Finally, as the afternoon waned, Lucivar walked into the room where Saetan waited. He looked exhausted, and his hands trembled a little as he poured himself a glass of brandy.
“You saw her,” Lucivar said, staring into the glass for a moment before he gulped the brandy and poured another glass.
“I saw her,” Saetan replied.
“Did she need a Healer? I asked, but . . .”
“No, she didn’t need a Healer.”
Lucivar sagged with relief. “Is she . . . upset?”
Saetan hesitated. He thought he’d taken an accurate measure of Marian’s temperament when she’d stayed at the Hall during Winsol, but the woman who had flung snow on him and snapped at him in her kitchen didn’t fit that measure. “She wasn’t reacting as I would have expected.” He frowned. “She’d struck me as a quiet-natured woman, but . . .”
Lucivar shrugged. “She usually is, but she gets feisty when she’s riled.”
Riled. Yes, that was a good way to describe the woman he’d seen that morning.
Lucivar set the glass down so carefully, Saetan suspected it was taking every bit of self-control to keep from throwing the glass at the wall.
“Is she going to leave?” Lucivar asked. “Should I stay away until she can—” He swallowed hard, unable to finish.
That, Saetan realized, was the root of Lucivar’s fear—that the woman he was in love with, the woman he’d been courting so carefully over the last few months, would want nothing from him except the chance to escape. Lucivar wouldn’t believe him right now if he said escape was the last thing on Marian’s mind.
“May I offer you some advice?” Saetan asked. “Not as your father or as the Steward of the court, but as a man who talked to Marian this morning.”
Misery filling his gold eyes, Lucivar said, “What’s your advice?”
Saetan smiled dryly. “Get your ass home in time for dinner.”
He found her in the kitchen, arranging slices of bread and cheese on plates while something that smelled delicious simmered on the stove. How many times had he come home to find her like this, preparing the evening meal for them, her warm smile of welcome a feast to a heart that had been starving for love for so many centuries? Now he wasn’t sure what he should say to her, what he should do.
“Marian.”
She looked up, and the unhappiness in her eyes was a twisting knife in his gut.
“I wasn’t sure you would come back,” she said, turning back to fuss with the bread and cheese.
“I wasn’t sure you wanted me to come back,” he replied honestly.
She started to speak, then shook her head and picked up the plates. “Have something to eat.” The plates clattered on the counter. She hunched her shoulders, as if to ward off a blow. “You didn’t have to run away. I wasn’t expecting anything from you because of this. You didn’t have to run.”
Yes, he did. But he hadn’t run far. Just down to the orchard, where he would be out of sight of the eyrie while he puked his guts out in sick relief that he hadn’t seen any visible wounds on her, hadn’t seen any missing limbs. He’d been terrified to look when he woke up that morning, hadn’t known how keen an edge panic could have until she’d walked into the kitchen on her own.
“It’s difficult to explain,” he said, flinching at the tears in her eyes when she turned to face him.
“How can a woman understand if no one will explain?”
“I don’t remember!”
Now she flinched. Then she whispered, “So I was just a body.”
Lucivar shook his head. “Oh, I remember you, Marian. The taste of you, the smell of you, the sounds you made, the feel of you under my hands. The feel of my cock inside you. I remember you. But I don’t—” He closed his eyes. “I remember bits and pieces, moments that are jumbled together and shrouded in a violent, red haze that needed some kind of release. But . . .”
Hadn’t he run from this all day? This one picture in his mind. He’d worked himself to exhaustion because every time he thought of her, desire burned through him, and he couldn’t ask her to be with him tonight. He couldn’t. Because of that one fragment of memory. But he had to ask. Had to know. She couldn’t stay here with him if he didn’t know how close he’d come to destroying her.
He opened his eyes and looked at her. “I do remember one thing. Me standing by the bed, holding my war blade. And you cowering in one corner of the bed.”
Marian shook her head. Then she paled as his words sank in. “No, Lucivar. No. You weren’t trying to hurt me. You thought something had gotten into the room, into the bed. You were trying to protect me.”