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1. Os Kervo
Zoya stood at the casement window looking out at Os Kervo in the darkness. There were festivities going on still, despite the lateness of the hour, soldiers celebrating a return to peace, the pious proclaiming the Age of Saints with strong kvas and revelry.
There had been some shuffling necessary to find rooms that various members of the court considered suitable for the Dragon Queen, but finally here she was, in the largest bedchamber of some toadying nobleman’s manor house. She wondered if such a large room had been deemed necessary because they expected her to revert to the dragon as she slept, or if it was purely a concession to her rank.
The sound of the door opening and closing echoed through the cavernous room. Zoya didn’t have to turn around to know it was Nikolai. She turned around anyway, because she wanted to look at him.
Nikolai smiled at her, with a brilliance that lit him up golden even in the dim light, that eased the tired lines on his face and eased something inside her, too. She’d spent the last few hours making arrangements and getting used to being called ‘highness’, and part of her had wondered if the interlude in the audience chamber this afternoon had been a figment of her imagination.
But here Nikolai was, crossing the room toward her, looking at her with a naked tenderness that she never would have imagined of him, and something warm and sweet unfurled inside her.
She turned back to the window before any syrupy feelings could make themselves visible on her face. “They didn’t give you your own quarters?”
“How shortsighted of me. I didn’t even think to ask.” His arms encircled her from behind, and she could feel the warmth of his chest against her back as he gathered her close. “Surveying your new domain?”
“You know that—the power—that’s not why I agreed to this.”
“I know.” He brushed a kiss to the side of her throat and set her pulse aflutter. “Zoya, light of my life, love of my heart, jewel in Ravka’s crown… you look terrible.”
“I do, do I?”
“I’m sure I’m not faring much better. Although I am incredibly handsome to begin with, so on the balance — ”
She almost laughed, but his ego didn’t need any encouragement, so instead she said, “Not handsome enough to be immune to the effects of an exhausting battle, abdicating your throne, intensive peace negotiations, listening to all the demands of the Ravkan court, and — ” Zoya stopped short. She’d been about to say, and us, but now she found herself unaccountably shy of referring to her confession this afternoon.
“Yes, and,” Nikolai agreed. “We both deserve to sleep for at least a month. Maybe three. Will you come to bed?”
“I suppose so. Beats any offer I’ve ever had from Kirigin, anyway,” she said, and made him chuckle.
She let Nikolai steer her to the bed, kneel to remove her boots. She watched as he removed his own boots and coat, and then he was getting into the bed with her, gathering her back into his arms with a sigh like her touch was a relief, even after so brief a parting.
“I missed this,” he said after a moment. “Bedtime with you.”
Zoya snorted. “You missed me chaining you to your own bed?”
“No,” said Nikolai. “Well, maybe. That’s an interesting idea we should revisit later, when we have more energy. But I meant that I missed those quiet moments. Just the two of us. Even with that awful sedative, your face was the last thing I saw before sleep and the first thing I saw on waking. I have missed that.”
“I always hated seeing you drop into unconsciousness so suddenly. It felt like I was killing you.” Zoya shifted so that her face was buried in the crook of his neck, her hand on his chest, feeling the steady, even rhythm of his heartbeat. “But I’ve missed this too.”
Nikolai’s hand skated up and down her back, exquisitely gentle, and she didn’t know why that should make her hurt, deep inside, until he kissed her forehead and she realized that it wasn’t pain, but something else fierce and grasping.
Are you so unused to love that you don’t recognize it at all? Juris asked in her mind. But the old dragon had no place here, so she banished him and focused on the sensations of her body. The softness of the sheets, the warmth of Nikolai beside her. His heartbeat beneath her fingers, his hand on her back.
“Thank you,” she whispered against his skin as she drifted into sleep.
2. Zoya’s old bedchamber
Zoya wasn’t in his rooms—her rooms now, they were hers by right, and he’d told her so. As the new Queen of Ravka, she was entitled to occupy the monarch’s rooms. And yet Nikolai wasn’t surprised when he did finally track her down in the bedchamber that she’d claimed for her own in the Little Palace.
“Why, General Nazyalensky,” he said jovially, closing the door behind him.
She was sitting at a dressing table, watching her reflection in the mirror as she brushed her hair by moonlight. She was wearing a nightgown of lace and ivory silk, and he was suddenly very glad he’d never had any idea, back when she was locking him up every night, that she left him to go change into such lovely and impractical nightclothes, or he’d have had some long and restless nights.
