Chapter 6: Her Door

I didn't wait for him to come to my door.

At midnight I walked down the corridor in my nightdress with my glasses in my hand, and I stopped at the door at the end.

The iron bar was on the inside, as it was every night.

I knocked twice.

"Ylva?" His voice was rough with sleep, or with not sleeping. "Go back. It's late."

"I know what time it is. Lift the bar."

"I told you about the claws. If it comes tonight."

"Then I'll hold your hand again. Lift the bar, Torin."

For a long moment there was only the sound of him breathing.

The bar scraped up, and the door swung open.

He stood there in nothing but loose linen trousers.

The firelight carved his chest and the old white scars across his ribs.

His hair was loose around his shoulders, long and grey as ash.

He looked at me, at my bare feet, at the thin nightdress, and a muscle jumped in his jaw.

"I'm not here to hold your hand," I said.

I put my glasses on the table inside the door, and I walked into the room and shut it behind me.

Then I dropped the bar down myself, in its iron brackets, with a heavy clang.

His eyes followed it, and then came back to me, gone dark and almost gold.

"That's on the inside," he said.

"I know where it is. I'm choosing to be in here with you."

I pulled the ribbon at my throat, and the nightdress slid off my shoulders to the floor.

I was not a slender woman.

I had a soft belly and heavy breasts and wide hips that Brage Falk had once called substantial.

Torin looked at every inch of me.

"Gods," he said, and the word broke in the middle.

He crossed the room in two strides and took my face in both hands.

The kiss was nothing like the one in the map room.

It was deep and slow and it went on until my knees went weak.

His hands slid down my back, over my hips, and he gripped my backside and lifted me clear off the floor.

I locked my legs around his waist.

He carried me to the bed and laid me down on it, and he stood over me, breathing hard.

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