond steady breathing and the slow motion of his hand on my back and hip. Kaourintin, who had pressed a stolen amulet into my hand, who had waited for my secrets to unspool, who had written down what he could not abide forgetting, who had said together. 

So I made myself stop clinging to him and pull back. His eyes were wide and bright, and I was not going to hide away from everything that reverent expression of his said this time. I kissed him as I had that morning he had recalled, as I had when I had laid safe in this bed for the first time, as I had when I had first awoken from saving him and knew that he was indeed saved. His mouth moved with mine, hand smoothing back my hair and settling against my cheek as I shifted to shelter myself beneath him. 

After that, my own shy form of courage should have guided me well enough, along with all I felt for Kaourintin and all that we had learned together, his abiding goodness. In a better world, I would simply have learned what I liked, just as he hoped I would, and I would have learned more besides. But we were who we were, having lived the lives we had in this world. 

I had only known a feeling like this when it had flowed through me because of another captive apprentice’s magic. The golden glow of that bliss had made me delight in my own abasement, fawning and eager, only for the degradation to be all the worse when the magic seeped from me and left me lying alone, wracked with a nauseous shame that I could only stand feeling for so long before my mind pushed it down into darkness. I didn’t know how to be with someone the way everyone else did, and how could I even fathom risking it? He would know, he always knew everything, and whenever I thought it could not get worse, it somehow did-

The best thing I could do was always what was expected of me, so I kissed him back, shifting my hips. Before I fell asleep, I would be able to think about Ado and what he was doing in the realm of memory right now, and if I could not fall asleep, I could think about him more, and it would be fine. But no… I had just been with Ado, feeling the weight of his head on my leg as we both basked in front of a fire. The thought slipped away as he asked me something –can I? – and I tried to pull my mind together enough to decide why he was asking me a question, what kind of game this was and how I was supposed to respond.

Yes seemed like the safest answer, but I found myself saying no instead. No, no, because I wanted him but it was not my choice to want him, it never had been, and how could you make someone want you that way? And then all that mattered was that I had made things worse for myself by saying something stupid that would make him angry. I pressed my hands to my face in a childish gesture that I should have long ago outgrown, as if doing so could hide me away. The breath and spit against my clenched fingers made me realize that I was gibbering something in a choked voice, and I could no longer feel Goulven’s body pressing down on mine.

So I was afraid, as I had been those many times before and would doubtlessly be many times again. Eventually, however,  the roaring inside me quieted and stilled enough for me to hear Kaourintin’s voice. “-need to Walk? You could see Ado. It’s just us, Frauke. You’re here. It’s Kaourintin.”

I blinked at him until I saw him. He had moved a cautious distance away from me on the bed, but I crossed that distance in a moment, wrapping my arms around him again. “I’m sorry – Kaourintin, you didn’t do anything wrong. I don’t think you’re like Goulven, I promise.”

“I know,” he said, hugging me back. “I did nearly the same thing last time. And you don’t have to apologize to me like I’m him, either.”

He was right, of course, and I felt how true it was as I slowly continued to return to myself. I couldn’t look at his face yet, but I listened to the beat of his heart and let the comforting heat of him sink into me as he lay with me.
“Do you think we’re going to be like this forever?” I only whispered the question after we had been lying there, still and silent, long enough for the fire to dwindle into flickering embers.
“You and me, together? Yes,” he said. “As for the rest…I don’t know. But we’re here.”

“Glad for all of it,” I echoed, and he kissed my brow in agreement. 

I fell asleep as I always did now, tucked against Kaourintin with his arms encircling me; one night spent so secure and content had been enough for me to be sure that that was how I always wanted to sleep now that I could choose. If I had a dream, if I jolted into awareness not knowing where I was, I would always be able to feel him there and quickly reassure myself that I’d never awaken to a reality worse than the dreams again. 

That night, I awoke filled with certainty in almost the same way I had when I had first spent the night here with him, after a festival evening of breathless joy. This time, though, I felt that goodness deep within stir awake alongside me, and with Kaourintin holding me, I thought I understood how I might keep it with me this time. 

He woke to my slight nudge and his whispered name. “What is it?” 

“I just thought…could we stay like this? And try again that way?”

