Chapter 3: A Restless Night and a Whispered Secret
The tent was a pocket of stillness in the murmur of the camp. Tristan’s breathing, deep and regular, had long since settled into the rhythm of sleep. For Adela, it was not a comfort. It was a seismic, grating thunder that vibrated through the woven floor and shook the air in her lungs. A saw cutting through wood. A bullfrog in a pond. It was absurd, maddening, and utterly inescapable.
She had tried everything. She had stuffed bits of linen from her sewing kit into her ears. She had pulled the thin blanket over her head. She had counted backward from one thousand. Now, bleary-eyed and frayed, she watched the slow rise and fall of his shadowed form on the larger pallet. Three days of hard riding, three nights of this. Her kindness felt brittle, her sunny disposition shrouded in a fog of pure exhaustion.
A particularly wet, rasping snore tore through the tent. Something in her snapped.
Moving with a stealth born of desperation, she slid from her cot. The night air was chilly through her linen shift. She crept the few feet to his bedside, studying him in the low glow of the banked fire. In sleep, the harsh lines of his face were softened, the scar on his brow just a pale seam. He looked younger. It was a deceitful picture.
Gently, ever so gently, she placed her hands on his shoulder and his hip. He was solid, a mountain of muscle and bone. She pushed, aiming to roll him onto his side.
The effect was instantaneous.
The sleeping form erupted into violent motion. A hand, iron-strong, clamped around her throat, cutting off her gasp. The world spun violently as she was flung onto her back, his full weight pinning her down into the furs. The air left her lungs in a painful rush. Above her, his face was a mask of feral aggression, his icy eyes wide and utterly vacant, seeing an assassin, not a bride. The pressure on her windpipe was precise, terrifying, a second from crushing.
“Tristan,” she choked out, the sound a mere scrape.
Recognition flooded his gaze, dousing the killer’s fire. It was replaced by a shock so profound it seemed to injure him. He jerked his hand from her throat as if burned. She drew in a ragged, aching breath, tears springing to her eyes from the pain and the shock.
He loomed over her, his own breath now coming in sharp bursts. “What in the seven hells are you doing?” His voice was gravel, raw with adrenaline.
Adela coughed, one hand rising to her tender neck. The fear was receding, leaving behind a pure, unadulterated irritation. “Do you know,” she whispered hoarsely, each word a stitch in her throat, “that you snore?”
He stared. His gaze darted from her furious, tear-bright eyes to the modest collar of her shift, behind which he knew his fingerprints were already darkening. A muscle twitched in his jaw. The wild alertness was fading, leaving a strange, vulnerable exhaustion in its wake. He had been somewhere else, some dark battlefield of memory, and she had dragged him back.
“So you decided to ambush me?” he muttered, but the heat was gone. He sounded almost embarrassed.
“I was trying to roll you over. They say it helps.” She didn’t move from beneath him. The weight was different now, not an attack but an anchor.
“They.”
“Mothers. Healers. People who wish to sleep.”
He was silent for a long moment, still braced above her. The sounds of the camp were distant, the world shrunk to this tent, this breath, this bizarre standoff. The fierceness in his eyes melted into a profound weariness. With a grunt, he rolled off her, but instead of returning to his own space, his arm shot out. He hooked her around the waist and hauled her across the narrow gap between the pallets, dragging her against the solid wall of his chest, her back to his front.
“Stay still,” he ordered, his voice a rumble against her spine. “And sleep.”
She lay rigid, her heart a frantic bird against her ribs. Every part of her was aware of him—the heat of his body through their thin clothes, the heavy curve of his arm around her waist, the slow, deliberate rhythm of his breathing now at her ear. This was not a lover’s embrace. It was a tactical solution. A way to monitor her, to ensure no more midnight assaults. Yet, the hand splayed across her stomach, after a minute, his thumb began a slow, unconscious sweep back and forth.
The snoring did not resume. His breathing evened out, deep and clear.
Adela did not sleep. She stared into the dark, feeling the phantom ache at her throat and the unsettling warmth at her back. The man who could break her neck without a thought was also the man who had kept her sketch of a river. The man who ruled with an iron fist held her now with a confusing, possessive caution. The fear faded, replaced by a deep, weary curiosity. What nightmares did a king have that turned a gentle touch into a death grip?
Slowly, infinitesimally, she let her body relax into the contour of his. The tension in his own frame seemed to ease in response. His thumb stilled, then his hand grew heavier, fully resting on her.
Outside, an owl called. A soldier coughed. The river murmured its endless song.
She lay there, a prisoner in an armistice, until the first grey light of dawn began to seep through the canvas, tracing the outlines of his weapons belt hanging from the tent pole, and the locked chest that held her stolen sketch.