The Luna Queen's Rebirth novel · Chapter 5 of 24

Chapter 5: The First Night

We rode north all day, and by dusk I had learned three things about my husband.

He rode as if the horse were an extension of his own spine.

He ate with a knife in his left hand.

And he did not say one word about the priestess's law.

"He's thinking about it so hard I can hear it," Eirik told me at the stone inn at Ravenpass, loudly, over a bowl of stew.

"I'm eating," said Rhydian.

"You're staring at a turnip."

"I'm thinking about the turnip."

Eirik slapped the table and laughed until the serving girl came to check on him.

The inn was a low building of black stone built into the foot of the pass.

It had a fire the size of a cart and six rooms upstairs.

Rhydian's riders had the barn. The innkeeper had given us the best room, and had not known where to look.

When the stew was gone Eirik stood, stretched, and took his boots to the stable.

"Don't wait up," he said, to nobody, and left me alone with my husband and a candle.

The silence went on a long time.

"We don't have to," Rhydian said finally, to the table. "There are two more nights. The priestess is a hundred miles behind us."

"She'll know."

"She won't."

"The Goddess will." I turned the cup in my hands. "And I would like to be more than a signature in your ledger."

He looked up.

"I don't think of you as a signature."

"Then what?"

"A woman who walked into my tent and put a hammer to the world," he said slowly. "I'm still working it out."

Heat climbed my neck, and I let it.

"Tell me one true thing," I said. "About you. Not the king."

He thought about it.

"My father taught me to keep every term of a contract," he said.

"He broke every one he made. I decided young that it would be the first thing I did right."

"That's the king."

"It's the man who is trying to decide whether to take his wife upstairs."

My breath caught.

"All right," I said. "My turn. I'm not afraid of you."

His mouth moved.

"I was afraid of the last one for four years, and I never let it show."

I stood up.

"I'd like to find out what it is to want a man who doesn't make me smaller."

I held out my hand across the table.

He took it, and we went up the stairs together without another word.

The room had a low bed with a wool blanket, a fire laid and burning, and one window with the shutters closed against the pass.

He shut the door behind us and stood with his back against it.

I crossed the room and put both hands flat on his chest.

His heart was pounding.

"You're nervous," I said.

"I'm married to a woman I met yesterday, in front of a witness who owns a staff. Yes."

I laughed. It was the first time in two lives, and it shook loose something old.

Then I pulled his coat open and slid it off his shoulders, and he stopped talking.

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