He nudged her with a press of his hips, and she let him lay her upon the bed gently—reverently.

Her reach for him, hauling him atop her, was anything but.

Chaol huffed a laugh against her warm neck, the skin softer than silk, as she scrabbled with his buttons, his buckles. She writhed against him, and as he settled his weight over her, every hard part of him lining up with so many soft parts of her …

He was going to fly out of his skin.

Yrene’s breath was sharp and ragged against his ear, her hands tugging desperately at his shirt, trying to slide to his back beneath.

“I’d think you were sick of touching my back.”

She shut him up with a plundering kiss that made him forget language for a while.

Forget about his name and his title and everything but her.

Yrene.

Yrene.

Yrene.

She moaned when he slid a hand up her thigh, baring her skin beneath the folds of that gown. When he did it to the other leg. When he nipped at her mouth and traced idle circles with his fingers over those beautiful thighs, starting along their outer edge and arcing over—

Yrene did not appreciate being toyed with.

Not as she wrapped a hand around him, and his entire body bowed into the touch, the sensation of it. Not just a hand stroking over him, but Yrene doing it—

He couldn’t think, couldn’t do anything but taste and touch and yield.

And yet—

He found words. Found language again. Long enough to ask, “Have you ever—”

“Yes.” The word was a rough pant. “Once.”

Chaol shoved against the ripple of darkness, the line on that throat. He only kissed it instead. Licked it. Then asked against her skin, his mouth skirting up her jaw, “Do you want to—”

“Keep going.”

But he made himself pause. Made himself rise to look at her face, his hands on her sleek thighs and her hand still gripping him, stroking him. “Yes, then?”

Yrene’s eyes were gold flame. “Yes,” she breathed. She leaned up, kissed him gently. Not lightly, but sweetly. Openly. “Yes.”

A shudder wracked through him at the words, and he gripped her thigh right where it met her hip. Yrene released him to lift her hips, dragging herself over him. Feeling him, with only the thin gossamer panel of her gown between them. Nothing beneath.

Chaol slid it to the side, bunching the material at her waist. He dipped his head, eager to look his fill, then to touch and taste and learn what made Yrene Towers lose control entirely—

“Later,” Yrene begged hoarsely. “Later.”

He couldn’t bring himself to deny her anything. This woman who held everything he was, all he had left, in her beautiful hands.

So Chaol removed his shirt, his pants following with a few, trickier maneuvers. Then he removed that dress of hers, leaving it in scraps on the floor beside the bed.

Until Yrene only wore that locket. Until Chaol surveyed every inch of her and found himself unable to breathe.

“I will cherish it always,” Chaol whispered as he slid into her, slow and deep. Pleasure rippled down his spine. “No matter what may befall the world.” Yrene kissed his neck, his shoulder, his jaw. “No matter the oceans, or mountains, or forests in the way.”

Chaol held Yrene’s stare as he stilled, letting her adjust. Letting himself adjust to the sensation that the entire axis of the world had shifted. Looking into those eyes of hers, swimming with brightness, he wondered if she felt it, too.

But Yrene kissed him again, in answer and silent demand. And as Chaol began to move in her, he realized that here, amongst the dunes and stars … Here, in the heart of a foreign land … Here, with her, he was home.

46

It broke her, and unmade her, and rebirthed her.

Sprawled over Chaol’s chest hours later, listening to the thump of his heartbeat, Yrene still did not have words for what had passed between them. Not the physical joining, not the repeated bouts of it, but simply the sense of him. Of belonging.

She’d never known it could be like that. Her quick, unimpressive, and only brush with sex had been just last autumn, and had left her in no hurry to seek it out again. But this …

He’d made sure she found her pleasure. Repeatedly. Before he ever found his own.

And beyond that, the things he made her feel—

Not just as a result of his body, but who he was …

Yrene pressed an idle kiss to the sculpted muscle of his chest, savoring the fingers he still trained down her spine, over and over.

It was safety, and joy, and comfort, and knowing that no matter what befell them … He would not balk. He would not break. Yrene nuzzled her face against him.

It was dangerous, she knew, to feel such things. She’d known what lay in her eyes when he’d looked at her. The heart she’d offered up without saying as much. But seeing that locket that he’d somehow found and had been so thoughtful about … Her initials were beautifully done, but the mountains and waves … It was stunning work, done by a master jeweler in Antica.

“I didn’t do it on my own,” Yrene murmured against his skin.

“Hmm?”

She ran her fingers over the grooves of Chaol’s stomach before rising onto an elbow to study his face in the dimness. The lanterns had long since burned out, and silence had settled over the camp, replaced by the buzz and hum of beetles in the palm trees. “Getting here. The mountains yes, but the seas … Someone helped me.”

Alertness filled those sated eyes. “Oh?”

Yrene plucked up the locket. Between bouts of lovemaking, when she’d gone to move his cane within easy reach of the bed, she’d slid the small note inside. The fit had been perfect.

“I was stuck in Innish, with no way of leaving. And one night, this stranger appeared at the inn. She was … everything I was not. Everything I’d forgotten. She was waiting for a boat, and during the three nights she was there, I think she wanted the lowlifes to try to rob her—she was spoiling for a fight. But she kept her distance. I was left with cleaning up alone that night …”

Chaol’s hand tensed on her back, but he said nothing.

“And mercenaries who had given me a hard time earlier that evening found me in the alley.”

He went utterly still.

“I think—I know they wanted to …” She shook off the icy grip of horror, even all these years later. “The woman, girl, whatever she was, she interrupted before they could so much as try. She … dealt with them. And when she finished, she taught me how to defend myself.”

His hand began stroking again. “So that’s how you learned.”

She ran a hand over the scar on her neck. “But other mercenaries, friends of the earlier ones, returned. One held a knife to my throat to get her to drop her weapons. She refused to do so. So I used what she’d taught me to disarm and disable the man.”

He blew out an impressed breath that ruffled her hair.

“To her, it was a test. She’d been aware of the second group circling, and told me she wanted me to have some controlled experience. I’d never heard of anything more ridiculous.” The woman had been either brilliant or insane. Likely both. “But she told me … told me it was better to be suffering in the streets of Antica than in Innish. And that if I wanted to come here, I should go. That if I wanted something, I should take it. She told me to fight for my miserable life.”

Yrene brushed the sweat-damp hair from his eyes. “I patched her up and she went on her way. And when I got back to my room … She had left me a bag of gold. And a golden brooch with a ruby the size of a robin’s egg. To pay for my passage here, and any tuition at the Torre.”

He blinked in surprise. Yrene whispered, voice breaking, “I think she was a god. I—I don’t know who would do that. I have a little gold left, but the brooch … I never sold it. I still have it.”

He frowned at the necklace, as if he’d misjudged its size.

Yrene added, “That’s not what I keep in my pocket.” His brows rose. “I left Innish that morning. I took the gold and the brooch and got on a ship here. So I crossed mountains alone, yes—but the Narrow Sea …” Yrene traced the waves on the locket. “I crossed because of her. I teach the women at the Torre because she told me to share the knowledge with any women who would listen. I teach it because it makes me feel like I’m paying her back, in some small way.”