“I know,” she said, still not looking at him as he approached. “I should be in the Grand Palace, not here. I’m the Queen, not a general of the Second Army.”
“And I hear the monarch’s rooms are very comfortable,” Nikolai added. “Whoever furnished them has excellent taste, I must say.”
If he’d been hoping for a laugh, or even a smirk, he was disappointed. Zoya put down her hair brush and closed her eyes. “Tomorrow. I’ll move into your rooms—into those rooms—tomorrow. But it was a long journey back from Os Kervo. Tonight, I just want the familiarity of my own room. Is that too much to ask, when everything else in the world has changed?”
He pulled off his gloves and leaned over her shoulder to pick up the brush. “You’re the queen now. As you’ve told me before, you must do nothing but please yourself. May I?”
At her small nod, he began to run the brush through her thick, dark hair, pausing occasionally to gently tease apart strands that had gotten snarled together. As he worked Zoya’s shoulders slowly lost their tension, and when he glanced in the mirror he saw that her eyes were half-closed.
When he’d untangled all the knots and kept brushing just for the pleasure of touching her hair, Zoya roused herself enough to say, “I may be the queen, but that doesn’t mean that you’re obliged to perform these services for me.”
“It’s not obligation,” Nikolai objected. All Saints, did she really think that was what this was about?
And was that any worse than the idea of her knowing the slightly pathetic truth, which was that he’d take any excuse to touch her while she allowed it.
“Nikolai,” she sighed. “Let’s go to bed.”
“I like the sound of that.”
Under the covers, in the darkness, she burrowed against him, smoothed a hand over his chest. Inside him, the demon settled, soothed. He hadn’t realized until now that the last few days of calm had made the demon restless under his skin. He rubbed Zoya’s back, revelling in the warmth of her body. He could feel the edges of her tiger-claw scars through the fine silk and traced over them gently with his own scarred hands. It was a reminder that she was a tiger, a dragon, a Grisha, a general, a queen, strong and fierce and ruthless. That this side of her, the soft quiet tenderness, was a gift she’d given him.
He bent his head to kiss her, to feel her smart, beautiful, glorious mouth against his, hands sliding over slippery silk and the warm curves beneath. And then, so full of contentment he barely recognized himself, he removed his hands from her person and pressed his lips chastely to her forehead.
“Good night, my love.”
“Good night?” Zoya sounded both amused and a bit breathless. “I thought you came here tonight to seduce me.”
“It was a long journey from Os Kervo. I’ll seduce you in the morning.”
Besides, if he prolonged the preliminaries for long enough, there was always the tantalizing possibility that Zoya might get tired of waiting and seduce him. He was an optimist, after all.
She snorted, but settled back into the circle of his arms. “I’m beginning to think that any rumours of your seductive prowess are highly exaggerated. I’ve never seen any evidence.”
“Well, since at least half of those rumours already involve you—”
“So they are exaggerated.”
“Aren’t all rumours?”
“Hmm.”
“I—may be a bit rusty, in terms of my seduction skills,” he admitted after a minute. “I never made much headway with Alina—not that I was trying to seduce her exactly—and then I had a little demon problem. And then I was too obsessed with a certain general to think beyond that. Even if I’d wanted to explain away these hands, the fact that I could be dangerous at night— ”
Why was he justifying himself to her? He didn’t think she’d had any lovers in the last few years, either. When she hadn’t been sneaking out at night to see to her garden she’d been actively shoring up the myth that she was his mistress.
“Nikolai. Are you nervous?”
“You don’t need to sound so gleeful about it,” he muttered.
Zoya laughed and pressed a kiss to his shoulder. “Nikolai. I’ve seen you face down certain death, take on the entire Ravkan noble court, and fight with a saint. And yet this is the thing that makes you nervous?”
Was there a way to put his feelings into words that didn’t make him sound like a fool? He settled for a quiet, “It matters. You matter. I want to get it right.”
Because if he got it wrong he wasn’t sure she’d ever let him touch her again.
She was silent for a few minutes, and then she said, “We have time now, and space. Enough to try and try again, if everything isn’t right the first time. But for now, Sobachka, let’s just sleep.”
“Sleep,” he agreed gratefully, and let her even breathing draw him down into slumber.
3. Nikolai’s new bedchamber
Nikolai didn’t come to her the first night she spent in the king’s bedchamber. The monarch’s bedchamber. Her new bedchamber.
