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When Corvus returns for the second time, it’s raining, a torrential rain that sleets against the shuttered windows, accompanied by a wind that howls like something out of Oblivion. It’s left Corvus soaked to the skin and shivering, the rain dripping from his cloak and boots and spreading in a puddle, while seemingly half the castle fusses around him and the other half struggles to push the heavy oak doors closed against the storm clamouring to be allowed inside. He always did know how to make an entrance.
No one has noticed Millona yet. She rushed from her chamber as quickly as she could, throwing a gown of richly embroidered wool on over her nightdress the moment the breathless maid burst into her room without warning and begged her pardon but his lordship had returned and he didn’t seem quite himself.
An unfortunate choice of words.
Millona, still unable to trust her memories, could get no further sense out of the girl, and the closer she drew to the commotion in the Hall, the more her steps faltered.
She can’t remember his name.
It’s because she’s still half-asleep, and still she panics, her mind fumbling for his name. It’s gone, she thinks, biting down on her knuckles, which she’s chewed red-raw. It’s gone, she’s forgotten...
Then it comes to her.
Corvus, she thinks, the flood of relief so intense she can do nothing but turn her gaze upwards to the vaulted ceiling as she thanks the Divines. There is no guarantee that she has not lost him – it may be that he has failed her once too often and she must think of her people – but at least she hasn’t forgotten him. There is some consolation to be found in that.
Lex stands beside Corvus, his hand on his shoulder. He looks poised to arrest him, but instead he’s talking earnestly, his expression grave. Lex’s honest and open face cannot help but show a little of his anger he is probably congratulating himself on hiding so well, but it is almost overwhelmed by concern.
Millona can see why, and she understands now why the maid was so distressed. Even from a distance, Corvus is a wreck. He wavers on his feet like a drunk, looking as though he might faint at any moment and as though it’s only Lex’s grip on his shoulder that keeps him on his feet. He’s filthy, his hair a matted tangle. Runnels of rainwater have left tracks in the grime on his skin.
The combined strength of the guards has succeeded in levering the doors open, shutting out the storm and the worst of the wind. The sound of the latch settling into place echoes around the Hall and at the sound Corvus looks up and meets her gaze.
He looks even worse than she realised.
His smile is an afterthought, made ghastly by the look of unrelenting despair screaming out from his bloodshot eyes.
Lex has seen her too, his expression of relief spoiled by his concern for her, and also, perhaps, by the tiniest sliver of crushed hope.
She can’t put it off any longer, no matter how desperately she wants to. She gathers herself, smooths her hands down the skirt of the robe, wishing she’d taken a moment to dress. She trusts the people here, her people, but she knows the delight with which gossip-mongers will meet this tale: how she was still wearing her nightclothes when she came to welcome him back from whatever dockside inn he’d lost his way in this time.
So she reaches for the calm outer image she came to rely on far too often while he was gone, bitterly regretting how easily it comes to her, how it feels like a second skin. With that on, she’ll take refuge in formality and practical necessities. Once those are in place, once Corvus is warm and dressed in clean clothes, once he doesn’t look quite so much like a resurrected shambling corpse…
"My husband appears to be frozen to the bone," she announces, sweeping into the midst of the bustle and catching the attention of a maid. "Have a bath prepared. Be sure not to make the water too hot, but stoke the fire in the room."
The maid curtseys, then hesitates. "In your chamber, my lady?"
"Naturally. Where else?"
The crowd departs in a rush. Something in their movements puts her in mind of a flock of birds. Starlings, she thinks, refusing to allow her thoughts to run along other lines. Other birds. Her shoulders loosen, and she nods gratefully to Lex.
"Thank you, Captain," she says softly. It’s a dismissal, but he hesitates.
Corvus claps him on the shoulder, still smiling, although his eyes were bleak, black pits. "I believe Lex thinks I must have been robbed on the road and left for dead," he says.
From Lex’s expression, he doesn’t believed anything of the sort, although he might have hoped it. And now feels guilty for hoping it.
"I should return to the barracks," he says uncertainly, his gaze shifting between the two of them. "Unless, my lady, you would prefer I…"
"Thank you, Lex," Millona says firmly, "but I believe we shall manage."
