Chapter 8: The Storm's Embrace
The rain started just after midnight, a soft, persistent tapping that grew into a relentless drumming on the slate roof high above. Kate lay awake, watching the shadows of water cast by a single guttering candle. Then the sky split open.
A flash of white-blue light filled her narrow window, bleaching the room for a single, terrifying second. The thunder followed—not a rumble, but an immediate, colossal CRACK that shook the very stones of the tower. She jerked upright, her heart a frantic bird against her ribs.
Another flash. Another world-ending boom. The storm wasn’t approaching; it was upon them, a furious entity breaking itself against the cliffs. The wind screamed through every fissure, a high, keening wail that harmonized with the thunder. Her room, already damp, felt suddenly alive, a small boat in a maelstrom. The cold seeped up from the floor, deep and marrow-chilling.
She clutched the wool blanket around her shoulders. It was no use. The fear was childish, she told herself. Irrational. But logic drowned in the cacophony. Each brilliant flash promised the instant, shattering crack. She flinched every time, muscles tight.
This was absurd. She was a princess of England, not a scared girl. But here, in this stone fist at the edge of the world, she was just a person, terribly small.
The next peal of thunder was so vast it seemed to suck the air from the room. A decision, born of pure instinct, clicked into place. She slid from the bed, her feet icy on the floor. Wrapping the blanket around her like a cocoon, she fumbled for the door.
The corridor was a black throat, drafts whistling through it. She knew his room was in the main keep, one floor down and through the timbered gallery. She moved quickly, the blanket trailing behind her. She told herself it was the draft. Everyone knew these old towers were drafty. It was a practical concern.
Lightning flashed again, illuminating the gallery’s arched windows, revealing the furious sea below for a grotesque instant. She hurried on.
His door was heavy oak, banded with iron. She lifted a fist, hesitated as another thunderclap shook the air, then knocked. The sound was pitifully small against the storm.
A long moment passed. She was about to turn back, humiliation warming her cheeks, when the door opened.
James stood there, shirtless, wearing only loose linen trousers. His hair was mussed from sleep, his frame a solid silhouette against the firelight in his room. He held a dagger loosely at his side, his eyes sharp and alert until they landed on her. The alertness shifted to confusion.
“Kate?”
“My room,” she said, her voice sounding thin and unconvincing even to her. “It’s… there’s a terrible draft. The wind is coming straight through the stones. I’m freezing.” She tightened the blanket around her shoulders, lifting her chin.
He just looked at her. His gaze traveled from her face, pale in the sporadic flashes, down to her bare feet on the cold floor, and back up. Another bolt of lightning lit the gallery. She couldn’t help it—her shoulders hunched, her eyes squeezing shut for a fraction of a second against the inevitable blast.
The thunder came. She flinched.
When she opened her eyes, his expression had changed. The confusion was gone, replaced by a quiet, unnerving comprehension. He saw it. He saw right through the pathetic lie about the draft.
For a terrible second, she thought he might call her on it. Might give her that cool, political smile and shut the door.
He didn’t. He stepped back, opening the door wider. “Come in, then. Before you catch your death from this fictional gale.”
His room was larger, dominated by a wide, canopied bed that was indeed unmade, the sheets tangled. A fire burned steadily in the hearth, casting a proper warmth. Maps were pinned to one wall, littered with notes. A worn book lay spine-up on a chest. It smelled of him—woodsmoke, leather, and something faintly clean like pine.
He pushed the door shut, muffling the storm to a pervasive growl. He placed the dagger on the chest, then turned to face her, crossing his arms. He didn’t offer her a seat.
“So,” he said. “The mighty fortress of Dunslair is undone by a draft.”
“It’s a very aggressive draft,” she insisted, clinging to the fiction. She wandered closer to the fire, holding her hands out to the flames.
“Right.” He watched her for a beat. “You know, my father’s orders were quite specific. Separate rooms. A cooling period.”
“I’m not here to warm your bed,” she snapped, spinning to face him. “I’m here to escape the hypothermia your ancestral home is inflicting on me.”