Zoya hadn’t really expected him to come. It would have felt too much like the room was still his, like she was the guest. Still, she slept poorly in the familiar bed, haunted by too many memories of late nights and early mornings, of chains and sedatives, of Nikolai’s golden beauty and scarred fingers.
He stayed away from her meetings the following day, too. Not unprecedented—he had been picking and choosing when to attend and when to absent himself, trying to shore up both her confidence and her reputation as queen.
She understood why he was doing it, even appreciated the thoughtfulness of the gesture, and yet, it still annoyed the hell out of her.
Apparently that annoyance was more obvious than she’d realized. At the conclusion of the last meeting of the day, Genya passed her a folded note that included both the location of Nikolai’s new room and a reminder that Zoya had only two hours before a state dinner.
A two hours would be more than enough.
Nikolai’s new bedchamber, it turned out, was only one hallway down from the royal apartments. Zoya opened the door without knocking, and found him sprawled in a wingback chair in his shirtsleeves, glancing over a stack of letters. He didn’t look like he’d slept very well either.
He smiled when he saw her, that smile that lit up his entire face and made something long-forgotten take flight in her stomach.
“Zoya! The jewel in Ravka’s crown!”
She put a hand on her hip. “No.”
“Ravka’s crowning glory?”
“Absolutely not.”
“Your scariness?”
She ignored his continued foolishness and went to sit on the edge of the bed.
“I know what you’ve been doing, and you don’t have to.”
“Don’t have to?”
“Keep your distance,” she clarified.
Nikolai dropped his letters and crossed the room to Zoya on the bed. “I don’t want anyone to say that I put you forward as queen so I could continue to reign through you.”
“If anyone says that,” Zoya pointed out sensibly, “I can always remind them that before I was the Dragon Queen I was the Storm Witch.”
He grinned. “Of course. I can’t believe I didn’t think of that. Your scaliness.”
“No,” she said firmly. “And that’s not what I meant, anyway. I acknowledge that there are some occasions where it’s beneficial for me to attend meetings or appear publicly without you. But I don’t see how that needs to extend to our private lives.”
When he still looked confused, she threw her hands up and admitted, “I slept terribly last night without you next to me.”
His smile this time was smaller, rueful. “As did I.”
She hated to ask. Her pride could still get the better of her sometimes. But she wanted him more than she wanted her pride, so she said, “Will you come to me tonight?”
“Yes. And I’ll do you one better.” He joined her on the bed, eased her backward. “We still have a few hours until the state dinner, yes? Let’s take a nap.”
“Oh, saints, yes,” she said, and within seconds they were in the position that had become second nature in the last few days, Nikolai on his back, Zoya tucked against him with her head on his shoulder and her hand over his heart, while he caressed up and down the length of her spine. She focused on those rhythms, his heart, his hand, and let herself drift.
Some time later, she came back to herself, indescribably refreshed. She wasn’t sure if Nikolai had slept. He was still—or once more—stroking up and down her back, so gently it was almost a ghost of a touch. She tilted her head, saw his eyes were open, and said, “You know, you don’t have to hold me like I’m made of glass.”
His lashes fluttered in surprise, but being Nikolai Lantsov, it only took him a second to recover. He slid his hand over the curve of her hip and gave an experimental squeeze.
“You certainly don’t feel like glass,” he confirmed.
“I mean, I’m not fragile.”
“No,” he said. “But you are precious.”
Zoya had to close her eyes against the feelings that threatened to overwhelm her. When she opened them again, Nikolai was watching her seriously.
“Zoya, I—sometimes I worry that this is all a dream. That I’ll wake up and we’re in some army tent at the edge of a battlefield, and my loyal general is not too pleased that my hands wandered in my sleep. Or that the demon is too close to the surface, that it might slip its leash and enact all my darkest desires. So if I seem tentative at times, it’s because I want to make sure this is all real.”
“Nikolai,” she said shakily. “This is real. I’m real. I’m here. Touch me, feel me, and see.”
She took his hand, now at her hip, and dragged it up to her breast.
“Nikolai,” she said again, helplessly, pressing his hand into her until he was cupping her breast through the fabric of her dress, stroking, squeezing.
“Zoya. All Saints.” Nikolai’s voice was shaky too. “I know you’re real. You’ve never felt this good in my dreams.”
