"His entanglement had placed him in a quandary, for he did not know whether she wished him well or ill; he could not make out whether she loved or hated him."

—From Tristan,

By Gottfried von Strassburg

"JOVANA, HELP ME TO UNDERSTAND. Why would you release your worst enemy? Only a week ago you were begging for their deaths..." Alastair said, trying to draw some sense out of the situation as he watched the queen pace back and forth across the stone floor.

The sound of dripping water was audible from the caves and hot springs they were next to though he could scarcely focus on them. Not when Jovana's bare legs were visible, a rarity in this cold climate not to mention with the gowns she usually wore, and her hair was loose over her shoulders. He wanted to take hold of the dark strands that cascaded down her back, to wrap them around his fingers, use it to tip her head back and kiss his way down her neck.

"I do not beg, Lambert." Jovana glared at him, tying up her hair with a violet ribbon. The mark he had made there in his dream was still visible, faded slightly, and he wanted to make a fresh one. "I released them for reasons that shall remain known only to me unless you fancy being sent to Atla with them."

"Very well, Your Majesty." He held up both hands in mock surrender though it bothered him to. Alastair didn't want to surrender. He wanted to fight, to conquer, to emerge triumphant from this battle. Because the sight of her anger with him brought back the primal hatred, that atavistic vengeance, that made him want to ply at her secrets, unlock that vault until she broke, until she emptied herself for him. "Shall we return to your chambers before we are discovered?"

Jovana nodded stiffly, tightening the tie around her hair. His hands still itched to unknot that ribbon, to tuck the length of silk into his pocket and twine his fingers in it as he kissed her. But he knew she was still upset with him, still harbouring dark thoughts and secrets she would refuse to let slip. Did he want to know them, Alastair wondered, in order to be her undoing? Or did he want to know, because she was his undoing?

Because she had clawed her way into his heart this fifteen years ago in spite of all that she was and all that he was. And now every breath, every heartbeat, every moment he spent in her presence was just sinking those talons in a little deeper. Damn it! Alastair never should have come to the chateau. He never should have returned home. He certainly never should have signed up for a job where he had to spend significant amounts of time in Jovana's presence, or taken so many liberties with her, or acted as if kissing her were merely an enjoyable diversion and not the all-consuming pleasure that it had been.

"Well, Lambert?" She snapped her fingers, looking stern and commanding even in such a risqué outfit. "Please do keep up. Are you coming or do you plan to spend the rest of the night gawking at me?"

He followed her, the colour flushing in his cheeks, with half a mind to throw her onto her bed when they reached it. "Your Majesty, I wouldn't dare."

He used her title again, trying to create some distance between them when she had become hopelessly tangled up against him. Trying was futile, when she felt more and more like a part of him and less and less like a separate entity—not that he didn't recognize her independence but that there was no facet of her that he did not fully understand and adore. Separating himself from her would be like the shore trying to stay away from the tide. It might recede a bit at times but it always came crashing back, just as relentlessly as before.

"Hmm." Coldness infiltrated her tone, just as frigid as the snow that fell perpetually in Mordania. But the coldness seemed hollow, delicate, used as a facade for a pit of vipers, snapping and gnashing within her. Because she was cold but it was a coldness that hid darkness, emptiness. "That is good to know. I would hate to think that I was in the presence of a traitor. You do remember, do you not, the punishment for a traitor?"

"I do, Your Majesty."

When Alastair had been six years old, his father had taken him to see a man being punished for treason. It was a slow and brutal and pitiless execution, merciless. On the coldest day of the year every man convicted of treason would be dropped into a frore facsimile of a fighting arena, to rip each other to pieces and eventually starve and freeze to death. Or some years there would be only one man, locked in the pit until he gave a final, shuddering breath, his body blue and disfigured, and expired. That had been the execution he had witnessed.

"Won't you come in, Lambert?" The queen held open the door for him to enter and he did so, not wanting to risk her wrath. "I need someone to ensure my safety tonight."

Because she had just shown mercy to her worst enemy.

"By sleeping in your bed?" he teased, trying to slip past that icy exterior of hers.

She let down her hair, untied her robe, undressed. Alastair wanted to be the one to undress her, the one to undo her, the one to unravel her and see what she looked like when she wasn't playing the part of queen. When she was simply Jovana Dusang, the woman he had been fated to marry since childhood. The woman he had hated and loved in equal measure. The woman he had claimed as his own, whether it was to love or kill or marry. She was his; he had made her his in return the moment she had drawn him under her spell.

"Do you think you have earned the right to sleep in my bed?" Jovana asked, wiping the cosmetics off of her face, looking pale and tired and lovely.

He walked up behind her, a silk shift all that divided their bodies as he fitted his hands to the dip of her waist. "Would you like me to earn it now?"

She stilled her movements, relaxing against him, her back pressed to his chest. Alastair brushed her hair aside, trailing kisses down her throat. He breathed in her scent: iron and roses. War and peace; softness and sharpness. A study in contrasts, from the sharp angles of her collarbones that jutted out as she drew in deep breaths, to the pink of her lips as they pressed against his.

"Carlyle," she murmured against his mouth.

"Jovana?" He was in a daze, intoxicated by her.

Her hands gripped his shoulders, fingers sinking into the thick fabric of his coat. The next words she spoke nearly stopped his heart.

"Aren't you going to bite me again?"

"Would you like for me to do that?" Alastair stumbled, the backs of his knees hitting the soft bed. He sat down without invitation, again that urge to claim the space rising up as he widened his stance on the bed.

Jovana, for all her confusing statements and coldness, walked toward him instead of away, a fire burning in her green eyes. She halted, standing right between his legs. "I don't know. When I found the mark I felt... I felt violated. But when you told me it was from you, I don't know what I felt. I wanted... Carlyle, I have craved control for the majority of my life, since my mother died and the Lord Regent began tyrannizing me. I thought that when... if I began a romantic relationship, I would want to hold power in that, too. But then you kissed me, and I wanted to... I wanted to give up control."

He tilted his head back, examining her. She certainly looked out of control now, all flushed cheeks and messy hair and heaving chest, falling apart at the edges. The vulnerability of it all, the delicacy to her usually rough edges, captivated him. How was it that she was standing above him, in a position of power, and he was the one who was witnessing her laid bare?

"Jovana," he said gently, reaching out to grasp her hand. "Thank you for sharing that with me. You... You didn't have to, but you did."

Jovana had always been self-sacrificial, had always been intense in that way. Going further than she needed to in any task. Throwing all that she had into any passion or pursuit that caught her eye. And here she was, giving him everything she had when he had nothing to offer her.

"Thank you," he repeated.

And those years of loneliness, of fixating only on revenge and his sister's death and the blood he felt was on his hands... they didn't vanish. But they became less of a weight on his chest, when she wrapped her arms around him, and he pressed his face into her shoulder, feeling sudden tears stream down his face.

"Carlyle," she murmured, resting her chin on the crown of his head. "Will you stay with me tonight?"