Chapter 7: Stay

Marshal Roark was waiting at the mouth of the lane with his hands behind his back.

He took one look at Linus's face and did not ask.

He walked beside him the whole way to the car, and the whole way up the cliff road, and said nothing at all.

It was the nothing that undid Linus.

In the dark of the keep's front hall, with the staff gone to bed and one lamp burning, he stopped walking.

"He said I didn't speak for seven years."

"Perrin?"

"He said I sat in a chair." Linus could hear his own voice go flat. "I don't want to talk about it tonight. I'm not lying to you. I just can't yet."

"Then we won't," the Marshal said.

He said it simply, and Linus turned and looked at him.

The black coat was open. A few plates showed at the collar, dull in the lamplight.

His bare right hand hung loose at his side.

Linus took it, and walked him backward until his shoulders met the wall.

The Marshal let himself be walked.

His breath caught when Linus's free hand went to his jaw, and the plates under Linus's fingers cooled and sank away at once.

"This isn't the fever," the Marshal said, very low.

"I know."

"I need you to know that. I would not ask on the fever's account."

"Ambrose."

It was the first time Linus had said the name to his face, and the Marshal's whole body went still, then not still at all.

Linus kissed him.

The Marshal made a rough, startled sound against his mouth.

Then his hand was in Linus's hair and he was kissing back, hard, with seven years of wanting in it.

Gold bloomed under Linus's skin where they touched.

The ring on his wrist burned.

The seams of the black glove on the Marshal's other hand flared white-gold, and the light ran up the wall.

They broke apart for air.

The Marshal's eyes were wide and nearly all gold.

"I said I would ask nothing," he said roughly.

"You did."

"I am asking." His forehead rested against Linus's. "Stay. In my room, not yours. Stay tonight."

"I thought you'd never say it."

The Marshal laughed, one short astonished breath.

Then he lifted Linus's hand to his mouth and kissed the glowing ring on the wrist.

His room was at the top of the stairs.

It held a wide bed and a window full of stars, and nothing else.

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