Chapter 20: Unspoken Reply
The chaise was too narrow, the velvet prickling against her bare skin, but she had no desire to move. Eris’s body was a solid wall of heat at her back, his arm a heavy, possessive weight across her middle, his hand splayed over the curve of their child. His breathing had evened into the slow, deep rhythm of waking rest, but she knew he wasn’t asleep. His fingers absently traced circles on her hipbone.
The fire had burned low, leaving the study in a cave of dancing shadows. The map of the Forest House was a vague blur on the desk. The recipe was a hidden pulse of potential death in a drawer. Here, on this couch that smelled of them, there was only this fragile, stolen peace.
His lips brushed the knot of her spine. “We should go to bed,” he murmured, the words vibrating against her skin.
“Mmm,” was all she could manage. Her limbs were liquid, her mind pleasantly blank. The frantic kicks had subsided into a gentle, sleepy turning.
He shifted, slipping out of her with a soft, wet sound that made her blush in the dark. He stood in one fluid motion, a silhouette of lean muscle and pale skin against the ember-glow. He bent, gathering her into his arms again, the dress still a forgotten pool on the floor. He carried her from the study, through the silent, torch-lit corridors of his private wing, and into their bedchamber.
He laid her on the turned-down sheets, the cool linen a shock after the warmth of his skin. He didn’t call for a servant. He went to the washbasin himself, wet a cloth, and returned to the bed. His touch was methodical, almost clinical, as he cleaned the evidence of their joining from her thighs. The act was so startlingly tender, so at odds with the ruthless prince who planned patricide over morning tea, that her throat tightened.
He discarded the cloth and slid into bed beside her, drawing the covers over them both. He pulled her back against his chest, fitting her body to his, his hand resuming its place on her stomach. The child gave a sleepy, half-hearted nudge.
For a long time, they lay in silence. The weight of the unspoken pressed down on her. The revel in three days was a cliff edge they were speeding toward. His father’s face, cruel and cunning, floated behind her eyelids. Her own power, that silent, terrible thread, coiled in her chest like a sleeping serpent. And beneath it all, a deeper, more terrifying truth had taken root, grown tendrils around her ribs, and bloomed in the dark hollow where her fear lived.
She turned in his arms, facing him. In the faint light from the banked hearth, his features were all planes and shadow, his green eyes watchful.
She lifted a hand, her fingers sliding into the thick, soft strands of his auburn hair. She stroked it back from his temple, the gesture slow, repetitive. He watched her, his expression unreadable.
Her heart was a frantic bird against her ribs. She took a breath, the air cool in her lungs.
“I’m going to say something,” she whispered, her voice barely stirring the air between their lips. “And it’s okay if you don’t say it back.”
His eyes narrowed, just a fraction. He remained perfectly still, a statue of Fae grace and lethal calculation.
She held his gaze, her fingers still moving through his hair. The words were there, sitting on her tongue, simple and catastrophic. She had known them for weeks, maybe from the moment he’d first looked at her not as a curiosity or a pawn, but as a problem only he could solve. She’d known them when he taught her to direct her power with cold precision. Known them when his hands trembled on her skin. Known them in the obsidian study, in the training yard, in this bed.
“I love you,” she said.
The words didn’t echo. They fell into the quiet room and were absorbed by the velvet and the shadow. They were not a plea. Not a question. A statement of fact, as solid and irreversible as the life growing inside her.
Eris didn’t move. Didn’t breathe. His eyes held hers, and in their depths, she saw the shock. Not surprise, but a profound, seismic shock, as if she had pulled a thread in the world and the very foundation of his five centuries had shuddered.
His arm around her tightened, imperceptibly. The hand on her stomach flexed, pressing her closer. A muscle ticked in his jaw.
He said nothing.
He didn’t have to. The truth of it was in the desperate way he had kissed her in this very room weeks ago, in the terrifying gentleness on the chaise, in the possessive heat in his eyes every time he looked at her belly. He was a creature of strategy and survival. For him, love was not a word. It was a secret kept in a locked chest beneath the floorboards of his heart, a weapon he would never willingly hand to an enemy. To give it a name was to create a target.
A small, soft smile touched her lips. She had expected silence. She leaned forward and pressed a kiss to the tense line of his jaw. “It’s okay,” she whispered again.
She settled back against the pillows, his silence a familiar blanket. She closed her eyes, the pulse of her confession still humming in her veins. She felt his gaze on her face for a long, long time.
Then, he moved. He shifted down the bed, his head coming to rest not on the pillow, but low on her abdomen, his ear pressed to the curve where their child slept. He lay there, listening, his body curved around hers, a silent sentinel in the dark.
His hand found hers on the coverlet and laced their fingers together. His grip was fierce, anchoring.
Outside, an autumn wind rattled the windowpanes, carrying the scent of dry leaves and distant smoke. The Forest House waited. The King waited.
But here, for now, there was only his head on her stomach, his hand in hers, and the three of them, bound by a truth too dangerous to speak and a love too vast to name.