He only took a moment to awaken to the thought. “Yes – Frauke, you’re sure?”

“Not that it will work, but that I want to try.”

“So let’s try.”

He shifted where he lay, pulling me to nestle closer into him, and I closed my eyes on the darkness. “We could keep talking, too. I don’t know if that’s right, but-”

“What’s right is whatever we decide we want.” His hand settled on my hip again. I felt him laugh softly. “But are you sure you’ll pay attention?”
“You are not reading about ancient kingdoms anymore,” I said, and I was already smiling when he pressed a kiss to my cheek, my neck. The kisses were careful and lingering, and when his fingers grazed the curve of my breast, I knew what to say even if my voice wavered as I said it. “I thought I might want you to do this when I saw you teaching that first fighting lesson. You were so intent and serious about it, and the way you moved…” I lost my next words as he touched me; it seemed possible that I had not been wrong to start wondering that day, after all.

Another kiss to the shell of my ear. “I hope you are not disappointed, then.” 

“No,” I whispered. “Because it’s you, so how could I be?”

His other hand reached for the hem of my shift and he paused; I answered the question by slipping out of my clothing. Shivering, dizzy with my boldness and the powerful new wave of sensation it brought, I settled back into the curve of his body and returned his hands to my bare skin. He made a noise, moving against me, and I felt another thrill of what might almost be power: I am doing this. 

“I already know you are lovely. But in the light I’ll know it’s you, and you’ll know it’s me- and I will understand how lovely all of you is.”

“So I will wake you up at dawn next time, just like I did when I asked to kiss you,” I promised, and he hummed his agreement while his slow, delicate touch whispered to the goodness inside of me and his lips moved on my neck. Instinctively, I reached behind me to weave a hand through his hair; it was the first thing I’d learned that he liked. His slight response to that made me take a deep inhale, and when his hands eventually settled back on my breast and between my legs, I found that my mind and heart worked just as steadily as he did.  He might have been the deftest man in the world or the clumsiest, and I still would have been filled with a pure, heady pleasure that was truly mine for the first time, a profound gladness that I was with him. What mattered was that it was him, thoughtful and true as he always had been, that he continued to speak quietly between kisses when I could no longer think of what to say. 

It almost did not matter, in just the same way, that I found the goodness within me capable of swelling and shattering, for perhaps best of all was that I knew throughout that there was no shame awaiting me when it ebbed away, only a different kind of goodness. But how could I say that any part of being with Kaourintin did not matter? It did, all of it. 

He held me tightly at the end, but as soon as I could think to do it, I wriggled to face him so that I could kiss him properly. “You promised you would find what I needed,” I said. “I already told you- you did, you do, and you always will” He nodded, thumb tracing my brow. “What about…” I swallowed, finding myself awkward and halting once more even after what we’d just shared. “I mean, what about you?”

He was silent, thinking. “I don’t- I think this is just right, for now. Knowing that I could be with you like this, feeling you feeling happy. Maybe we can keep trying, and so we will find what I need, too.”

“Yes,” I promised, and kissed him for the last time that night. He fell asleep before I did, his breath once again slowing against my neck, his arms heavy around me. I lay awake and thinking, savoring, for although I had already memorized the feeling of learning to be happy with him in a hundred different precious ways,  I now had one more to remember. 

2.

Kaourintin sat hunched over his pile of letters, his grasp on the top sheaf delicate, his lips moving silently. Every few days he took them out from where they were tucked in his journal and repeated this same process. I was loathe to disrupt the quiet sanctity of it, so I sat in bed with my own notebook propped on my knees. Lieffe was still full of energy.  I let her tumble and pounce as I moved my toes under the quilt until she decided she was defeated and curled up to sleep on my feet instead. 

I was free to use my magic as I chose now, experimenting and exploring, and I’d been true to my last promise to Ioena. It was only as I started working my way through her treatise on Maelissen’s magic that I began to grasp how limited my own knowledge was, shaped by centuries of suppression in our land, Goulven’s limited understanding as he’d taught me, and the honing of only those particular skills that had made him money. After the initial wave of bewilderment, I’d stoutly told myself that I was already unlearning and relearning everything else, so I took step after step here, too, and kept a careful log of each day’s ventures and questions. 