“Of course.” A faint, almost imperceptible smile touched his lips. It wasn’t mocking. It was something else. Curious. “Well, the fire’s here. So’s the floor.” He gestured to the thick rug by the hearth. “Unless the draft victim requires the bed.”
She glared at him. He was being impossible on purpose. “The floor is fine.”
“Suit yourself.”
He walked to the bed, picked up a pillow and a folded plaid from the foot of it. He tossed them to the rug by her feet. Then he climbed back into the bed, pulling the covers up and turning on his side, facing away from her towards the fire.
The dismissal was stunning. She stood there, clutching her blanket, seething. The thunder boomed again, a low, rolling threat this time. She flinched, but he didn’t turn.
Gritting her teeth, she arranged the pillow and the heavy plaid on the rug. It was coarse wool, scratchy, but thick. She lay down, her back to the fire and to him, pulling her own blanket and his plaid over her. The floor was hard, but the rug provided some cushion. The heat from the fire began to seep into her bones. The room was profoundly quiet, save for the wind and the rain.
And the waiting for the next strike of lightning.
It came. A bright flicker against her closed eyelids.
One… two… she counted in her head, the old childhood habit.
The thunder crashed, shaking the windowpanes. Her body tensed, a full-bodied recoil she couldn’t suppress. She bit her lip, hard.
A rustle of linens came from the bed. A sigh.
“For God’s sake, Kate,” his voice came, gruff with sleep and frustration. “Get up here.”
She froze. “What?”
“You heard me. You’re jumping like a startled hare on the floor. It’s distracting. The bed is large enough for a battalion and their horses. Get in.”
Indignation warred with sheer, desperate relief. The relief won. She stood, gathered the plaid and her blanket, and walked to the other side of the bed. He hadn’t moved, still facing away. She slid in, careful to keep a wide span of mattress between them. The sheets were rumpled, warm from his body heat. They smelled like him, too. It was disconcerting.
She lay stiffly on her back, staring at the dark canopy above. The storm raged on, but enclosed in the sturdy hangings, the sounds were more muted. The next flash was followed by thunder, but further away now. She didn’t flinch.
“It’s just noise, you know,” he said into the darkness, his voice low. “The lightning is the danger. The thunder is just the sound it makes. It can’t hurt you.”
“I know that,” she whispered.
“Do you?”
She didn’t answer. They lay in silence as the storm slowly began to move out to sea, the artillery barrage becoming intermittent.
“When I was a boy,” he said, so quietly she almost didn’t hear him, “a thunderclap woke me. I ran to my father’s chambers. He sent me back to the nursery. Told me a king’s son doesn’t fear the weather.” A short, humorless puff of air. “I slept under the bed for a week.”
The confession, offered to the dark, hung between them. It was a vulnerability, a chip in his own armor, given in exchange for having witnessed hers. A peace offering of shared weakness.
Kate turned her head on the pillow. She could just make out the line of his shoulder in the dying firelight. “Did it help? The bed?”
“It was quieter. Felt like a cave.” He paused. “This is quieter than the floor.”
“Yes.”
Another silence, easier this time.
“James?”
“Hmm?”
“Thank you. For not… saying anything.”
He finally rolled onto his back, hands behind his head. He stared up at the canopy. “Everyone’s afraid of something, Princess. Even warriors. Even kings.” He glanced over at her. “Even sharp-tongued English roses.”
She found herself smiling in the dark. “Even brooding Scottish thistles.”
A real laugh, short and surprised, escaped him. The sound was unfamiliar, warmer than the fire.
The rain settled into a steady, soothing patter. The thunder was just a distant grumble now, like a stomach after a meal. The tension seeped from her limbs, replaced by a heavy, irresistible drowsiness. The warmth of the bed, the retreat of the storm, the unexpected, fragile truce—it all pulled her down.
Her last conscious thought, as she drifted, was that his father’s cooling period had just gone completely, irrevocably off course.