By now, she’s desperate to escape from the Great Hall, away from the sound of the wind lashing the rain against the doors, from the smell of damp rising in wisps of steam around the flickering torches. Sound carries strangely in this great old castle. Even Millona, who has spent her entire life here, doesn’t know all its secrets.
She turns and strides back along the Great Hall, towards the staircase. Corvus follows her meekly enough, pausing only to shed his dripping cloak and hand it off to one of the maidservants. Beneath he’s wearing the same clothes he was wearing when he vanished, fine Colovian clothes in sensible hard-wearing fabric, leather and wool in plain muted colours, and now all ruined beyond repair.
She isn’t going to say anything. She has already decided that, if only because she doesn’t trust what she might say, and then despite that, when they reach a quiet corridor, she stops dead and then turns on him, spinning on her heel. At first she can’t speak, and when she does, Corvus begins to speak too, saying her name at the exact same moment that she says his. They break off, staring at each other. Corvus sighs.
"Millona," he begins to say more slowly, and she shakes her head and steps towards him, lets him enfold her in his arms.
She isn’t crying. She’s done enough crying since the moment he left, and now she feels numb, only the chill of his sodden clothes piercing through the fog of exhaustion and fear. He rubs her back gently, moving his hand in slow circles.
"How could you?" she demands, pressing her face into his chest. "You promised me you’d never leave again."
"I won't," he says, and she makes a noise of disgust deep in her throat.
"You have already–"
"This time I mean it. I swear, on the gods, on my life, on anything you damned well like, I'll never leave you again. Not so long as I live. It’s over."
"Corvus…" Dread grips hold of her. "What have you done?"
"The only thing I could do," he tells her, his voice light as if this were nothing but an amusing story, something to swap over glasses of brandy in the wake of a dinner party. "I made a bargain. Using the only thing of value I have left to trade."
"Which is?"
She has a horrible feeling she already knows. Corvus grips her upper arms and pulls back. He’s smiling again, but it doesn’t touch his eyes.
"Nothing of any real value," he says with brittle cheer. "Quite the opposite, in fact. I do believe I got the better deal in that particular bargain. And I promise you this, my love, you’ll never have to be afraid of shadows ever again."
* * *
She dreamed of shadows before he left. Dreams that weren’t exactly dreams, the same ones which had haunted her sleep for as long as she could remember. They were worse than ever now.
Two days before he left a crow had fallen down the chimney while she read, bursting into the room in a sudden flurry of feathers, frantic cawing and soot. The smell it brought with it might have put her in mind of a blacksmith’s forge, superheated metal and the choking acrid reek of ash. But what it really brought to mind, the truth she didn’t want to admit to herself, was her memory of the Oblivion Gate.
Bad omens. There’d been too many of those lately.
And in her dreams the crow came back to her, spreading its wings around her like a shroud while she lay drowsing on a bed that had become a raft, floating on a vast unending ocean of black glassy ink. The glassy surface of the ink shivered with a breeze she couldn’t feel, marked with ripples that suggested something sinuous and snake-like slipping beneath the surface, and with every breath she took her memories slipped away. She forgot Corvus, her family, her city, even herself: all she knew was that she was hunting for someone in this dream that wasn't a dream, and when she found him she wouldn’t like what she found.
Then a hand burst up out of the black water, so suddenly she cried out, but she threw herself across the tilting bed towards the figure who was already sinking and thrust her hands beneath the surface to grip his arm. The sheets rucked beneath her heels where she braced herself and he grasped at her blindly as she hauled him out, shivering and naked, her mind a screaming void save for one thought: I don’t want to see.
His face was blank, an expanse of skin with no eyes, no mouth, no features save the daedric lettering carved into the featureless mask.
She woke with a strangled cry, lay there gasping for a few moments while her gaze roved wildly around the shadowed corners of her bedchamber until her eyesight adjusted to the gloom.
There was no sign of Corvus.
After a while, once her heart had stopped hammering, she rose to pulled a robe on, not allowing herself to think, and lit a candle.
Instinct took her along less used passageways, to a long-forgotten storeroom where the dust was almost an inch deep, and the only sign of life other than Millona’s own footprints were the rats and spiders.
No one had been here in a long time. Not since the other throne, the twin to her own, had been brought out of storage and returned it to its proper place on the dais in the Great Hall. The sheet lay crumpled on the ground at the base of several paintings leaning against the wall.