She meant to say something cutting, but before she could manage he kissed her open mouth, hot and hungry. She kissed him back, just as needy, letting him roll on top of her and bear her down onto the bed with his weight, tugging his shirt out from his trousers so she could run her hands underneath it and up the hot skin of his back.
I want you all the time, he’d said, on the airship back from Ketterdam, and she hadn’t forgotten but this was the first time she really felt the truth of the words. It wasn’t that she hadn’t believed him at the time—although, yes, she hadn’t fully believed him at the time. Zoya was used to being wanted by men, carnally, and they all stopped wanting her eventually when she said or did something that disrupted their idea of her. Even while they did want her—it had never felt like that, with Nikolai. Nikolai’s regard had felt like respect, like intimacy, not like—not like—
Well—now it was clear it was—more. That he’d been keeping his want leashed, contained. That being wanted felt different when the carnal was only one part of it. That everything changed when she wanted, too.
She pulled at the hem of his shirt and pushed at his shoulders until he sat back and pulled the shirt off, tossing it over his shoulder. Saints, he was beautiful like this, with the early evening light catching the golden hair that dusted across his chest and trailed down from his navel, making his whole torso glow.
He saw her admiring look and smirked, pausing to preen and pose a little bit, before she said, “You’re an idiot,” and pulled him back to her so she could kiss her way across his beautiful jaw, down the strong line of his throat to his shoulder, his collar bone.
“Damn,” he said suddenly. “Damn it to hell. Zoya, that was the bell. We only have an hour before the state dinner.”
Zoya sat up and tried to catch her breath. Nikolai’s pupils were wide, darkening his hazel eyes, and a stripe of colour rode high on each cheek, golden hair all disarrayed from her hands. All she wanted to do was gather him back into her arms and feast. “Are you saying you can’t get it done in an hour?”
“We have to get ready. And I’d rather not have a time limit.”
She groaned. “You’re right. We can’t do this now.”
He rubbed her back softly, gentling her body back down from its inflamed state. “Later?”
“Later.”
4. The royal bedchamber
After the conclusion of the longest state dinner known to man, Nikolai crept into the familiar confines of the royal bedchamber and eased the door closed behind him.
Zoya was already there, of course. While Nikolai had allowed himself to be waylaid by a loquacious duke, Zoya had simply looked at anyone attempting to interrupt her exit until they melted away. And so now here was Nikolai sneaking in, while Zoya stood in the middle of the room and watched with something that might be amusement.
She was stunning in the muted light. Well, she was stunning all the time, but tonight she was so gorgeous that he felt breathless just looking at her. She wore a dress of midnight blue—he still wasn’t used to seeing her in dresses—with a silver sash, and her hair caught up in a matching silver ribbon, which he was fairly certain had been added to the outfit for the sheer purpose of tormenting him.
All Saints. It had been too long for him, and he’d wanted her for too long, and he’d been slowly simmering for the entirety of that too-long dinner. He needed to get himself under control or he’d go off like a titanium rocket the second she touched him.
“Did you come to my room just to stand in the doorway all night?” Zoya said sharply, making Nikolai grin.
“It’s an excellent doorway,” he replied. But he stepped forward, towards her, memories rising around him as he went.
The room looked largely the same as it had when it had been his. When Zoya had been the one visiting him, to put him to bed and to get him up out of it. All those nights he’d stared at the ceiling, missing her presence, mornings he’d lain in bed waiting for her.
She didn’t move as he approached, didn’t even shift her posture, back straight and head lifted like the queen she was. But when he got close enough he pulled the ribbon from her hair, and she sighed as if she was relieved, as if that was what she’d been waiting for, and no power in the world could have stopped him from reaching for her then.
“Zoya,” he breathed, and she kissed him.
They were a blur of hungry lips and seeking hands, desperate touches and muffled groans. When she finally pushed him away he gasped at the air, saw her chest rising and falling in the same rhythm.
“Take off your coat.” Zoya's voice was authoritative but her eyes were as dark as a storm-tossed sea.
Nikolai saluted. “Yes, Commander.”
A breeze ruffled his hair and the tails of his coat. Summoned by Zoya? He grinned and adjusted his stance, legs apart and knees slightly bent, the way the would stand on the deck of a ship on rough seas. He pulled off the coat, and the breeze immediately picked up and threw the offending garment at the wall.
He unbuttoned his waistcoat next, noting the way her gaze followed his fingers and slowing down to savour the moment. When he finished with the buttons he began to inch the waistcoat slowly down his arms. Zoya’s eyes narrowed.
