Chapter 2

Beyond the darkened points of the village, the horizon glowed a sickly red and purple.

Yelena leaned her cheek against her hand as she gazed out of her window. The fires that turned the sky that terrifying hue were far away, and yet also too close. She knew that it did not bode well that she could see the fires of war as it meant that it grew closer.

In contrast to that ill omen, it was a mild night, holding the intoxicating scent of summer but not causing the skin to sweat beneath its heat.

The summer scent was designed, she thought, to raise the heartbeats of primitive creatures and drive them to seek a mate. There was something wild and wicked beneath the hewn grass and flowers.

How could air smell sinful? She did not know, but it made her want to do the most wicked things, and brought to mind stolen moments in the past, and eyes that held the shimmer of silver in their depths.

She sighed as she sank onto her back.

The nursery was a chamber designed for many children, and yet hers had never held more than herself, her parents having never been blessed with more than one living child. The bassinets had long stood empty, the toys gathered dust, and the rocking chair had been pushed into a corner.

Yelena had outgrown her nurse-maids years before, and only her maids attended her in the echoing chamber, but at this time of the night, she was utterly alone.

Her hand stroked a sensual path from collar bone to the full cup of breast, to the hollow of hip bone and beyond. She had learnt this sinful path long before, the passage mapped by the kisses of her lover, who had not returned since, his absence like a ghost in the room.

Her mind pictured Sylvin as her fingers explored where his memory brought most pleasure. She lifted her hips, writhing beneath the silvery moonlight as she imagined him where her own hands touched, her heart racing and filling her head with sound, the pulse of which promised glory.

The cry of voices interrupted, and she rolled onto her knees, crawling across the mattress to the window, and easing open the shutter in order to peer over the stone lip of the window.

In the courtyard a party of knights dismounted their armoured steeds.

She saw the visor of one lift, as if knowing that she watched from above. Her fingertips gripped the sill and she bellied across the bed frame, her eyes barely looking over the ledge.

The knight's pennant was crumpled without a wind to lift it, but she could see the glimmer of silver threads, a snout, the tips of wings, and the whip of tail.

The man in the stocks cowered as if sensing that the knights held more than the average danger, and there was a flurry of activity as the horses were led away by stable hands, and her father’s men-at-arms surrounded the knights. The rise and fall of their discussion could be heard, but not the content.

The knight continued to look towards where she watched.

Yelena's breath sighed out loudly, and she sank back against the stonework, breathing heavily, each breath feeling as if she dragged it through sodden wool before peeking back, irresistibly drawn back to look until they moved inside.

She sat, her back against the wall, thinking over what she had seen, and wondering what it meant.

Could it be... Could it be him?

She dressed hurriedly in the moon-silver of the room, determine to find out for herself, pulling over her shift an over-gown that buttoned tightly down her breasts and shoving her feet into matching embroidered slippers.

The nursery door eased open, spilling golden light across the floor.

“My Lady,” Eustice murmured. She smothered a yawn beneath her hand, her eyes heavy with sleep. “The Lord asks that you attend him in his study.”

"Of course," Yelena did not hesitate and made her way swiftly down the winding staircase with the webbing of cracks in its walls.

The light that spilled through the ajar door to her father’s study was bright from the beeswax candles that he preferred to use when he worked at the house household accounts at night.

She pushed the door wider in order to slip into the chamber. There were only two men present – the keep’s priest, and… Her eyes immediately went to Sylvin's, the meeting of their gazes sending a shock through her that was based in her bones, in a primitive core far beyond any intelligence.

He was beautiful, a beauty that transcended description. She could outline the way that his muscles stood against his skin, the utter perfection of bones and musculature, as if the epitome of artistry had sculpted the utter perfection of man and laid it before her for her admiration. But the lay of bone, of muscle, the silk of skin, of hair, the crystalline flicker of eye, the delectable curve of lip that invited her to sink her teeth into its plush fullness… that was all the surface of the creature that lay beneath.

She would do his otherness disservice if she did not recognise the raw power, the animalistic nature of him, the strength that coiled muscle, the awareness that glimmered in his silvered eyes. He was everything beautiful, and more so.

He had come from battle, she thought. She could smell the sharp metal of blood on him, along with sweat and smoke, see the tide of filth on his skin and armour. He did not appear to be injured, and appeared to be well, and that was all that mattered to her.

“Yelena,” her father murmured, drawing her attention. “Sylvin,” he looked at the silver haired man. “Lord Sylvin has asked for your hand in marriage.”

