The Dragon Queen's Gambit novel · Chapter 10 of 24

Chapter 10: Return

Year Six, the third night of the Dragon Moon. Ysmera was thirty-two, and Torvald was thirty-five.

The border fort sat on a bare black ridge, with snow on its roofs and one light burning in its tower.

Ysmera landed in the yard at midnight.

The sentries who ran out recognized her dragon and dropped to their knees.

"Where is the captain?" she said.

"In the north tower, Majesty. He does not sleep much."

She climbed the stairs alone, with the oilcloth packet against her ribs.

The door at the top stood ajar.

Torvald sat at a rough table in his shirt, writing a report by one candle.

He was thirty-five now, and the cold air of the north had put lines at the corners of his eyes.

He looked up, and the pen fell from his fingers.

"Ysmera."

"Pack your things," she said. "We are going home."

"In the middle of the night?"

"In the middle of the night. I have come three hundred miles to ask you, and I do not want to hear a single question."

He stood.

He crossed the room slowly.

He stopped in front of her and lifted his scarred hand to her cheek.

"You came yourself."

"I did."

"Three years," he said. "I have thought of nothing else for three years."

She did not remember deciding to kiss him.

His arms came around her, hard, and he lifted her off her feet and carried her backward until her spine met the stone wall.

The cold of it went through her riding coat.

She did not care.

She wrapped her legs around his waist and clawed his shirt open and bit his collarbone.

He growled and dragged her coat off her shoulders, and the oilcloth packet hit the floor.

"Later," she gasped.

"Much later."

He tore at her laces with a patience he did not feel.

When her breasts came free he bent his head and took one nipple in his mouth.

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