Page 109 of Six Wild Crowns

“I must check on the final arrangements,” she says to her table. Outside, the bustle of the preparations has died down, with most of the workers gone to the kitchens for their supper. A stray wyvern drifts over the winter lavender, its belly teasing the white flowers, only visible in the darkness from the soft glow emanating from its full, hot stomach.

Boleyn runs through the gardens, seeking the sound and smell of the sea. She finds it on a promontory, sheltered from the view of the castle’s windows by a line of ancient trees. The water is her only witness. The sounds of the festivities are muted, ceding to the ocean’s roiling pendulum. Hand on her chest, Boleyn takes gulping breaths. She watches the glimmer of the bordweal – the goddess’s protection, not Cernunnos’s – play across the dark horizon. A dart of blue green purple like a fish flitting through waves.

“Your Majesty? Boleyn?” a voice says. Wyatt.

She senses him approaching her slowly.

“What’s this?” he says, the taunt evident in his voice. “Queen Boleyn frightened?”

“If you knew what I’m about to do you wouldn’t tease me for being frightened. You’d be on your knees with terror.”

“It’s a good thing I don’t know then.”

She turns, and finds him right there, looking down at her with reverence, the warmth of his body radiating through the layers of her clothing and sinking into her skin.

“I’ve drawn you into a net. You should know what that net is before it closes over your head.”

“Too late.”

“It’s not,” she whispers. “You can flee now before the king arrives.”

“Is that an order? Because I’m not leaving your side again unless you tell me to.”

He hooks his little finger, coarse and ink-spotted, around hers, the one on which she wears her wedding ring.

“I’ll swear on it if you wish,” he says.

“I’m dangerous, Thomas.”

The wind whips her words into the air, where they whisk between and around them. Wyatt smiles ruefully.

“Oh, I know. I don’t care. I love you, Boleyn. I love you as the anvil loves the hammer, as the rocks love the waves and the leaves love the autumn. You are destruction and promise. You are the storm, and I have been lost in your tornado for so long now that I no longer desire the sun.”

She closes the short distance between them, pressing her lips to his. His arms wrap around her waist, crushing her to him as she curls her fingers in his hair. Not because she loves him – there is only one man she has ever loved – but because he is the only man who has ever wanted her without trying to consume her.

She rips his doublet open and releases the shirt tucked into his hose, running her hands over his bare chest. He gasps as she rakes her fingernails over his skin.

“Permit me to undo your bodice,” he whispers into her hair.

“Yes.”

With trembling fingers he undoes the laces binding her, and tugs the gown over her head so that she stands before him in her shift.

“Permit me to set your hair free,” he says.

“Yes.”

He unclips her hood, then runs his fingers through her locks. She turns her face up to kiss him again, slowly this time, her hunger aching and bone deep.

“Permit me to look upon you,” he says, running a hand over the bandages that cover her ribs and arm.

She pulls the shift over her frame. Wyatt holds her in one arm, lending her his warmth, and with the other he unwinds the bandages. When she is naked, he says nothing.

“Will you be writing poems about me now, Master Wyatt?”

Wyatt smiles. “There is no need, my queen. We poets are truth-hunters, words our arrows. Why would I write a poem when you have given me the gift of perfect truth?”

He kisses her again but makes no attempt to do more.

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