“Did he?” Yelena whispered, her heart leaping. Lord Sylvin. The rumours were true, then.

“It is a good offer. The Lord has risen high with the Fae Courts, and… your heritage… it is dangerous in these times,” her father referred to her human mother who had passed many years before. “The Lord’s name and favour with the Fae Kings will offer you protection,” he waited, looking between his daughter and the silver-haired Lord.

“Yelena... say something," he prompted, rising, and making his way around the table, the wooden leg that replaced his own clumping heavily on the floor. “The Lord Sylvin needs to return to the army before daybreak.”

Yelena drew in a sharp breath as she realised that Sylvin had ridden in from the war that burnt the horizon red and purple in order to marry her and would ride out again as quickly as he had come.

It was how things had always been, she thought sorrowfully, her silver-haired lover slipping into and out of her life like water through her fingers.

"Yes, I will marry him," she said. The expression in Sylvin's eyes shifted, the slightest smile lifting his cheeks. "But you knew that," she mouthed the words to him, and saw the smile widen.

"Good. Good," her father's sigh of relief was heavy. He gestured the priest forward. "Let's get the formalities underway, then."

The priest began to intone the ritual, whilst Yelena and Silvyn held gazes, what passed between them far beyond the religious intonations of the grim-faced man called upon to legitimize their marriage.

“I declare you husband and wife, in the eyes of the law,” the priest declared.

In the guest chamber, a page stripped Sylvin’s armour from him, and the maids poured a bowl of wash-water, the closest to a pre-marital bath as they would be afforded, with the fires of battle aglow on the horizon, and the future of the keep relying on the consummation of their marriage.

He stripped off his shirt as he bathed, and she stood by the bed in her shift, watching with the rise of desire burning bright within her. Had there ever been a man, she wondered, as beautiful as this one? One so divinely muscled? So masculine?

“Get out,” he said to the pages and the maids that lingered in order to stare at him, as caught by his beauty as she was. They responded to the irritation in his tone, fleeing before his displeasure.

He stepped out of his boots and shoved his trousers down his hips, his c-ck standing proud.

She bit her bottom lip before releasing it, as she met his silvered gaze.

He crossed the room to the bed by which she stood and lifted the shift she wore up and from her.

"Beautiful," he breathed the word as she was revealed to him.

Her fingers found a puckered wound on his chest which had not been there when last she had seen him. She wondered who had healed it for him.

She moved back to lie upon the bed and reached out to him. "Sylvin." It had been so long since they had been together that she felt clumsy and shy.

“Hmm,” he lowered his mouth to hers, tasting her lips, in no hurry despite the night slowly slipping by them, his tongue stroking over their surface, before deepening his kiss until she arched to him, her hand closing on his shoulders, whilst her hips sought…

She sobbed out a breath as the heated silk of his skin came against hers.

“Yes,” he acknowledged the wildness that raced through her. “You are mine.”

“I have missed you,” she whispered, her hands following the lines across his back, evidence of a whipping he had endured years before.

His c-ck throbbed between them, and he leaned back, holding his weight onto his arms, so that the strength of the muscles stood stark against his skin. His eyes met hers, waiting patiently.

“Yes,” she breathed the word. “Please, husband.”

He inhaled, his nostrils flaring, the only sign of what her words had meant to him, as he adjusted against her, and sank into her with the thrust of hips, and the grip of one hand on her arse, lifting her into the stroke of c-ck and body.

His groan was brutal in its broken desire. Hers stole her breath, a vocal-less inhalation of pleasure as she adjusted to him, her hands tightening against his back, holding his body, his skin to her, as she worked her hips to reward the thrust of his c-k, until they were both breathless, their moans grated through teeth clenched for control that had truly been lost far earlier than that moment, and their bodies crested over the peak of pleasure, gripping, clenching, and seizing the pleasure that flowed over them.

In the stillness after, her limbs heavy with the limpness of satiation, she sifted the strands of his hair between her fingers. “I love you,” she barely put breath behind the sounds, fragile, delicate, vulnerable in their admission. “I love you. I have always loved you. You are mine.”

They slept, entangled, and she did not wait until the sunlight was bright in the room. She sat up. The bed was bare, and the room empty. He had not woken her to say goodbye, and the ache in her chest was a raw pain as she laid back down, pressing her face into the pillow, hoping to catch a lingering trace of his scent.

“Live,” she whispered, her fingers clenched in the pillowcase. “Live and come back to me.”