Chapter 36: Claiming in the Dark
The cabin smelled of pine resin and old, sun-warmed wood. Dust motes danced in the angled, late-afternoon light spearing through the lace-curtained windows. Eris set down the two heavy bags—one of baby supplies, one of his own things Lilly had packed—just inside the door with a soft thud.
He watched her. She stood in the center of the main room, Rowan on her hip, Ella in the carrier strapped to her chest, turning a slow circle. Her blue eyes were wide, taking in the vaulted ceiling with its exposed beams, the massive stone fireplace cold and waiting, the worn, comfortable furniture. It was different from the Autumn Court. Softer. Quieter. A place of knots and grain, not polished stone and lurking politics.
“It’s perfect,” she breathed, and the tension Eris hadn’t even acknowledged he was carrying in his shoulders began to dissolve.
By dinner time, a simple fire crackled in the hearth, pushing back the evening chill. They ate at the small, scarred oak table. Ella sat in a highchair he’d conjured from some summoned Autumn Court memory, her face smeared with mashed sweet potato. Rowan, in a chair beside her, diligently smashed peas with his fist, occasionally deigning to put one in his mouth.
Eris speared a piece of roasted chicken, his eyes on his daughter. She was babbling, her spoon waving like a conductor’s baton. It was a stream of sound, mostly vowels, until— “Da!”
He stilled. The word was bright, clear, a statement flung into the air. Ella banged her spoon on the tray. “Da!” She looked right at him, her blue eyes demanding. See? I know you.
Lilly chuckled softly from across the table. “It’s her favorite word,” she said, her voice warm. “Now that she’s found it, she’s testing its power. Da, pass the bread. Da, why is the sky? Da.”
Eris finished chewing his bite slowly. “Efficient,” he said, his tone dry. He reached over and wiped a streak of sweet potato from Ella’s chin with his thumb. She grinned, revealing two tiny bottom teeth, and said it again. “Da.”
“She’s got your directness,” Lilly mused, feeding Rowan a piece of soft carrot. “Rowan’s was ‘Mama.’ A gift. Ella’s is a command. A tool.”
Rowan, as if to prove her point, looked up from his carrot and said, softly, “Mama,” before going back to his smashing.
Eris met Lilly’s gaze over the messy tableau. The firelight caught in her hair. Here, in this room, with the scent of woodsmoke and simple food, with their children covered in dinner, the war inside him—the one between the Heir and the man—quieted to a distant hum. He didn’t smile. But his eyes held hers, and he gave a single, slow nod. An acknowledgment. A sharing of this strange, quiet peace.
By eight o’clock, the fire had burned down to embers. Full and tired from the journey and the rich, unfamiliar air, the twins were sprawled on a thick, woven playmat in the glow of a single faelight orb. Ella was on her back, chubby arms flung wide, breathing deep and even. Rowan was curled on his side, facing her. One of his hands, faintly sticky from his bath, was fisted gently in the soft cotton of her sleeping shirt, holding onto her as he slept. It was a habit left from the womb, a echo of the comfort they’d shared for months in the dark.
Lilly watched them from the rocking chair, her heart a soft, aching thing in her chest. Eris stood by the mantel, a silent shadow. After a long moment, he pushed off and knelt. He gathered Ella first, her head lolling onto his shoulder without her waking. Lilly rose and scooped up Rowan, his hand finally releasing his sister’s shirt as he was lifted.
They carried them across the narrow hall to the small, plain nursery. There was a single crib, wide enough for two. They laid them down together, limbs instinctively seeking each other out even in sleep. Lilly pulled the light blanket up to their waists. Eris stood back.
He didn’t speak. He lifted a hand. His power, usually so fierce and bright, emerged as a subtle, deep amber glow. It wasn’t fire. It was intention made solid. He traced runes in the air before the door, the window, the very walls. Symbols of silence, of protection, of warning. One. Two. Six. Twelve. Each one shimmered faintly before sinking into the wood and stone, sealing the room. No sound would escape. No ill intent could enter. When he was done, the air felt stiller, safer. He looked at Lilly, nodded once.
They backed out, pulling the door shut until the latch clicked with a soft, final sound.
In their own room, the silence was different. It was full of the sounds they made themselves. The floorboards creaking underfoot. The rustle of fabric. Lilly moved to the large, simple bed with its heavy quilts and began straightening the sheets, plumping the pillows they’d brought from home.
Eris leaned against the doorframe, watching her. The faelight here was softer. It turned her hair to pale gold and cast long shadows behind her as she moved.
