Page 122 of The Duke and the Disciple

He closed his eyes and kissed the top of her head, lost for what to do about any of it.

Reluctantly, he broke the spell and lifted her from the tub. She stirred in his arms but didn’t wake, not even when he dried her and slid her nightgown over her clean body, or when he laid her in the bed.

“Are you... Are you mad at me?” Her soft voice drifted from the bed. Her eyes struggled to open.

“Mad? Squish...” Rahn sighed, burying his face into his hands. “No. No, I’m not mad. You’ve done nothing wrong.”

“If you’re not mad, you’re... You’re something.”

“Confused,” he said after a soft pause. He sighed. “Worried. They drugged you, and youvomited,and?—”

“They didn’t drug me, and that’s not... It’s not why I vomited.”

He shook his head. “Then why?”

“You don’t think I was coerced, do you?”

“Why did you vomit, Aesylt?”

“Because I wasn’t coerced.”

“If you were, those men would be dead, and I would be in jail.”

She drew the blanket tight to her neck. “I don’t regret it, so if you’re waiting for me to say I am?—”

“I wasn’t?—”

“But I never, ever want to do that again.” Her eyes welled with more tears.

Rahn tried to breathe deep, but it came short. “Why?”

She rolled her head to face away. “I thought I could be the kind of person who could enjoy a casual encounter and still be me. I thought maybe...” She shook her head tightly. “And you... Did you have your own... fun... tonight?”

“No.” Rahn cleared his throat and smoothed some lumps from her blanket to keep his hands busy.

“Why not?”

“I didn’t go there for that.”

A distressed frown knit her eyebrows together. “When I asked you to stay and participate with those men, you said no.”

Rahn jumped to answer but realized he needed to think first. “Iwantedto share it with you, Aesylt, just not... not in that environment. Not with those men.”

Aesylt considered all of that for a while. Their silence turned from careful to comfortable, and he was priming himself for the inevitable retreat to his own bed when she finally had something to say.

“Scholar, I... I think we’ve done enough. In the coitus curricula, I mean. I think we’ve done all we can for it, and it’s...” She rolled her lips inward, sucking in through her nose. “I think I’m done.”

Rahn squeezed her leg through the blanket, fervently nodding through a powerful impulse to cry. “I agree, Squish. We’ve done more than enough. No one would dare say otherwise.”

Chapter23

All Hail the End of Days

Aesylt guessed it was an ambush the minute she saw her brother sitting to the right of Lord Dereham in the Great Hall. His unannounced visit wasn’t what put her nerves on edge though, nor the strange, almost fatherly looks passed between Rustan and his son. It was Imryll’s face, reddened from a good long cry, that had Aesylt pausing midway to her brother and saying, “All right, someone is going to tell me what’s going onright now.”

“It’s good to see you too, cub,” Drazhan said dryly. He was smiling, broader than the general mood seemed to require. “I’m sorry for not sending word first. My movements are closely tracked. Couldn’t take the risk.”

“You know damn good and well that wasn’t my question, wulf.”

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