Page 36 of Sunder

And again.

Until it registered, he was modelling it for her. So she would breathe and allow the panic to recede, the tears to stop their welling.

“Doing that well, are you?” he asked when she’d calmed, just a little.

She laughed. Not long, not hard, but it was a better outburst than the sobs she had been close to just a moment before. “I was going to go home,” she confessed. “Or... I was trying to convince myself to go. I didn’t realise how...” she gestured at her shoulder, at her chest. Whatever bits of her he’d seen. The lump settled back into her throat, and she wanted to bring her wings forward to tuck about herself—to hide away as best she could.

The blankets would have done just as well, but that would be childish.

“How I appeared,” she finished quietly. He wasn’t touching her, but that was almost worse. He was just standing, patient and seeming so unaffected. As if he saw a woman panic every day.

As if it was common for a new mate to steal away from home without word of where she was going.

He gestured toward himself. To his mussed hair and rumpled clothing. “You look as well as I do,” he assured her. A lie if everthere was one. “I take it from your frequent protestations, you have not permitted me to take the role of your healer.” Nothing in his tone suggested he was angry at her denials, and she tamped down the urge to offer him a sheepish smile in order to smooth away the offence that was not there.

She shook her head instead, slowly. Gauging his reaction.

He smiled at her reassuringly, as if her answer was expected. “No examination, then.”

She wanted to wilt even at the prospect.

“All that remains is for you to decide if you should like a tray brought with your breakfast, or if you’d care to brave the lower level.” He added an ominous, teasing lilt to his tone, suggesting he thought the lumbering Brum to be a mischievous taunt rather than a serious threat.

She did not share his cavalier attitude, but she wanted to offer him something. Wanted to... try.

“I will eat at your table,” she managed, her heart not quite in it. That should be something special, should it not? A first meal shared. A bed made together, sharing shy smiles as they glanced at one another, both thinking fondly of what had been done in it the night before.

She glanced down at the mess of blankets and linens and was ashamed of herself.

She’d fallen into the role of invalid so easily. She should have tried harder, should have insisted she was better than she was, so she might have sweeter memories than counted breaths and measured pulses.

“Excellent. Dressed or undressed?”

She looked up at him in alarm, and he shook his head quickly.

“I meant...” he gestured toward the trunk where both of their clothing resided. “Should you like to change first? Or have me change?” He huffed out a breath and tugged at his hair before taking a careful step backward.

He did not want to crowd her. Did not want her alarmed.

Did not want her to panic again, she thought with a grim awareness that it was the truth of it.

“I’ve prepared a few things. I did not know what would be to your liking.”

No kitchen staff tending to his meals and cleaning up afterwards. Or perhaps he’d simply dismissed them so they might spend time alone.

She doubted that was the case, but she did not wish to presume he was without some funds.

She wanted to dress. Wanted herself fully covered and proper.

But there was another part, one that was dangerous and slipped away to fetes to watch couples fall in love and dance and see the beauty of their shimmering threads braid and cord and twine...

That one said to take his hand. To go down as they were. To let him see her scars and wonder at them, and maybe even allow herself to think he was marvelling at some beauty he found in them. In her.

“Right. I’ll go to the washroom, shall I? Dress there? Unless you would like to...”

She’d waited too long. Let him fill her silence with proprieties, and she found it terribly endearing.

“I would,” she agreed. “But maybe... maybe we might change after eating. I should hate the food to be neglected.”

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