I’d been blinking at the same page for a few minutes when Kaourintin roused himself from the table and started to do what he did each night: spread the ashes, close the chimney, bolt the door, dim all the lamps. He was scrupulous in washing his face and mouth and putting his clothes away, and he never hesitated to poke me if I failed to do the same. He deposited Lieffe in her nest by the bed, which often meant that he did not want to go to sleep right away, but he was so quiet and still after lying down at my side that I thought he might have fallen asleep after all.

His hand brushed my shoulder, and his voice was quiet. “Frauke. Can I ask you something?”

Without thinking I wriggled to face him, and when I could see him no better in the dark than I had facing away, I grasped for his hand. He squeezed mine back. 

“What?”

And he was silent again for so long a stretch that I only knew he remained awake because of his fingers twitching a pattern in mine. 

“There was something Argantael used to do. I don’t know how to describe it, exactly- she could make you sort of remember things while you were still there with her, while we were…”

I felt my stomach lurch and constrict; I breathed into the dark and tried to think while he did the same.

“I’m saying this wrong, I know. I want to be with you but I want it to be you, and I just remembered…I thought it might help.”

When I had first met him, he had shied from any trace of Maelissen’s magic and only endured it with difficulty to save the both of us. I knew I was part of how he had gotten from there to this question, and I tried to remember how grateful I was that it had happened- but what was this?

What he suggested now had never even crossed my mind. Goulven had been entirely impervious to all forms of Walking until the very end, and after he had forced happiness upon me through Hoaurve’s power along with everything else he had forced, I struggled to see how anyone willing could ever want to mix magic and sex. 

It took me much longer to decide what to say, and my voice sounded small and tremulous when I said it. “You really want that?”

He was facing me. Though I could still see nothing in the dark, I could envision his expression perfectly: the downward press of his lips and upward pull of his brows as his eyes searched the air behind me for answers. 

“I don’t know.” He sounded just as cowed by the question as I had been.

“Well, I don’t want to use my magic on you.” It started to feel like I might have lost something when he’d asked this- didn’t he know, shouldn’t he understand? And he wanted more of something Argantael had done, not just the kinds of things that most people liked their lovers to do, but what she had done specifically to hurt him. Unreasonably, I felt my face start to heat and my eyes start to sting. 

“That’s fine, I promise,” he said quickly. “You know you don’t ever have to do something because I ask-”

“I know,” I interrupted. “I just want to understand.” 

“I don’t know if I understand, not really.” He sighed, and I felt the heat of it on my shoulder. “Let’s not talk about it anymore. I shouldn’t have asked.”

“All right.” I still sounded tremulous to my own ears. When I pushed myself closer, he understood the silent request and hugged me to him. It helped, but the warmth that flooded me didn’t fully melt the unease tightening my stomach, the sense that we had just stumbled upon something that wasn’t going to go away quickly. 

Lieffe awoke me just as the sun was rising. Heedless of my bare feet, I led her outside and blinked at the pearly morning sky until I was too cold to stay out any longer. The puppy followed me back in after two attempts to start a chasing game, and I collapsed back beside Kaourintin, savoring the heat trapped in the blankets and his sleeping body beneath them. He slept still, twitching and brow furrowing slightly in response to my coldness, and as he slept I watched him. Sometimes I felt both tiny and immense when I thought about what we had and what our lives were going to be like. The fear that it would all be snatched away no longer struck with the paralyzing force it once had, but it had not yet vanished completely. Hope might sometimes feel dangerous, but I would never let myself turn away from it again, and it would always lead me back to Kaourintin. 

My heart still hurt wonderfully as I set myself to my morning tasks. Maybe you could sleep through a great deal when you grew up in barracks, and maybe you wanted out of bed as soon as possible when you grew up with Goulven; whatever the reason, I could never fall asleep again once it was light out, and I’d once shattered a mug and set both Ado and Lieffe to barking without so much as a murmur from the bed. 

So Kaourintin had a mug of tea and two warm rolls as soon as he sat up, and I let him take a few swallows of each and blink himself into some kind of awareness before I said anything. He was used enough to my bluntness that when I settled down beside him with determination and took a deep breath, he nodded and carefully swept a handful of crumbs onto his plate.

“I want to understand,” I said. “I don’t care how it comes out – when you’re ready, just tell me what you think.”