Nothing removed, nothing added. Except for one thing: a single raven’s feather lying on the ground in the middle of the room.
Carefully, Millona knelt and picked it up, It felt like silk between her fingers, its deep shining blackness broken up with shimmering colours that caught the flickering light of the candle and shone like the lights in the sky over Bruma. When the flame guttered, she caught her breath, both desperate to put the feather down, and unable to make herself do it.
She could taste ashes in her mouth, blood in the back of her throat. In her memories, the wind changed direction, sweeping in from inland, and carrying with it the acrid stench of burning metal, and beneath that the suggestion of burning flesh. Singed hair, cooking meat. The reminder of how helpless she was, how useless–
She wasn’t alone. A shadow fell across her, the floorboards creaking softly in a way she was certain had to be deliberate. If he'd meant to move silently, she wouldn't have heard him.
"Millona?"
"You followed me," she said, not wanting to look around.
The monster from her dreams suddenly felt more real than the man she married. If she looked up, she thought, he wouldn’t have a face.
"I thought you might have been sleep-walking," he said carefully.
"I was, I think. In a way." She had to force herself to lift her gaze, and when she did her shoulders eased off a little. He had a face. Not the one she’d been expecting, since every time she looked at him she half-expected to see him as he was ten years ago and it always threw her a little, but she’d grown used to that, more or less.
As he came inside, his gaze paused on the feather, then flitted up to her face, but he said nothing. He knelt beside her, his knees nudging against hers, and waited for her to speak, gently brushing the clinging dust from the skirt of her gown.
"I used to come here often while you were gone," she said. "I never quite knew why, not then. It was as if... as if I was looking for something. Do you know that feeling, Corvus, when you walk in a room and you know you've gone there with a purpose, but for the life of you, you can't remember the reason why or what you were looking for?"
"Not often. There’s only one thing that matters to me these days."
She smiled wanly.
Corvus took her hand in his. He always had had beautiful hands, she remembered, and they were one of the few things about him that hadn’t changed much: long-fingered, elegant, the hands, she realised now, of a thief. He'd done tricks for her when they were courting, sleights of hand that had delighted her. There always had been more than a whiff of Oblivion about him. The Corvus she remembered was quick-witted and mercurial, and seldom silent for long, leaping from one topic to the next with a rapidity that left the listener breathless. Part of his thieves’ cant, he’d told her once, a knack he picked up and never quite lost.
He was silent now, apparently content merely to listen and wait while she picked her way through another labyrinth of his own making. His expression was grave and weary, but as she paused to study him he brought her hand up to his lips to kiss her knuckles, a sad smile on his lips.
"My whole life feels that way," she said, and when he said her name, she cut him off with a decisive shake of her head. She knew what was coming and she didn't think she could bear it. "No more apologies, Corvus." Her voice was sharper than she intended, more brittle. "There have been quite enough of those."
"Not enough, I sometimes think."
"And have any of them done any good?"
"Well…" He pursed his lips. "I like to think so."
"Well, perhaps they did help a little," she allowed, "but..."
"Diminishing returns?" He said it lightly, almost jokingly, but she knew him well enough to recognise the regret threading through his words. She squeezed his hand. She had forgiven him, but whatever cracks there were that remained in their marriage would heal only in time. She had faith that what emerged would be as strong as ever, perhaps even stronger, even if it wasn’t quite the same as it had been before.
He leaned in close to kiss her forehead, then the corner of her cheekbone, then her lips, and in turn Millona leaned into him, wanting the comfort of his presence, as they kiss, slow and sweet. With her eyes closed they might both be young again, and Millona could be in no doubt that this was the man she married.
"What was it brought you here tonight?" he asked when the kiss broke off. "I know I slept badly. Did I wake you?"
She shook her head, although she wasn't sure that was true. An empty bed might have been enough to do it: her sleep was always more restless when he wasn’t there. "I’ve been thinking about the paintings," she said. "We should bring some of them out again. Find a place for them again."
Corvus made a face. "I’m not sure that’s a good idea. I’d rather not have that idiot version of myself staring down at me from the walls, reminding me of everything I could have had but missed because of my own stupidity." He glared at the nearest painting as if it had personally offended him. "That little fool who didn't know how lucky he was."
Millona laughed. "I very much hope he did know," she said mock-sternly, and Corvus cast her a penitent look.
