41

THEODOR’S HOUSE WAS QUIET, THE CANDLES OUT, THE ONLY FIRE still blazing the one in his bedchamber, so he took me there and let me sit, shivering in front of the flames. “I—I’ll wake the maid and have her stoke a fire in the other bedroom,” Theodor said. I took his hand before he could open the door.

“Please—stay.”

He sank beside me, sitting on the floor next to my chair. He rested his head on my knee, and I found my fingers stroking his honey-brown hair. “This will all be over soon,” I whispered. It was true—the Midwinter Ball was two nights away, and whatever plan Pyord had would begin. The waiting was worse, perhaps, than anything he had planned.

No, that wasn’t true. Nothing would be worse than civil war in the streets.

I pulled my hand back and closed my fist, letting my nails dig into my palms. I should say something, tell Theodor. But what could I say that didn’t incriminate myself? What could I say that wouldn’t send my brother to the gallows? I couldn’t do that, even after what he’d done to me. I relaxed my hand.

Theodor took it in his. “I spoke to the king today,” he said quietly. “I didn’t want to say anything earlier. I—I told him I thought I had a better plan for my marriage than an alliance with another nation.”

I looked down into his upturned face, the firelight playing games in the shadows it cast. “What plan is that?”

“An alliance with our own people.”

I slid off the chair and knelt next to Theodor. “What do you mean?” I asked.

“I suggested that marrying a person without a title might assure our people that we truly do have the best interests of the entire country in mind. That we are not so insular. It’s only one idea, of course—a wedding can’t resolve a revolution. But he said he would consider it. It was part of a larger conversation—how to stop this insurrection before it escalates any further. That takes precedence, of course, over anything else.”

I turned and looked into the hearth, at the coals radiating heat and the flames licking the logs. I knew from my charm casting that a little light could go a long way. It could even, perhaps, begin to mend the relationship between the nobility and the common people. “It’s a lot to consider,” I said. “For the king and for me.” All of the fears I had held, for years, stitched tight to the idea of marriage itself, weren’t resolved by marrying a noble instead of a commoner. Yet I was weary of being guided by fear—fear for my brother’s life, fear for the coming revolt, fear for my own safety. Theodor was the only part of the patchwork of my life that seemed guided by hope instead of fear, light instead of dark.

Theodor gripped my hand. “I—I’m sorry. I should never have assumed.”

“You had to assume a little,” I said with a smile.

“I won’t assume any longer,” he said quietly, gathering me to him, wrapping my body in his arms. “I want you to tell me what you want.”

I sank into him and traced his chin. Stubble had begun to soften the line of his jaw. His fingers—deft, deliberate fingers—waited expectantly at my waist. The hazel of his eyes brightened to green in the firelight, and I knew what I wanted. Desire bloomed thick and heady within me, and I took his face between my hands and kissed him.

“I want you,” I whispered in his ear, kissing the soft space just behind it, delighting in the gasp it drew from Theodor. “I want you always.”

He stood, pulling me up with him. “And I, the same.” Carefully, methodically, he removed each of the pins that closed the front of my gown, lacing each sharp point back through the fabric, and then pulled the gown from my shoulders. I reached behind me to untie my petticoat, but he stayed my hand.

“I want to do it,” he said, untying each skirt and gathering them in a bundle of silk and cotton. Then he found my staylace and slowly pulled it through each eyelet, his fingers tracing my back in the gap between the boned edges of my stays. The corset fell to the ground, still shaped like me. My shift drifted, translucent and unshaped, away from the curve of my body.

“I wanted to see all of you,” he said. “Even though your clothes are so very much a part of you, I wanted you without them. With nothing between us, nothing brought in. Just two people,” he said, dropping his ceremonial sword on the chair and shucking the coat with his family’s device pinned to it.

“Everyone wears a shift and a shirt,” I said, touched by the metaphor inherent in our clothes. “Noble and common alike.”

“In that, we are all the same.”

“Your linen is finer than mine,” I whispered, taking his shirt ruffle between my fingers.

“Then let’s take it off,” he suggested, and pulled me into his bed.