“Ya know,” she said, her voice thoughtful as she smoothed a wrinkle from the quilt, “I’m starting to think Rowan purposely hid Ella when I was pregnant with them.” She tucked a pillowcase corner with a sharp, precise flick. “All those ultrasounds, he was always curled up, camera shy. And when I was sleeping, Ella was likely the one kicking me late at night. Little nocturnal instigator. He just took the blame, the quiet scapegoat from the start.”
She said it casually, but the observation hung in the room between them, a piece of their shared history examined under this new, quiet light. It was about more than baby kicks. It was about knowing them, already, in their secret selves.
Eris was quiet for a long moment, his arms crossed over his chest. The firelight from the main room behind him outlined his form in a faint, flickering halo. He was looking at her, but his gaze was turned inward, processing.
“Maybe,” he said finally, his voice a low rumble in the quiet. “He’s always been the observer. The strategist. Letting her make the first move, take the first hit.” He pushed off the doorframe and took a step into the room. “Smart.”
He took another step. The distance between them shortened. The air, which had been still, seemed to gather a charge, a slow, gathering pressure. Lilly’s hands stilled on the quilt. She looked up at him, her blue eyes wide in the dim light. His green ones held hers, unblinking.
His next words were quieter, meant only for the space between their bodies. “And maybe,” he said, “you were right about something else, too.”
Lilly’s breath caught. She didn’t ask what. She knew. She saw it in the line of his jaw, the intensity of his stare. Her confidence in him. Her packing the bags. Her faith that he would say yes to this, to them, to the open field.
He was close now. Close enough for her to see the flecks of darker green in his irises, close enough to feel the heat radiating from him. She could smell the clean scent of him, the pine from outside, the faint, lingering sweetness of Ella’s bath soap on his shirt.
Her hands, which had been smoothing the blanket, went still. The room was a silent, waiting vessel. The only story left in it was theirs.
The only story left in it was theirs.
She turned. The soft smile still played on her lips, but her eyes were bright with a challenge he knew well. “I’m right about many things,” she said, her voice a gentle tease in the quiet room. “Which one have you decided to admit to now?”
She stepped into his space, rose onto her toes, and placed a light, lingering kiss on his cheek. The contact was simple, domestic. Then she moved past him, the scent of her hair—wildflowers and sleep—washing over him as she went to the bags still sitting by the door. She bent, the thin fabric of her nightgown pulling taut against her curves, and began to unpack, pulling out soft folded sweaters and placing them in the rough-hewn dresser.
He watched her hands, precise and capable. He felt the ghost of her kiss on his skin, a brand of normalcy that was somehow more intimate than anything that had come before. The admission was already there, a truth he had carried since the moment she’d asked about the cabin.
“That you were right to pack the bags,” he said, his voice low. He didn’t move from his spot. “Right to be sure. Right that I needed to be here, away from all of it, more than I understood.”
Lilly paused, a pair of his socks in her hand. She didn’t look at him, but her shoulders softened. “Just needed to hear it, huh?” she murmured, more to the drawer than to him.
“Yes.”
The word was final. It hung between them, stripping another layer away. He pushed off from where he leaned and crossed the room. He stopped behind her, not touching, but close enough that she would feel his presence like a change in the air. He looked over her shoulder at the meticulous piles she was making—his clothes, her clothes, a separate stack for the children.
“You packed the grey sweater,” he observed.
“I told you I did.” She finally glanced back at him, her cheek nearly brushing his chin. “It’s your favorite. Even though you’d never say it.”
He said nothing. Instead, his hand came up. He didn’t touch her. His fingers hovered beside her temple, then gently hooked a strand of her blonde hair that had caught on the corner of her mouth. He tucked it behind her ear, his knuckles barely grazing her skin. The touch was deliberate, unbearably soft. It was an answer.
Her breath hitched. The casual unpacking was forgotten. She turned fully to face him, the dresser at her back. Her blue eyes searched his, finding no guard, no deflection. Just a raw, unwavering truth that mirrored her own from days ago.
“Eris,” she whispered, his name a question and an answer all at once.
His hands came up to frame her face, his thumbs stroking the high curve of her cheekbones. He leaned in, his forehead resting against hers, closing his eyes. For a long moment, they just stood there, breathing the same air in the silent, golden room. The protector of an entire court, brought to his knees not by a enemy’s blade, but by a packed bag and a soft sweater.
“You terrify me,” he breathed against her lips, the confession a hot, shocking truth. “This terrifies me.”
His confession hung in the air between them, raw and uncomfortably honest. Lilly’s breath caught, her own fears mirroring his in that suspended silence. She saw the truth of it in the tight line of his mouth, in the slight tremor she felt where his thumbs still rested against her cheekbones.