"He did," he said, "of course he did. Which only makes his idiocy all the more aggravating."
He stood, holding out his hand. She took it and he helped her up, tugging a little too hard so that she was pulled into his arms.
"What would you do with him?" she asked. "If you had the chance?"
"Lock him in the dungeon, probably," he said. "In shackles. And double the guards on patrol."
"He'd pick both the shackles and door in moments. And Castle Anvil has its share of secret passageways so he could very easily make his way around it unseen."
"Not if I boobytrap them."
"A man as quick-witted as him would have no difficulty in evading even the most elaborate of traps."
"Fine," he said, nuzzling at her neck. "Then I’ll tie him to the bed."
"Wouldn’t he just slip the bonds."
The shadow of a smile tugged at the corner of his lips. "Not the way I'd tie them."
She laughed, then made a faint sound of appreciation at the sensation of his lips on her throat. "I miss him," she murmured softly into his chest. "It's absurd, I know. You're the same person. But I still miss him. I know it makes no sense."
Corvus shook his head and stepped away. "What makes even less sense is me being jealous of him. Which, I’m very much afraid to say, I am. And that strikes me as another reason why we should let those paintings rot. Given my current appearance, I'm not sure I want my handsome younger self smiling down at us from the walls, making you fall in love with him all over again. Let's have some new portraits painted instead. A fresh start."
"I like the thought of that," she said, smiling up at him as he held the door open for her.
They left the dusty loneliness of the silent store room, and walked along corridors so quiet they they might have been the only two people left alive, and when they reached her bedchamber Millona realised with a shudder that she was still carrying the feather.
She threw it onto the flames, immediately wishing she hadn’t as the smell of burning feathers pervaded the room, too strong, surely, to have been caused by a single feather, but then Corvus was there, drawing off her gown, kissing away her fear, pulling her slowly towards the bed, and it wasn’t until afterwards, when they were lying tangled together in a nest of rumpled bedclothes, that he asked her what she’d dreamt about.
His voice was deceptively casual, still light-hearted on the surface, as though he were only curious, nothing more.
"I don't really remember," she said. "Does it matter?"
"It matters if it isn't really a dream," he said. Millona froze, then twisted in his arms to stare at him. Corvus smiled, but there was a grimly set quality to his expression, almost mask-like. "I could be wrong."
"It's her, isn't it." Panic made her throat tighten. She couldn't bring herself to say the name, not out light, but she formed it inside the relative safety of her skull: Nocturnal. There always had been a whiff of the daedric about him, she remembered. "I thought she'd let you go."
"It's almost the one thing that frightens me most," he said. "That she might not be so easy to escape."
"Only almost?"
He didn’t smile, not exactly, but the lines around his eyes creased a little deeper. "There is something that frightens me more," he said, then:"I want to know about your dreams, Millona. Every detail. It's important."
And so she told him, about the dreams, about the shadows. About slick black ink and billowing clouds of smoke which carried the clammy brush of frozen hands against her cheeks, and trees with branches heavy-laden with carrion birds. Once she started, it was as if she couldn’t stop, as though she wasn’t quite herself, like a wisp of smoke had twined its way into the cavity of her chest the first moment she took a breath of that tainted air and taken her over.
The fear took root: she was going to lose him again, just as she’d always known she would lose him, ever since the first moment they met. And other fears, stranger ones, that she’d never really known him at all, or that perhaps the man who’d come back wasn’t really the man she’d married. While he was missing, a new figure seemed to step into the place he left behind, a shape with a face impossible to bring to mind, and a name forever on the tip of the tongue. It was a figure of gossip and innuendo, formed from whispers and mock-whispers, spiteful and sympathetic both. How scandalous he was, how dissolute, how dreadfully cruel to his poor wife. And maybe it was true. Maybe she didn’t really know him at all.
Would she have married him, she wondered, if when they were courting she’d known what she knew now? Corvus would have walked away, he’d already told her that, but for Millona it was a question she didn’t know the answer to. Not yet, anyway, but there was always a chance, wasn’t there, that there was something else lurking in their futures, something worse.
When she’d finished talking, he stayed silent for so long she might have thought him asleep if her hand wasn’t resting on his chest. She could feel the rapid beat of his heart. He was afraid.
"It means something to you," she said, sounding more accusatory that she had intended. In response, his shoulders twitched.