“Nikolai, since when are you such a peacock?”
“Well, since the sight of me disrobing seems to please my queen—”
“Oh, for—you’re too vain for your own good. Just take your shirt off.”
He was happy to oblige, pulling the shirt over this head and dropping it. Before the shirt hit the floor, a gust of wind picked it up and snapped it against Nikolai’s chest, hard enough to sting, before whisking it away. Zoya sat on the edge of the bed, looking serene and innocent and not at all like she’d just used her Squaller powers to assault him with his own clothing.
All Saints, he adored this woman.
“Bit of a draft in here,” he commented.
She didn’t want to smile. He’d spent enough time studying her, her face, her lips, to tell. And yet, despite her best efforts, the corner of her mouth twitched up.
And he was enthralled, bewitched, powerless before her. He fell to his knees, her supplicant, her slave.
“I thought I told you not to kneel,” she said, as he reached for her feet.
“And I told you it’s just what my knees do now.”
He slipped off her court shoes carefully, running his scarred thumbs over her arches, her heels. Through the silk of her stocking he pressed a kiss to her right ankle bone. For a moment he thought she would pull her foot away.
“Zoya, let me do this.”
“Let you? Since when do I let you do anything?”
But she didn’t move her foot away. Instead she was pulling up her skirt, achingly slow, and voiced no objection when he followed the hem up her leg with his mouth. She didn’t always like to ask for things, his proud Zoya, but he liked to give them to her anyway.
He took his instructions from the quickening of her breath. When he darted his tongue out behind one of her knees she sighed, so he repeated it on the other side. When his bristled cheek brushed her inner thigh she gasped, so he did it again, and once more for good measure.
And then he reached the hot core of her, the sweet and spice and salt of her, and the sensations were too overwhelming for him to listen for her exhalations. Here she was as soft as the silk she liked to wear, softer. Her hand came down to his scalp, fingers running through his hair, and he groaned, and then he feasted.
He didn’t know how long he stayed there. He would be happy to spend his life on his knees with his face buried in Zoya. He kept his movements gentle at first, almost soothing, learning her with his mouth, easing her into excitation. And then her hands became rougher in his hair, and her hips bucked more aggressively against him, and her voice was commanding as she cried his name. Like a good soldier, he followed the tone of command in her voice and went on the offensive, a barrage of lips and tongue, working her hard until she shuddered against him.
His scalp stung from her fingers pulling at his hair, and his ears rang from where her thighs had clamped over them, and his knees ached from the time on the floor, and he’d never felt better in his entire saintsforsaken life.
“Nikolai.” Zoya’s hand cupping his jaw, bringing him back to reality. “Come up here, Sobachka.”
Powerless, he went. Why did the nickname feel so right coming from her, so much more right than it had ever felt before?
She drew him up until he was sitting on the bed next to her and kissed him, wilder even than before. His fingers tangled in raven hair and he focused on the ache in his knees to keep himself grounded, restrained.
Zoya stood and unfastened her dress. It floated down to the ground, borne on a gentle breeze, and she stepped daintily out of it. But her undergarments she removed herself, by hand, and Nikolai stared, mesmerized, at each new slice of skin that was revealed. Each piece of Zoya, strong, powerful, utterly lovely, unexpectedly soft.
When she was naked before him but for the dragon scales at her wrists, she struck a seductive pose.
“Am I worth all your days of wanting?”
He didn’t bother to tell her she was beautiful. She’d heard it before, probably from countless men. So instead, he told her another truth. “Zoya, you are worth more than anything I could ever give.”
He saw her face twist with emotion, but then she was in his lap, breath warming his face. “Touch me.”
This he could gladly do. The minutes or hours or days that followed were a flurry of caresses, of exploration. The hollow of her throat, the apple of her cheek, the shell of her ear, the jut of her shoulder blade, the line of her collar bone. The smooth curves and taught muscles of her body, all of her real and tangible under his hands and his lips. All the places he’d looked at but barely dreamt of touching, all the textures he’d thought he’d never feel. Zoya touched, too, tracing fiery trails over his skin and sparking his nerve endings where she went.
He was in such a haze of arousal that when Zoya finally told him to take off his trousers his fingers fumbled on the fastenings. Zoya had to do it for him, calm and competent as always even when incandescent with passion. And then he was kneeling again, on the bed this time, and Zoya straddled him and pressed her forehead to his.
