my skirts, I could feel the press of Tristan’s hip against mine, the brush of his coat against my neck as he rested his arm along the back of the seat, the way his breath tickled my hair. I wanted to lean against him, but the gleam of amusement on the other men’s faces told me I was already skirting the line of what was proper. I wanted them gone so it wouldn’t matter, and from the burn of the heat in the back of my head, I knew the same thought had crossed Tristan’s mind.
There isn’t anything stopping you. The thought that I’d been thinking more and more over the past few days, crept across my mind even as I laughed along at a joke I hadn’t even heard. He is your husband.
I considered the reasons why our intimacy had been limited before. Certainly a child was a complication we could not afford. Our lives were too much in jeopardy, and I couldn’t even bear to think about what would happen to our baby if we were both killed. Half-blood as it would be, if the King got his hands on our child, would he not sell it off as a slave as he had done with Lessa? And that would be if he didn’t kill it out of hand. And wasn’t there a certain inevitability that the child would have to go to Trollus as long as the curse remained? Would it happen the moment it was born? Before? I shivered at the idea.
The carriage pulled to a stop beneath the domed side entrance reserved for subscribers and other important guests. Tristan stepped out first, then helped me down. “What are you thinking?” he asked quietly, leading me toward the doors the liveried men held open for us.
“The compulsion is getting bad again,” I said, because it was true and he needed to know, and I didn’t want to admit that the only thing that chased it off was my lusty thoughts.
“Keep in your mind that you are doing what you promised you would,” he said softly. “She knows my intent, and she’ll come after me sooner rather than later. She has to.”
I knew he was trying to make me feel better, but the reminder that Anushka would try to hurt him or kill him did anything but. He was not afraid of her, but I was. There was no one alive who knew more about trolls, and she’d killed one as powerful as him before.
Sensing his words had the opposite effect than he’d intended, he reached up with his free hand and squeezed mine where it rested on his arm. Then he lowered his head, his breath warm against my ear. “I know that wasn’t what you were thinking about.”
My cheeks flushed, but a smile crept onto my face. “Perhaps not.”
My mother had taken me on a tour of the opera house soon after I’d arrived in Trianon, but sometime since, I’d lost an appreciation for how extraordinary it really was. Marble colonnades banded with gilt twisted up to ceilings painted with soft golds and blues, with massive crystal chandeliers hanging one after another to light the long stretch of the grand foyer.
We were somewhat late, and went straight to Bouchard’s box on the second level of the horseshoe-shaped theatre and took our seats, the lights already dimmed and the curtain up. Willowy girls in white tulle flitted across the stage, and even though I’d seen them perform countless times before, I could not help but marvel at their grace, lifting up onto their tiptoes in shiny satin shoes, limbs impossibly flexible. Tristan leaned forward against the railing as he watched, his expression captivated. This, like so much else, was not something he’d ever seen before.
My eyes went to his wrists, where the sleeves of his coat and shirt pulled up ever so slightly. Instead of skin between cuff and glove, there was black fabric wrapped around his wrist. I turned my gaze back to the stage before he could catch me looking, but my stomach still clenched. Five days, and still not better. It was past time I ask him to let me try to heal the injuries.
A waiter brought glasses of wine, and Tristan leaned back in his seat and sipped at his, never taking his eyes off the stage. What did he think, I wondered, at this display of humanity? Of the color and the vibrancy, of the filth and the beauty, of the