"Dreams can mean anything."
"Don't," she snapped, suddenly furious. "I'm not a fool, Corvus. I know what dreams are and what they were not and that was no dream. Shadows and carrion birds, it's her. She hasn't let go of you. Or you haven't let go of her."
"I have. But..."
"But what?"
"But she may not be ready to let go of me," he said, and his voice sounded numb with despair.
Millona burrowed into his side, drawing in the scent of his sweat, the comfort of the weight of his solid body. Her anger had already flared out, brief and violent as a summer storm. "She has to be," she said despairing. "What more could she possibly want from you? You’re–"
"Old and spent? Worn out?" he suggested.
"Well, I wasn’t going to say," she said, and he snorted, pressing a kiss against her hair. He was smiling, she thought, but then she felt the shift in his body, the tension in his limbs. He drew a breath and she tensed up, the movement involuntary, because she knew he was on the verge of telling her something, and that he was reluctant to tell her, which could only mean that whatever it was she wouldn’t like it.
Then he sighed, the tension leaving his body in a flood. "You’re right," he murmured softly, his voice so quiet she could barely hear it over the rush of the blood in her ears. "She has plenty of thieves, many of them far more skilled than I am these days. She’ll leave us alone, I’m sure of it."
He was lying. She should have challenged him, but the words caught in her throat and she couldn’t bring herself to speak. As they drifted off to sleep she clung to him tighter, as if by doing so she could somehow anchor him to her forever, keep him by her side.
And in the morning he was gone.
* * *
"Corvus," she says now, "you’re frightening me."
He pulls back his lips in something that’s more grimace than smile, and reaches for the glass of brandy. "And terrifying myself."
He’s had the bath, which has gone some way to warming him through, but the storm still howls, making the shutters rattle, and the wind seems to find every crevice in the windows, and there’s a deeper chill in the air which the fire in the grate has done little to alleviate.
"Corvus, please, you’re drunk. Whatever happened to you, if you were… injured…" And gods, how she hopes that was true. Wishes it with all her heart. "Please, just sleep. We can discuss it in the morning, can’t we? I’m sure, whatever it is…" Her voice trails off. He’s making no move to stand, to move to the bed. Instead, he’s staring down at the surface of the brandy, his eyes distant and dreamy. She can’t be certain he’s heard her at all.
"Do you remember what we talked about?" he says. "Before I left?"
A breath hisses out between her teeth. A stab of resentment. How many times had she run through that conversation, over and over again, as if she could find the answers she needed in his words. "Yes," she says flatly because she cannot trust herself to say anything else.
Corvus nods slowly, dips his finger in the brandy, then scrawls something on the desk. Millona follows his gaze unwillingly, unable to focus on the letters. They’re daedric, a phrase that she knows only too well.
Shadow hide you. The motto of thieves.
"Those shadows you dream of," he says, "do you know what they are? They’re not simply an absence of light. They're people, Millona. Those sworn to Nocturnal. The avaricious ones who traded the service of their souls after death for a lifetime of luck and plenty."
"You mean thieves," she says. It feels as though her blood has frozen, a chill creeping through her as she begins to understand. "The only thing of value you had left to trade. No, gods, please tell me you didn't..."
"To protect you." He reaches for her and she recoils, her heart hammering.
"What makes you think I want your protection?" She shakes her head, refusing to accept it, trying to make sense of it all. "You promised me were finished with her! To do this… It’s obscene."
He gives a one-sided shrug. "What's my soul, anyway? A worthless tatty thing. She's made a bad bargain there." And still, for all his pretended indifference, his voice breaks. Millona squeezes her eyes shut. She’s trembling, and this time when he reaches for her, she doesn’t resist, lets him pull her close. "I did it to protect you," he says, his voice at her ear. "Always. Everything I've done. It's for you, my love."
She drew a ragged breath, pulls herself together. Reluctantly, he lets her pull away, searching her face. "Do you remember when the Gates opened?" Millona asks, dropping to her knees before him.
"I imagine everyone in Tamriel remembers that day. I should have been with you. And I will never be able to forgive myself that I wasn't."