“I thought about it last night,” he said softly. “Sometimes, when I let you, you’ll do something that feels so good – and then I think, how does she know how to do that? And then it’s all I can think about. I’ve only been with a few people, but you haven’t been with anyone, not really, and so if I do something wrong….”  His brown skin was flushed a deeper shade by now, and just as I’d imagined last night, his brows were pulled together as he frowned and let the thoughts tumble out. “What I’ve heard from women,” he said slowly, “is that sex, as in me-in-you, that isn’t always what feels the best…so – I don’t know. It feels like if it’s something that is better for me and it’s something that hurt you before, it’s wrong to want it.”

I tried to think as he took another swallow of tea and bent to pull Lieffe up into his lap and hug her close; sensing something important happening, she had come over to investigate. Cautiously, I poked at my memories, still a weighted jumble despite the work I had done to unravel and unburden so far. I was a girl who understood nothing but thought she was loved; I was dizzy and eager with the false bliss that magic had infused in me; I was frozen, unable to so much as turn my head away, but maybe that was a good thing because resistance made it all the worse. I had an untold number of strangers’ memories in my head, the great pleasures and terrible pains and shameful fantasies that had made them seek out a Walker of memory and tip their gold into Goulven’s palms. 

“I never got to want to make someone happy when I was really me,” I said finally. “Someone good who I love. That is as much a part of this as what I don’t want. And…and what you want matters, too.”

And I couldn’t help my smile when I saw that my words had drawn out my favorite of his expressions, the one that was rapt and hopeful and almost like he couldn’t believe I was real just as I couldn’t believe I –we- were real. I nudged the puppy out of the way and wrapped my arms around him, feeling his chin settle against my shoulder as he hugged me in turn.

His next words were only slightly muffled. “Maybe it’s easier if I don’t think about it because then there’s the rest of it, too. What Argantael did. So I don’t know if I can, and I don’t want to know if I can’t. But what we’ve been doing so far- Frauke, you know that I love every moment of it?”

“Yes,” I said. “That is perfectly clear.”

I felt his laugh, and his weight shifted slightly as something settled in him. “I don’t know. I’ll think about it, I promise.” 

And I drew back to kiss him in agreement, and that was it for the time being. 

Three days passed without another word on the matter. I’d summoned Ado to make his customary full rounds of Penti for the week – Lesneven to the beach where I’d first summoned him to the Whale for Marig’s scraps to Dahud’s cottage for games with Nol. Teasing and testing had allowed me to extend the amount of time he could spend in our realm bit by bit, so by the time we were all back at the castle, he still had a few minutes left to play with Lieffe. Dahud had given me a small packet of a new tea for sleep and stern instructions that we were not to keep living on Marig’s pies alone, and my assurances had been met with a snort as she’d looked over at Kaourintin’s stack of purchases from the Whale. 

Everything was put away and Ado had just managed to fit Lieffe’s head in his mouth when Kaourintin cleared this throat. “You wouldn’t be worried about pregnancy, Frauke?”

I had thought plenty about that, and Dahud had been patient through several anxious conversations on the matter. “That depends on what you do at the end,” I said, and I was comfortable enough with the thought now that I almost giggled at the face he made. It struck me with a shiver of disbelief that just over a year ago I had been in flight from Goulven, bleeding out to end my pregnancy, staggering up the castle path to beg Kaourintin to save me. Now here I stood, with my dogs and my love, safe and learning to be happy and trying not to laugh. 

I took his arm. “Well, I would take the potion Dahud taught me to make no matter what. I don’t fear it enough for it to ruin anything, not anymore. At least not right now.”

He nodded, solemn and thoughtful, and then he left me to watch Ado until he vanished back to Maelissen for the day. 

Nol had told me many times that I should stop wearing my hair in a simple braid – it was very pretty and very long, but simple braids were boring. I hadn’t relented yet, but I let it dry loose whenever I washed it. That night, I was just starting to rebraid it when Kaourintin asked me not to. “It looks so nice when it’s down, he said quietly. “Not that it doesn’t the rest of the time.”

