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Less than three hours out of Bulgar, the heavy clouds that have been following them for days finally burst. Lyn laughs as they both scramble off the wagon seat and into the back to take shelter. The rain pelts the canvas covering as they try to make space for themselves amidst their carefully-stacked supplies.
When they’ve cleared a little section, she taps his lower back; it’s not an order but he obeys anyway, folding himself up to sit against the side of the wagon bed.
She slides onto his lap a moment later, still smiling as she looks out at the weather. His hand hovers at her waist as if to steady her, but without blinking she takes his hand and settles it on her hip, pressing it there firmly as if to remind him of what they are allowed to be, now.
He tries not to feel ashamed of needing it.
They’ve come a long way from stolen kisses on the balustrade overlooking the gardens, but sometimes those days linger like a ghost. The first time Lyn first pressed him back into the shadow of the stone wall to kiss him, she insisted it always be she who did so to dispel any doubts regarding his integrity if they were caught. Each subsequent meeting there, they allowed themselves a minute spent wordless, but never two; touches were kept light and sparing. And every time she stepped away from him and turned to go, he ached with the knowledge that days—if not weeks—might pass before they found another minute alone.
It seems surreal that those days are behind them, finally, and that gestures that had once been too grand to be permitted are actually rather small.
And small things should be easy.
“I’m sorry,” he says at last.
She brushes her thumb against his and turns to look at him. “For what?”
For having to be reminded again, he can’t make himself say, though it closely matches how he feels. She shouldn’t have to remind him; it should be easy. He just shakes his head.
She turns on his lap to face him, a position that made him blush warmly one afternoon only last week; but this time the intimacy feels different. “Kent,” she says, and touches his arm. “Are you okay?”
He opens his mouth to answer in the affirmative, as always, but the brush of her fingers against his cheek silences him.
Her eyes are suddenly brimming with emotion. He recognizes some of them: hope and determination, love and trust. Longing. Affection. He’s seen them before; she’s allowed him the privilege.
But there’s something else in there, something fragile and scared.
She swallows. The sound overhead stops and they both look out the back to see that the world around them is caught in a soft drizzle. A long moment passes before she looks at him again.
“It’s not too late,” she says as if forcing herself to speak the words. “If this is too much to ask—”
The way her last word wavers tells him everything she can’t.
She won’t hold it against him if he leaves right now, if he returns to Caelin, if he abandons her as swiftly as he abandoned his position, if he just goes—because if this isn’t what he wants, if he’s not okay with this, with the plains that already surround them and the life that awaits him here at her side, then it’s all right.
Her fear that she isn’t enough to hold him to her makes his chest ache.
He’s always admired her frankness, and considering the courage it must have taken her to give him an out—after the patience of a thousand stolen kisses and all the years he’s been at her side—he can’t help but love her for it, too.
“No,” he says, and is surprised to find his own voice unsteady. “This is what I want. You are what I want. I—”
He falters, overwhelmed by the future that stretches out before them, unknowable, and how deep his love for her runs—and the way both these things tangle together to form a knot of anxiety in the pit of his stomach he cannot hope to unravel alone.
She offers him a tentative smile and he takes her hand in his, pressing it to his mouth without kissing it.
He’s afraid, too: that everything will go wrong, that he won’t be able to shed the burden of titles and propriety enough to be a good lover, that he’ll never be useful out here, and that, isolated on the plains with only one another for company, the fear of loneliness will become the tie that binds them, rather than their honest feelings.
But the warmth of her hand in his reminds him of the words he once spoke to her on the battlefield—and which he continued to show her over the years that followed with every glance exchanged across a crowded room and every offered handkerchief and every stolen kiss.
“I need you to know,” he manages to say, the words thick with how long they’ve waited to meet the air, “that my heart has not changed.”
Relief softens Lyn’s expression into something tender, and she takes their joined hands and brings them to her lips, pressing a kiss to his knuckles. “Nor mine,” she says, her voice hardly a whisper as she meets his eyes.
He pulls her close and she melts into the embrace, burying her face in the crook of his neck. Only when the gentle patter of rain grows softer and sunbeams begin to fall shyly through gaps in the clouds does Lyn stir—and even then, it’s just to stretch her legs over his lap again. When she settles against him this time, he needs no reminder to put an arm around her.
She presses a smiling kiss to the corner of his mouth and leans her head against his shoulder as they both watch what is now a bright and drizzling mist. He holds her and twists a bit of her long hair around a finger as he thinks.
With their hearts set on one another, the only person he is beholden to now is Lyn. Perhaps out here, so far from the sundrenched gardens of Caelin Castle, it will be easier for him to remember that.
He wraps his other arm around her and tips his head against hers while they wait for the rain to stop.