seven,’” she growled in her best Arland voice.
“It’s true.”
“That was different. The fight in the Lodge was a brawl against bandits and scumbags in outdated armor. You could kill them. You went up against nine knights in prime condition, in good armor, and you couldn’t kill any of them without ruining the wedding. Who does that?”
“Well, sure, it sounds unwise when you put it like that. But I won.”
They paused on the landing. His breath was coming out in ragged gasps.
“Do you feel cold or drowsy?” she asked.
“I’m not bleeding out.”
“Well, we don’t know that, do we?”
“I would know.”
“Shut up.”
He grinned at her.
“What?”
“We’re like we were before. At the inn.”
She glanced at his face. “Beat to hell and bleeding out on the stairs?”
“No. You are talking to me again. Really talking to me. You’ve been so…distant since you arrived. I like when we’re like this.”
They started up the second flight of steps.
“If I had to fight nine knights every week…”
“Don’t say it,” she warned him.
“…to keep you talking to me…”
“I will throw you down the stairs, Arland. I mean it.”
“No, you won’t. You like me. You are impressed.”
She rolled her eyes. “That you can’t walk, unassisted, up a flight of stairs? Yes, my lord, very impressive.”
He grunted and swayed. For a moment they tottered on the last step, careening back and forth, and she thought they would lose their balance, but they pitched forward and conquered the final stair.
“As I was saying,” Arland said, a sheen of sweat covering his face, “if I had to fight nine knights every week for the pleasure of you berating me, I would do it gladly.”
“You are an idiot. I abandoned my sister and a perfectly good inn and traveled halfway across the galaxy for an idiot.”
The door slid open in front of them. The breezeway stretched in front of them, suffused with sunshine and impossibly long. They would be watched by the vampires on the lawn for every step of it.
Arland grunted again, gently pushed away from her, and stood on his own.
“You can do it,” she told him and slid her arm in the crook of his elbow.
They walked into the sunlight side by side, as if out for a leisurely stroll.
“If I fall, don’t try to catch me,” he warned.
“You are not that heavy.”
“Yes, I am.”
They kept strolling. One step at a time.
One step.
Another.
Another.
“Did it have to be nine? Couldn’t it have been five?” She knew the answer but talking would distract him.
“It had to be more than there were at the Lodge. Beating seven again wouldn’t be as exciting. I already did that.”
“You make me despair, my lord. Is there no common sense in your head? None at all?”
He gave her a dazzling smile. “No, not right now.”
Maud sighed. “Figures.”
“You should stay with me. Here. You and Helen. Don’t leave me. I don’t want you to go.”
Her heart sped up.
“Marry me, or not, I will take what you’re willing to give me. Don’t leave.”
There it was. He just came out and said it. He went for it. She had to give him an answer and this time it couldn’t be a maybe. “Lord Arland?”
He sighed quietly, his voice resigned. “Yes, my lady?”
“I’m not going anywhere, you fool. You are mine. But if you decide to fight nine random knights again because you want to make a statement, I swear, I will leave you bleeding right there and walk away.”
“No, you won’t. Next time you can help.”
She swore, and he laughed.
Twenty feet from the fork in the hallway that led to both their rooms, Arland’s harbinger chimed. He glanced at it and continued. She was almost carrying him now. The unit chimed again and again.
“Soren,” Arland told her.
They reached the spot where the hallway split. They had a choice, his room or hers. Soren likely had a direct channel to Arland’s quarters with priority access. If they went to Arland’s room, they would get no peace.
“Does Lord Soren have an override code to my quarters?” she asked.
“No.”
She turned right, to her room, and he went with her. The last fifty feet of the hallway were pure torture. Her knees shook and her back burned from the strain.
The door whispered open. They stumbled through and it slid shut behind them. His full weight hit her. His face had gone blank and almost soft. He was done.
“Bathroom,” she squeezed out. “We have to get you into the bathroom.”
His face jerked, and he staggered to the bathroom, fueled by pure will.
“Medbed!” she ordered as