Page 24 of The King is Dead
Feeling the tiny strip of warmth at my back that was her fed something within me. I’d turned my back intentionally so I couldn’t reach for her. But it was no surprise when a few minutes later I felt her foot slip through the gap in the bars to lay over my calf and her breath fluttered on the back of my neck as one of her tiny arms reached between the bars and her hand slipped between my ribs and my bicep.
To my relief, with her touch on me, that itch to be closer eased.
She sighed and went still, her body deflating.
Where we touched, my skin came alive. All the weariness and stress from the day easing out of me.
And so, we slept, leaving the rest of the shitshow for tomorrow.
~ YILAN ~
I woke when the pale light of dawn through a crack in the shutters made my eyelids glow.
It took a moment to remember why my back ached and was freezing but the front of my body and leg were toasty warm.
Melek.
The bars.
Sleep.
I didn’t open my eyes immediately but inhaled his scent and mentally prepared to see him. Melek’s breathing was deep and even. I knew as soon as I moved he’d wake. But for those few seconds I could pretend we weren’t opponents, that we were curled in a tent together and…
The fantasy died as I opened my eyes to a thinning dark and my instincts screamed that I had to get moving while there were still shadows in the Palace.
My nose brushed the back of Melek’s neck, tickled by the strands of his warrior’s length that trailed to the cold stone. The sliver of sun-browned skin at the base of his neck, bare and vulnerable, taunted me.
Gripping his waist where my hand had come to rest through the bars, I leaned forward to brush my lips on that sensitive skin.
Melek sighed but then stiffened when his eyes blinked open.
“I have to go while it’s still mostly dark,” I whispered, tipping my forehead against the back of his neck. “I love you, Melek.”
I waited, but he didn’t respond.
Swallowing back the lump that appeared in my throat, I pushed away from him. I stretched my stiff joints and rolled my head, watching from the corner of my eye in case he deigned to look at me.
But he didn’t. And the light outside was turning from purple to pink.
“I’ll bring Gall later,” I whispered, then walked the shadows back to the stairs and through the Palace with barely a thought. Icouldn’tthink.All I could see was him. My senses were filled with him—his scent, his warm strength… and his cold, cold shoulder.
I would not cry. I would pray thatGodcould get through to him.
It was a relief to take those final steps through the shadow in the halls and to open the door to my rooms. But the room beyond wasn’t shrouded in darkness as I’d left it.
Instead, the curtains had been drawn back from the tall windows at the end of my large sitting room, and there was Turo. He stood with his back to me staring out the window, silhouetted by the dawn light glowing through it.
I couldn’t see his face. But even the set of his shoulders wastaut.
7. It’s Not the Time
~ YILAN ~
After all the tension of the night, Melek’s rejection, and the effort of passing through the Palace in the shadows, it was a blow.
My shoulders slumped. I stopped trying to move quietly and shook my head, unbuttoning my cloak.
“You’re here early,” I said dryly, as if we both didn’t know he wasn’t here for official duties.