“Nikolai.”
“Yes.”
She sank down onto him slowly, and she felt so good he was already shaking. He could see the intensity of the moment echoed in her eyes.
“Nikolai.”
“Zoya.”
She kissed him deeply. He liked it like this, the intimacy of it, the two of them in the centre of the bed, clinging to one other for balance, entwined as closely as it was possible to be, her arms and legs wrapped around him. Right at this moment, everything in his world was Zoya.
He said so, when she left his mouth to kiss his jaw, only less coherently because she was distracting him from his usual silver-tongued standards. What came out was less of an elegant line and something more like, “Zoya, oh my love, you feel so, Zoya, this is, all saints, love me like this, you make me, Zoya, so perfect, so lovely, I want this forever, Zoya, so good, so—“
He should stop talking, he should, but Zoya felt so damn good in his arms, all around him, and he wasn’t even sure where the words were coming from anymore.
“Hush, Sobachka.” Zoya withdrew, but only far enough to push him down onto his back on the bed, and then she climbed on top of him. “You talk too much.”
She leaned over to take his mouth with hers, and her hair fell around them in a dark curtain, a further layer of privacy inside the privacy of the room. He stroked his hands up and down her back, over the curve of her bottom, squirmed a bit to get closer, deeper, which made her laugh against his mouth before she kissed him again.
By the time she levered herself up to ride him properly his brain was broken enough that all he could say was her name, and she didn’t seem to mind that at all. He grasped her hips as she moved on him.
He would never forget her like this, regal Zoya, head thrown back, face flushed with desire, dark hair tangling wildly over her breasts and down her back, taking what she needed from him. He bit his lip and squeezed her hip, trying to hold on for a minute, a second longer. But she reached a strong hand down to hold him in place, and something in that gesture was enough to put him over the edge. He cried out her name as he went. Zoya didn’t stop until she found her own release a minute later, clenching around him until he shuddered from the stimulation.
They were sweaty and sticky, but Zoya still folded herself into his embrace the way they both liked. Nikolai ran a hand up her back, over her scars, and wondered distantly if her new powers would let her summon just enough water to clean them up without either of them having to move.
“Why am I not surprised that you can’t shut up, even in bed?”
Nikolai grinned, sheepish but not really repentant. “Sorry.”
“No, you’re not.”
“No, I’m not. Zoya—” He swallowed, not wanting to take away from the perfection of the moment, but needing her to know. “It’s—it won’t always be like this.”
She lifted her head, wary. “What won’t always be like which?”
“The demon was quiet tonight,” he said, looking up at the ceiling, as he had so many times after she’d chained him down to keep the demon at bay. “But he’s still there. He’s still part of me. And you’ve seen what it’s like when the demon is active. He brings out the darker side of me. The primitive side. Or maybe it’s that he comes out when that side of me is already at the forefront. I can’t promise I’ll always be gentle in bed.”
“Sobachka.” She had pulled herself up to sitting position while he spoke, but she’d made no move to distance herself from him, to cover herself, so he began to feel a little hopeful. “I love you, but what makes you think I need you to be gentle all the time?”
“But you liked— ”
“Besides, I still have the chains, if we ever need them.”
“Do you? Intriguing.”
“Nikolai. The demon is part of you. So what I hear you saying is that you’re going to make love to me in interesting and varied ways, and yet you say it as though it’s a bad thing.”
Nikolai smiled, even though he could feel the dampness in his eyes. “All saints, Zoya— ”
“Say it! Say it the right way!”
He rolled on top of her and kissed the tip of her nose. “Darling Zoya, light of my life, I am going to make love to you until the end of time, in every interesting and varied way under the sun.” He thought about telling her how life-changing it was to worship at the altar of Sankta Zoya, but she was still a bit sensitive about saints, so he’d wait for another time to do that.
She ran a finger along his jaw. “The dragon queen and her demon lover. Who ever would have thought?”
“Later we can play the dashing privateer and his fiery storm witch. But I need a nap first.”
Nikolai rolled them over and pulled her into him. Exhaustion was tugging at him now, after the physical and emotional release, after the restless night last night, after the months of wanting, of war.
Zoya nuzzled into his side. “Do I get to be the dashing privateer?”
Was this joy, the feeling washing over him now? It had been so long since he’d felt anything like it.
“You get to be whatever you want. I love you. Now sleep.”
“I love you too,” she said with a contented sigh.
And they both slept.