“Theon,” I choked. My fingers tangled in his locks and I felt his lips move over my hair, against my neck, across my face, onto my lips. The heat was incredible as it moved over and swallowed me like a sandstorm, like a tornado.
“What are you doing here?” When he finally pulled away from me, I saw how wide his eyes were, how shocked. “We can’t—not here,” he added, and I knew it was true. He pulled me into one of the shadowy alcoves, behind a drapery of burgundy and gold. “Nell, I’m so sorry for what I did,” he said. “I was just so scared to lose you. After my father… I couldn’t stand to lose someone else.”
“Shh,” I pleaded, and brought his lips to mine, knowing that it was all we needed to bring order back into the universe. The world might as well have imploded right there, both Earth and The Hearthlands, for all that it mattered. A million guards could have surrounded us and I wouldn’t have known it; time stopped. Fire raged through each of my nerve endings as his fingers clutched at the small of my back, bringing the fabric of my servant’s skirt off the ground, bound in his hand. I was going to die. If making love to him didn’t kill me, the desperation to do so would. “Theon,” I breathed, “I’m sorry too. I said so many things I did not mean. But all I wanted was you. All I wanted was to be here with you, no matter what might happen.”
“I know,” he said into my ear. “I know.”
The echo of a door clapping shut further down the hall brought us both to a tense silence. Theon clutched me, shielding my body with his own, and neither of us dared look out into the hall. Even that minute movement, the shifting of the whites of our eyes, might attract the attention of a guard. Instead we stood stiff, all the confidence of our passion drained in an instant, clutching each other not like a queen and a king but like slaves on the verge of a fearful lashing.
The clanking of footsteps came nearer.
Nearer.
Neither of us moved. I held my breath, and Theon’s chest was still, though his heart throbbed beneath my hands like the bass in a techno song.
The clanking reached a crescendo, and I dared to allow my eyes to move to the side, just barely, to witness two shadows milling past. Watchmen on their rounds. They did not approach with any urgency, and in fact their body language spoke of boredom as they milled past us, clanking.
We both sagged into each other and exhaled as they receded further down the hall, away from us. It would likely be several minutes until they passed again.
Theon’s lips grazed my forehead, and then he pulled away enough to peer down at me. I looked up at him, and he said, “Did you…” His thick brows knit over his eyes, and he hesitated for a moment, and then forged ahead. “Did you make some sort of barter with the harpy, Parnassia?”
My mouth fell open in a mixture of emotions: heartbreak, remorse, surprise, despair, and even, in part, a little piece of me searched for a decent lie to tell him. I couldn’t bear to tell him the truth. I hadn’t just made any old deal with Parnassia. And if he had met Parnassia—if he somehow knew that I had made a deal with her—
“Theon,” I said. It was all I could say. I think my eyes said the rest.
He pursed his lips and broke eye contact.
“Look at me,” I whispered.
“I can’t,” he replied, and a schism tore down the center of my heart.
“You don’t understand…” But then tears crusted over my eyes, because the truth was even worse than what he might have assumed. “What did she tell you?”
“She didn’t tell me anything.” But the disappointment, the dark caramel of his eyes, said otherwise. He knew something. “But she implied that you… that you might have… bartered our children with her.”
“Listen to me,” I said, placing my thumb against his lower lip as if that tiny gesture could hold this moment still, could crystallize us before I had the chance to ruin everything. And just when we were finally back together, standing at the precipice of all we’d ever wanted. “It’s not the whole story, Theon. I didn’t talk to Parnassia first. First, I talked to Pythia.”
“Pythia?” Theon hissed. “Why—what—”
“You left me in Beggar’s Hole after you promised that you wouldn’t,” I reminded him in a low, steely voice. “I had to talk to someone who would understand. Do you know what it’s like for me in my world right now? No one believed me. Michelle was still missing. Everyone thought that I was crazy. And being abandoned by my husband so that he could return to war without me didn’t exactly make me sane.”