Then, she moved. Her hands lifted from his wrists, coming up to frame his face. Her palms were cool against the warmth of his skin, her touch a deliberate anchor. She held his gaze, that intense green now dark with unguarded feeling, and leaned in.
She kissed the bridge of his nose, a soft, lingering press. When she pulled back just enough to speak, her voice was a gentle, unwavering murmur in the quiet room. “It’s simple,” she said, her thumbs stroking the sharp angles of his cheekbones. “You keep us physically safe.” She kissed his nose again, a deliberate, tender punctuation. “I keep you from being too grumpy and broody.”
A faint, almost imperceptible huff of air escaped him—not quite a laugh, but a release of tension. She smiled, her eyes crinkling at the corners. “I like to think I add a little excitement to the whole deal.”
For a moment, he just looked at her, his expression unreadable. The fear was still there, but it was being carefully catalogued, folded away beside this new, disarming truth she offered. His hands slid from her face, down the column of her neck, coming to rest on her shoulders.
“Excitement,” he repeated, the word a dry rasp. “A euphemism for chaos. For upending five centuries of perfectly functional isolation.”
“Functional?” she challenged, her brows lifting. Her fingers traced the shell of his ear, a distracting, gentle caress. “You were a clockwork assassin in a gilded cage. I gave you a home.”
He had no retort. The truth of it was indisputable. He leaned forward until his forehead rested against hers again, closing his eyes. “You did.” The admission was a surrender. His hands moved from her shoulders, down her back, pulling her firmly against him. The thin linen of her nightgown was no barrier against the feel of his body, solid and real and here.
Her arms wound around his neck, her fingers tangling in the hair at his nape. “The scariest things are usually the best ones,” she whispered into the space between their lips. “You taught me that.”
This time, his exhale was a genuine, shaky laugh. “Did I?”
“Mmm.” She nudged his nose with hers. “Indirectly. By being one of them.”
He kissed her then. It wasn’t the slow, exploratory kiss from before. It was a claiming, a sealing of the pact they had just made in the dim light. It was desperation and gratitude and a terrifying kind of hope, all translated into the press of his lips, the slide of his tongue, the firm grip of his hands on her hips.
When he broke away, they were both breathing heavily. He didn’t let her go. He kept her locked against him, his gaze roaming her face as if memorizing the details of this moment. The way her lips were swollen from his kiss, the flush on her cheeks, the absolute trust in her blue eyes.
“The lingerie,” he said suddenly, his voice rough.
Her flush deepened. “What about it?”
“You packed it.” It wasn’t a question. His hands slid lower, over the curve of her backside, gripping possessively. “Confident little thing.”
She smirked, though her heart hammered against her ribs. “I was optimistic.”
He made a low sound in his throat. In one fluid motion, he spun them, pressing her back against the rough-hewn wooden wall beside the dresser. The impact was soft but definitive, pinning her in place. The cool, unvarnished wood kissed her shoulders through the linen.
“Prove it,” he growled, his teeth scraping the sensitive skin of her throat.
His hands slid down her thighs, hiking up the hem of her nightgown. The air was cool on her skin. His fingers found the lace edge of the shorts she wore underneath, the delicate fabric a secret she’d brought for this, for them. A low, approving rumble vibrated against her neck.
“See?” she gasped as his fingers traced the lace, a teasing, maddening pressure. “A little excitement.”
His answer was to hook his fingers in the fragile material and pull. The lace tore with a sharp, satisfying sound. The scraps of silk and satin fell away, forgotten on the plank floor. He pressed the hard, insistent length of himself against her, separated only by the fabric of his trousers and her now-bare skin.
Her head thumped back against the wall, a soft moan escaping her. “Eris.”
He kissed her again, swallowing her gasp. It was a kiss of pure possession, of five centuries of withheld want finally unleashed in this safe, silent place far from courts and crowns. His hands were everywhere, mapping her skin as if for the first time, as if he needed to verify she was real, that this was allowed.
When he finally pulled back, his breathing was ragged. He rested his forehead against the wall beside her head, his eyes closed, his body trembling with the effort of his control. “This,” he bit out, the word strained, “is not a little excitement.”
Lilly reached between them, her hand finding the fastening of his trousers. Her fingers, usually so deft, fumbled. “Good,” she breathed, her own control fraying. “I was overselling.”
His hand covered hers, stilling her movements. He lifted his head, his green eyes blazing in the dim light. “No,” he said, the command softening into something else as he looked at her. “You were exactly right.”
He didn’t let her finish. Instead, he shifted his grip, his hands closing around her thighs. He lifted her effortlessly, pressing her back against the wall, settling her right where he needed her. There was no more teasing, no more slow exploration. There was only this: the perfect, shocking fit of him filling her, the sharp gasp she couldn’t contain, the choked sound that ripped from his throat.
