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“Ead, you will be sleeping with me tonight,” Sabran said. Ead noticed Roslain’s face falter for a second, until she cleared it.
“Of course, My Queen,” she undressed obediently as the other Ladies of the Bedchamber filed out of the room.
Sabran lay on her back for close to half an hour. Ead could see her eyelids twitching, and the shift of her thumb against the meat of her hands, until she clearly gave up for the time being and moved onto her side, so she was balanced on her elbow with her cheek in her palm, and making an intense amount of eye contact in Ead’s direction. It was far more appropriate for the petitions room than in bed, but she cared not how the Queen of Inys spent her evenings if it was in this way.
She had been requesting her company over any of her other ladies as of late, and it had not gone unnoticed. Roslain, and Katyren especially, whom she had seen deliberately keeping blank expressions whenever their Queen inevitably chose her as her bedmate for the night, at least five nights out of seven.
She understood their protectiveness. She was being suddenly favoured, not a person brought up at court, nor even raised in the Six Virtues. She could take advantage of their queen’s generosity, and especially her vulnerability after Lievelyn, but there had been grudging respect in them too, after Lievelyn, and how they had seen her fight for Sabran, and risk her life for their queen’s.
“Your Majesty?”
“Sabran, please, Ead,” the queen said. “When we’re alone like this.”
“Of course, Sabran. If I may… you seem troubled.”
“I do not know.” She touched her stomach lightly at the swell and the jutting belly button interrupting its gentle curve. “Everything is so troubling, and I hardly know who to turn to,” she sounded as if on the verge of tears, and Ead knew that tremble she’d seen in her during the day was more than a mere lack of sleep. This past year had been nothing but disasters, and bad news, and the pressure was cutting her down before her eyes.
“You can always turn to me, Sabran. I will listen.”
She blinked furiously, “I know Ead. I think you might be the only one. I do not think I understand you, you want no favours from me, and seek no rewards, but you are my most loyal servant all the same.”
“I only wish to serve you, and the Saint.” The second part tasted like ash in her mouth, but she swallowed it down.
“I know this,” she rolled further, touching against Ead’s side, and she tried not to shiver from the movement. Sabran’s skin was always so warm, and smooth, even through her nightgown. “When Glorian is born,” she touched her belly, looking mournful, “I want you to know her. If there was anyone I knew that I wanted my daughter to be like, it would be you, Mistress Duryan.”
Ead had no reply to this except one Chassar had trained into her, “You flatter me, Majesty, but I would be honoured to know your daughter.”
Sabran merely made a noise of acknowledgement, and another one, and when Ead looked at her again, she realised she had fallen asleep.
“Ead,” Sabran reached for her. “My Lady Nurtha.”
“Only yours,” she said. “I don’t think I would stand it for anyone else.”
“Of course,” she said. “But I appreciate it anyway. Will you come to me tonight?”
She held one of Sabran’s hands between hers, “Tell me, please.”
“I was so scared,” she said. “It was terrifying. I was all alone. The Night Hawk took you, and Igrain-” she broke herself off. “I do not think I have ever been frightened in my life. She locked me up, and I think she would have thrown away the key eventually. And Truyde,” Ead felt a stab thinking of the girl. She had been cleverer than any of them. “I wanted her punished for what she did to Aubrecht, but she did not mean to kill him. She did not need to die for it.”
She cried for a while, and Ead just rocked her from side to side in her arms, calming as a ship. “I am here now, Sabran. All will be well.”
“I do not know what I did without you, Eadaz. You hold my strength now, and my hope.”
She kissed her on her brow, on the line wrought when she frowned too heavily in court without realising, “I promise to be a worthy vessel.”
“I had Ros, but they hurt her. Igraine is,” she shook her head. “I do not even know. It is like her sense has detached from her brain. I think I shall have to kill her.”
“I fear so, Sabran. I can be there, if you wish it.”
“I might well. But my own Duchess of Justice. It is the most unjust and unvirtuous thing. I have struggled to believe it, even as her prisoner.”
“She surprised everyone, I think.” Ead let herself be pulled further into the embrace. “Sleep now, Sabran. Nought can be done at this hour, and we all need rest.”
“I never want to be parted from you, Eadaz uq-Nāra, not ever.”
Ead did not mention the fate for them she considered inevitable. They might as well pretend this night that things were not as they were in truth.
Sabran kept her head on her shoulder until Ead’s arm went numb and she had to move. But their hands did not break apart, both of them holding on, even in sleep.
“I shall miss you,” Ead brushed a piece of hair from her lover’s cheek. “Most ardently.”
“The work shall be done, and we shall be together.” Her eyes softened, “Ten years is not so long, when we have the rest of our lives together.”
“And the rest of the world insists on being put to rights,” she laughed. “Who else would do it? I do not know anyone I trust so well as you with the fate of your own country.”
“I shall miss Inys,” Sabran bowed her head, and kissed a line from Ead’s clavicle to behind her ear, in that place that made her neck twitch and her breath catch. “But there is nothing I want in this world so much as you, and the Milk Lagoon.”
Their little house was the smallest, and plainest place Sabran had ever lived, even spent the night in. And she loved it more than anything.
She lay awake, waiting for her companion to return, counting the stars in the sky from their unlit terrace. “Were you successful?” she asked when Ead returned, smiling, and covered in blood.
She pulled out the game to show her, “You didn’t need to wait up for me.”
“It’s a beautiful night,” she said. “I wanted to see it.” The sky was different than it was in Inys, but she had always feared the dark back then far too much to ever see it for longer than a handful of seconds, and always the more dimmer for the constant light of her candle in the night. She no longer feared the night, she had nothing to fear from the Lady of the Woods now, but she still hated to sleep alone, hated to sleep without Ead with her.
“It is,” she glanced at her, and shifted the game back onto her shoulder. “Let me wash up. I don’t want to ruin our sheets.”
Sabran wiped the blood from her brow, and unbound her hair, rubbing oil through Eadaz’s scalp, “I do not like to sleep alone,” she admitted.
“I know,” Ead said. “But our beds are warmer here than in Inys.”
“I do not mean that, Eadaz up-Nāra, I mean I do not wish to if you are not here.”
“Some of my hunting trips are days long.”
“And I have waited that long, or as long as I could.”
“Perhaps,” she made a noise of appreciation as Sabran scratched her scalp. “I could teach you to hunt in the style of here. It is unlike that with a horse, it is far longer work, but you are more than good with a bow.”
“Thank you,” she started rubbing her hair with a dry cloth. “That is high praise from a former Prioress.” Ead stood up, completely unclothed. “Come on,” she untied one of the fastenings at Sabran’s shoulder, leaving space for her to either do it back up, or undo the other ones as well. “We can talk more of it on the morn, let us go to bed.”
She went, gladly.