reception from the folk of Dundalis after becoming Danube's queen.
Aydrian caught her attention, then, looking over at her, his eyes sparkling with pride and also with something else, some intensity that caught Sadye off her guard at that moment.
Instinctively, she hugged her arms close in front of her, almost an attempt - a futile one - to deny the warmth that was suddenly flowing throughout her.
Their meal was served by a host of attendants, seeing to their every need, and while the food was rather plain, Sadye appreciated the great lengths to which Aydrian had gone to make this evening together something rather special.
She noted, too, the way he looked at her throughout the meal, and knew that the hunger in his blue eyes longed for something more than food.
This time, though, the woman was not caught off her guard as she had been earlier in the day. She did not recoil from Aydrian's stare, did not hug her arms defensively in front of her. Rather, she lifted her glass of wine - one of the few delicacies the army had taken out of Palmaris - and replied to Aydrian with a leading and teasing smile.
Aydrian dismissed the servants before he and Sadye had even finished their meal. And when she was done, he wasted no time in coming around the table toward her.
Sadye rose before he got there and moved to the window, pulling aside the curtain to look out on the quiet town of Festertool and the many campfires of the army gathered about it.
"The hero comes home," she said when Aydrian stalked up beside her, and her words slowed his deliberate approach somewhat. Still, he was right against her, looking not out the window, as was she, but at her. She could feel his stare boring into her, soaking in her delicate features.
Only after a moment did her words truly seem to sink in to him. "Home?"
he asked. "This place?"
Sadye turned her gentle expression to him. "This is not your home?" she asked. "Where, then?"
The question seemed physically to push Aydrian back at step and he blinked repeatedly as if coming out of his intoxication with Sadye's obvious charms.
"Is it this place you name as Andur'Blough Inninness?" the woman pressed, and Aydrian was shaking his head before she ever finished.
"I do not wish to talk about this."
"These questions do not dig so deep, do they?"
"No, I don't wish to talk about this!" Aydrian said more emphatically, and he turned away. "Not here. Not now." He spun back on her almost immediately, moving close once again. "This is not the time," he said, his voice going softer but hardly diminishing - rather, it gained a husky quality and a sense of urgency.
Aydrian pressed up against her, his arm going about her so that she could not even begin to lean away. "Not now," he whispered, and he moved in to kiss her.
A deft twist and duck had Sadye sliding under that holding arm and moving back toward the center of the room.
Aydrian's eyes popped open and he spun to regard her, his expression caught somewhere between surprise and anger. "You refuse me?"
Sadye recognized the genuine confusion in his voice, and, as she had expected, the lack of true confidence behind his imperial fagade. She didn't respond to him openly, not wanting to clear that confusion and those doubts, but merely smiled coyly.
Aydrian approached, but the graceful woman simply danced away.
"What game do you play?" the frustrated king asked.
"Game?"
Aydrian came at her suddenly with a move that would have served him well as a swordsman, closing the distance too quickly for Sadye to move aside.
And so she stopped him instead, with a simple change in expression, a sudden frosty stare.
Aydrian halted and shook his head.
"You just take what you will?" Sadye remarked. She nearly laughed aloud when Aydrian started to answer in the affirmative, and her fluid expression stopped him before he made that mistake.
"I am the king," he said instead.
"And so you have your kingdom."
"And so I have what I desire."
"No," came the woman's simple response.
"I could have any woman in the kingdom!"
"All but one, perhaps."
Aydrian clenched his fists at his sides and Sadye half expected him to stamp his foot in frustration. She resisted the urge to giggle at him.
"My word is law," he argued, and then reiterated, "I will have whatever I desire."
He started forward, but Sadye's outstretched hand, backed by a look of intensity beyond anything Aydrian had ever seen from her before,