He held there for a moment, buried to the hilt, his body bowed over hers. His eyes were wide, locked on hers, as if stunned by the sheer rightness of it. The wall was solid at her back, his body was solid against her front, and she was suspended between them, utterly claimed.
“Lilly,” he whispered, her name a prayer and a curse.
Then he began to move.
Then he began to move. It was not the measured, controlled rhythm of the courtier, but something ancient and hungry. Each thrust pressed her firmly against the unyielding wood, the grain imprinting itself on her skin. The air filled with the sounds of their breathing, ragged and shared, and the soft, relentless creak of the cabin settling around them.
Lilly’s world narrowed to the points of contact: the wall at her back, his hips driving against hers, his hands gripping her thighs. Pleasure coiled tight, a spring winding deeper with every roll of his body. A gasp tore from her throat, followed by a broken moan she didn’t recognize as her own.
She leaned forward, burying her face in the crook of his neck. She kissed the salt-damp skin there the best she could between gasping breaths, her lips stumbling against his pulse. Her hands scrambled from his shoulders, nails digging into the hard muscle just enough to leave a faint, claiming indent.
“Eris,” she choked out, the word a plea and a promise.
He adjusted his angle, a subtle shift of his hips, and suddenly he was hitting a spot just right. White-hot sensation shattered her. She clung to him, a sharp gasp ripped from her lungs. One hand flew from his shoulder to the back of his head, her fingers tangling in his sweat-damp hair and pulling lightly, an anchor in the dizzying rush.
He growled, the sound vibrating through her entire body. His pace faltered, stumbled, then drove deeper. His own control was fraying, unraveling at the edges. “Again,” he demanded, his voice rough against her ear. “Say it again.”
She couldn’t form words. She could only let out a high, desperate sound as the coil inside her snapped. The release was a flood, washing away every thought, every fear, leaving only the tremors that wracked her frame and the solid, shuddering weight of him holding her through it.
He followed her over the edge, his rhythm breaking into short, sharp jerks. A stifled, guttural sound escaped his clenched teeth, muffled against her shoulder. He held her there, pinned between him and the wall, as the waves receded, leaving them both trembling and breathless.
For a long moment, the only sounds were their ragged breathing and the distant pop of the dying fire in the other room. He slowly lowered her, her legs nearly buckling as her feet found the floor. He kept his arms around her, his forehead dropping to rest against hers. His breaths were hot puffs against her lips.
“Functional isolation,” he murmured, the words tinged with a wrecked, self-deprecating humor. “Deeply overrated.”
A breathless laugh hiccupped out of her. She swayed into him, her hands smoothing over the faint marks her nails had left on his shoulders. “Told you I added excitement.”
He hummed, a low, tired sound of agreement. His hands came up to cradle her face, his thumbs wiping away the moisture from her cheeks she hadn’t realized was there. He studied her, his green eyes dark and unreadable in the shadowed room. “That,” he said quietly, “was an understatement.”
He stepped back, his touch gentling. He righted his clothes with a few efficient motions, then looked at her, standing bare-legged and rumpled against the wall. His gaze swept over her, a slow, thorough inventory that had nothing to do with possession and everything to do with reverence. He bent, picked up the torn scraps of her lingerie from the floor, and tucked them into his pocket.
“A souvenir,” he said, catching her questioning look. His lips quirked in the barest hint of a smile. “Of your optimism.”
She shook her head, pushing off from the wall. Her legs felt like water, but her heart felt like sunlight. “You’re sentimental,” she accused, her voice soft.
“I’m strategic,” he corrected, reaching for her. He pulled her against his side, his arm a warm, heavy weight around her shoulders. “Evidence of a successful campaign.” He guided her toward the bed. “Now, sleep. The instigators wake at an ungodly hour.”
They fell into the tangled sheets, limbs seeking each other instinctively. The old wood of the cabin creaked softly around them, a lullaby of settling beams. Lilly curled into his side, her head on his chest, listening to the steady, slowing beat of his heart.
In the dark, his voice rumbled under her ear. “Lilly?”
“Hmm?”
He was silent for so long she thought he’d fallen asleep. His fingers traced idle patterns on her bare arm. “The scariest things,” he whispered, the words barely audible, “are the only ones worth having.”
She didn’t reply. She just pressed a kiss over his heart, a silent seal on the truth he’d finally given voice. Outside, a breeze whispered through the pines, carrying the scent of night and wild things. Inside, wrapped in the profound quiet and the warmth of him, she knew no castle, no crown, no court had ever felt so much like a kingdom.