I dropped my hands to my lap, permitting the warmth of his words settle through me instead of trying to push it away. He shifted from where he sat at my side, hand cupping my cheek before pushing a loose strand behind my ear. I closed my eyes as his hand grazed my neck and quelled a small shudder as he moved closer to press his mouth where his hand had just been, arms closing around me. Just like that I was ensconced, the goodness of it heavy and light at once. It  was easy to forget that we were sitting on the floor, that the back of my shift was wet from my hair, that there was anything in the world to worry about besides what Kaourintin might choose to do next and what I hoped I could do too. 

His mouth was warm on mine, one hand pulling lightly through my hair and the other moving carefully on my breast, and I was breathless when I pulled back to whisper that we should move. I was going to be brave, I decided, so when I sank down next to him and kicked a blanket back, I let my hand settle on his stomach to feel the rise and fall of his breath there. “What we talked about,” I said, words only wobbling a bit.

He drew my head down to meet his. I felt him blink and swallow, exhale slowly. “It’s what I want more than anything right now – I don’t know if that means it will be fine. But even if it isn’t, I know that it is.”

This I understood, so I kissed him with everything I felt. His hands grazed and settled where he knew they felt best – where he could reach.  Carefully, slowly, I traced the line of his hip to curl my hand around him, and I waited to hear him take a hitched breath against my lips. I stayed slow and careful until he did not want me to be, until I felt the trembling in his legs, his slight, choked sounds. 

He had the knack of knowing just want to say, hushed words that were just the right combination of kind and encouraging and teasing, but as I tried to think of what to say to him like that now, my mind turned curiously blank. “This is about you and me,” was all I could come up with, the words halting in a way that his never were. It was true, though, the truest thing I could think of saying just then, and I repeated it against his brow to see how it felt a second time. 

His response was to give me a light tug towards him where he lay, and in a moment I had scrambled to brace myself above him. I blinked down at him, shocked by how thrilling it was to see him overcome like this, chest rising and falling, brow beaded and hair rumpled and cheeks flushed, eyes rapt as he took me in, too. The thrill of it all swelled as I moved against him and saw what that did, as he told me what he wanted, as I guided him into me and let the feeling settle through me and saw what that did.

I’d pressed a draught for bad dreams into his hand early on, one of my first fumbling attempts at friendship with the first thing Dahud had taught me to make as her apprentice. As he’d smiled down at the bottle in his hand, I had thought clearly to myself: this is something I have done for him. The giving was revelatory, and so much had followed.

 This wasn’t the same as that –  I’d known that he was right, that I wouldn’t feel the pleasure that came from the gentle, insistent work of his mouth and hands, but I was still shocked by the goodness of it. So much of it was just what I’d told him: I wanted him to be happy, to be the one to draw all that forth, and I hadn’t imagined just what that would really be like until it happened. My hand curled in his hair, my mouth at his jaw as I shifted and he shifted in response, hand clenching and unclenching on my hip. 

I understood when he told me I should move, voice strangled, and I felt something like triumph filled me – both fierce and sweet – as I dropped back to his side and watched him twist away from me with a gasp. He said nothing for a few moments, and when he rolled back over, I let the silence stretch while he pushed the hair from his face and settled into steadier breathing. My legs felt strange enough that I almost stumbled when I got up to find my little row of glass bottles, each a careful lesson from Dahud. A normal woman might not waste a draught in such circumstances, but I needed to be sure, and the healer had told me firmly that she had plenty of supplies for me to make use of when I needed them, so I wasn’t to fret about that.

The taste of the bitter sludge meant relief from any fear that lingered, and I tried not to swallow it away as I settled back down at Kaourintin’s side. He hugged me to him immediately, which I’d previously decided was one of the best parts of it all, and I focused on loosening every muscle I could feel in my body and counting the slow seconds as he breathed in and out.

“So it was fine,” he said quietly, and I couldn’t help but actually giggle at that.

“I think that is just what everyone wants to hear afterwards, yes.”

He laughed. “Just what I meant. You always understand.”

I’d rapidly become too content to stay awake much longer, barely able to shake my head when his knuckles brushed my ribs – was I sure I didn’t want him to-? Next time, maybe – and it might be fine or it might not, then, for me or for him or for both of us. But that was the way of it all, wasn’t it? Together, we’d decided, and that was how it was going to stay, and so we’d found another good thing that together could mean now with all the rest.