Chapter 4: The Wedding Night

"My mother," Marit said.

The fire popped in the hearth.

"She sang it to me when I was small. I never knew what the words meant."

Torren's eyes closed for a moment.

When they opened again, he looked like a man who had decided not to say something.

"Your mother died young."

"How do you know that?"

"Everyone in the north knows it."

He pushed off the door, slowly.

"Tomorrow I will tell you what I can. Tonight you are tired, and I will sleep in the chair."

"No."

He stopped.

She had expected to be afraid.

She had been afraid for eleven years in a cold bed in another life.

But the girl standing in the firelight was twenty.

No man had touched her in this life, and her body did not remember cold hands.

It only wanted.

It had wanted since the torchlight, since the drop of water ran down his scar.

"This is an arranged marriage, Your Majesty," she said.

"I know exactly what it is. I walked into it in my sister's veil, and I would do it again."

"Marit."

"I chose you. Nobody sold me to you. Nobody sent me."

Her voice dropped.

"So if you sleep in that chair, I will sit on your lap and make you regret it."

His breath left him in something that was almost a laugh.

"You are a terrible bride."

"Come here."

He crossed the room.

He stopped a hand's width away.

She felt the heat of him through the wolf fur.

He looked down at her.

She took hold of his coat with both fists and pulled his mouth down to hers.

He kissed her.

All the stillness he had kept at the feast broke at once.

One hand slid into her hair and tilted her head.

The other closed on the small of her back and hauled her against his chest.

She gasped into his mouth and he took the sound and swallowed it.

His tongue stroked hers, slow and deep, and her knees went to water.

"Gods," he muttered against her lips. "You taste like honey wine."

"Take this off," she said, and tugged his coat.

He did, with one rough shrug.

The shirt came next, over his head, and she stopped breathing.

He was a fighting man's body, broad and hard, scars across the ribs and one long white one along the shoulder.

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