Chapter 4: The Conqueror's Morning Ritual
He didn’t answer her question about the glass. Not with words. He simply took a long swallow, his throat working, and then placed the crystal back on the table with a definitive click. “It’s not a social visit.”
“Then what is it?” she asked, her fingers gripping the carved bedpost. “An inspection? Or do you just enjoy watching me try to sleep?”
“I enjoy knowing where you are.” He finally turned to face her fully, leaning back against the table’s edge, crossing his arms. The movement pulled the linen of his shirt taut across his shoulders. “And you weren’t sleeping. You were thinking. I could hear it from across the room.”
The accuracy of it unnerved her. She lifted her chin. “A luxury you seem to deny yourself.”
A muscle ticked in his jaw. “Thinking is a luxury that gets men killed. Instinct keeps them alive. You should learn the difference.” He pushed off the table and walked to the fireplace, stirring the embers with an iron poker. The new light danced over the harsh planes of his face. “You’ll take the bed. I’ll take the chair.”
Adela blinked. “The chair?”
“The one by the window. It’s adequate.” He said it as if discussing troop placements.
She laughed, a short, brittle sound. “This is absurd.”
“It’s practical.” He didn’t look at her. “You’re of no use to me sleep-deprived and shivering on the floor. The bed serves a purpose. So does the chair.”
“And what is my purpose?” The question left her lips before she could stop it, hushed and terrible in the quiet room.
Nikolai stilled, the poker hovering over the glow. He slowly set it back in its stand. When he looked at her, his eyes were black in the dim light. “I haven’t decided yet.”
The silence that followed was thicker than the castle walls. Adela’s knees felt weak. She climbed back into the bed, pulling the covers up to her chin, turning her back to him. She heard the soft thud of his boots being removed, the creak of the heavy oak chair as he settled into it. The candle on the table guttered, drowning the room in deeper shadow.
She lay there, every nerve screaming. She could feel his presence as a physical pressure, a cold spot in the room. Minutes bled into an hour. Her eyes stayed wide open, fixed on a crack in the plaster wall.
Eventually, the sound of his breathing evened out into a slow, steady rhythm. It wasn’t the sleep of peace; it was the controlled rest of a soldier, alert even in repose.
The bottle still sat on the table beside the single glass.
Slowly, silently, Adela slipped from the bed. The stone floor was icy under her bare feet. She padded to the table, her nightgown whispering around her ankles. She picked up the bottle. It was heavy, three-quarters full. She glanced at the chair. He was a dark shape, head tilted back, eyes closed. Unmoving.
She took the glass. She poured. The liquid splashed, loud in the stillness. She didn’t sip. She drank it down in two burning gulps, the fire spreading through her chest, blurring the sharp edges of her fear. She poured another. Drank it.
Only when a warm, numb haze began to cloud the terrifying clarity of her thoughts did she stop. She placed the glass down, carefully, and crept back to bed. This time, when she closed her eyes, the darkness pulled her under.
Dawn was a grey knife-edge between the heavy drapes. It sliced across Adela’s eyes. Her mouth was a desert, her skull a too-tight drum. A low, persistent throb pulsed behind her temples. The whiskey.
She rolled over with a soft groan, expecting emptiness.
The other side of the bed was undisturbed, the pillows plump. The chair by the window was vacant.
A splash of water, sharp and clear.
Her gaze, fuzzy and pain-filled, drifted toward the bathing alcove. The folding screen was pushed aside. Steam curled in the cool morning air.
Nikolai stepped out of the large copper tub, water cascading off his body in sheets. He was facing her, rubbing a rough linen cloth over his head. He was… entirely unclothed.
Adela’s sleep-fogged mind processed the sight in slow, shocking fragments. The powerful shoulders. The defined muscles of his chest and abdomen, tensed with movement. The dark trail of hair below his navel. And lower, hanging thick and heavy between his thighs, still softened by sleep, its size undeniably formidable.
Her breath lodged in her throat. A scorching heat, completely divorced from her will, flooded her cheeks, her neck, the tips of her ears. She stared, paralyzed.
He lowered the cloth. His dark eyes found hers instantly, as if he’d known she was watching all along. There was no surprise. Only a slow, deliberate understanding that sharpened into something perilously close to amusement.
He didn’t cover himself. He didn’t turn away. He dropped the cloth onto the rim of the tub and began walking toward the bed, water dripping from his skin, leaving dark prints on the grey stone floor.
Adela couldn’t move. She could only watch the fluid, powerful approach of him, every scar, every sinew, a testament to a life of violence. The sheer, unabashed masculinity of it was a weapon, and it was aimed right at her.
He stopped beside the bed, close enough that a drop of water from his hip fell onto the coverlet with a soft, dark blot.
“You’re awake,” he said, his voice a low rasp of gravel. “I trust you find the view to your liking.”
The sound of his voice broke her paralysis. A mortified gasp escaped her. She wrenched herself away, burying her face violently into the pillows, squeezing her eyes shut. Her whole body trembled—with shame, with a ridiculous, humiliating spike of heat that coiled low in her belly. She wanted to disappear.
She heard the quiet rustle of fabric. The sound of him pulling on his trousers. The soft clink of a belt buckle.
“The water is still warm,” he said, his voice now coming from near the fireplace. Casual. As if commenting on the weather. “You should use it. You look like you need it.”
She didn’t answer. She kept her face pressed into the down, inhaling the scent of her own fear and the lingering lavender.
She heard him approach the bed again. Her muscles locked. But he simply leaned over, his shadow falling across her. She felt his fingers, surprisingly light, brush a strand of hair from her damp temple. The touch was electric, contradictory.
“The whiskey was a mistake,” he murmured, his tone almost clinical. “It makes the head weak and the tongue loose. A dangerous combination for a prisoner.”
Then he was gone. She heard the door open and shut.
Only then did she dare to lift her head. The room was empty. The chair was by the window. The bottle and glass were gone from the table. On the floor by the tub, his discarded linen shirt lay in a damp heap.
And on her bedside table, where her silver locket had been, a small, clean, white handkerchief now lay, neatly folded. It was the one she had given him in the throne room, stained with his blood. It had been washed. The pale fabric bore a single, faint, rust-colored shadow, a ghost of the violence they now shared.
He had given it back. Not as a kindness.
As a receipt.