Millona ignores this. She's silent a long time before she begins to speak, her voice soft and low, distant. "I watched it from the battlements. For hours I was up there, watching for... I don't know. The way it stained the sky red like blood, even from a distance it hurt the eyes. They tried to get me to come down and I... I couldn't. I couldn't do anything but watch it happen and wait and know that I was utterly helpless, that what happened in Kvatch might just as easily happen in Anvil. I've never been so scared, Corvus. Not in all my life. It felt like a... a living thing, bunched around my chest, tightening around my heart so I could hardly breathe. I'd never felt such despair." She bunches her hand, hooks her fingers into claws against her chest. "Except that then, there was someone up there with me. Standing at my side, just by my elbow. He took my hand and when I leaned in against him he put his arm around my back and he held me." She looks up at him, her lips twisting. "I thought it was Lex."
"It very well could have been. It's just like him to offer comfort and succour to a woman in distress."
She glares at him.
"But at least he was here," he continues. "Protecting you. Doing his duty."
"Odd," she says pointedly, "why a man as noble, accomplished, and intelligent as Captain Lex should find himself posted here in the first place. There were some questions raised about that posting, as I recall."
"Someone in the Imperial City wanted him out of the way for some reason I couldn't possibly fathom. So I would imagine."
"Mm. I wonder who that could possibly have been." She shakes her head. "It wasn't Lex. It couldn't have been Lex, because after I left the battlements, I found him in the courtyard running training drills with the guardsmen."
"Diligent as always."
She strokes his wet hair, running her fingers through it. They catch on snags and tangles, and she tightens her grip, tugging just a little to force him to meet her gaze, telling him without words that she is serious, and that she expects him to be serious too. Just once in his life. "You shouldn’t have done it. Whatever you hoped to achieve, it wasn’t worth it."
"We’ll have to disagree on that score. To protect you, I'd sell my soul a thousand times over."
"And you never once thought what I would want you to do?" She speaks softly, but her words are tight and furious. He blinks and gives her a second glance, a little thrown. Millona leans forwards, resting her hands on her legs, intent as a hunting dog. "Have you forgotten who I am, everything my family has done? Do you think I'm any less than any of them?"
"No." He kisses her hand. "No. You're worth more than all of them combined."
"Well then. I have seen a gate to Oblivion open outside the walls of my city, my city. I ruled alone for ten years after..."
"...Being deserted by your faithless rogue of a husband?"
Millona sighs. He never can take anything seriously for long. "Rogue, perhaps, but faithless? I'm not sure that's the word I would use."
"What word would you use?"
"Foolish. Impulsive. Feckless. Irresponsible, conceited. Take your pick."
"All right, all right," he says, but he's smiling.
"And anyway, stop trying to change the subject. Did you really think I would stand by and let this happen? I've seen the worst happen. I have seen what remains of Kvatch, and I know it could very easily have happened here in Anvil. I know that. I accepted that. And I would willingly have died with my people. Do you really think I would have stood by and let her take you?"
"Defy the daedra at every turn?"
"It's what a good pious girl who loves the Nine would do. My ancestors didn't baulk at defeating the Blag Flag, and I will not baulk at this. And if you think I'm going to stand by and allow my husband to spent eternity in servitude to a being so utterly cruel, who stole him away from me for ten long and terrible years, then you really are a fool."
He's staring at her, taking in her resolute expression. "What do you mean to do?"
"The daedra can be outwitted, even Daedric Lords. It's happened before."
"Yes, and look how that turned out."
"Maybe there's nothing we can do. But maybe there is. But I know what it is to feel helpless, certain that there was nothing that could be done, that we might as well stop fighting, because some enemies could never be defeated. Someone lent me his strength and gave me the will to carry on."
"Good old Lex."
"Corvus." She glares at him, and he, damnable rogue that he is, flashes her his most winning smile. "You were there, Corvus. At the moment I needed you most, somehow, and the gods know how you managed it, how you managed any of it, you were there. How could I do anything but the same for you? Whatever happens, I'll find a way to free you from this obligation, my love."
There is hope in his eyes, for the first time that she can remember. He wants desperately to believe her, and her heart aches for him. Believe it, she wills, and she doesn’t know which of them she’s trying to convince.
"Whether it's possible or not, I don't know," she says, cupping his cheek. "But I mean to try."
He smiles. The brief flash of hope she saw in his eyes has gone. He’s pulled up his walls again, closed his emotions off. Maybe he doesn’t believe it’s possible but at least he doesn’t look frightened any more. It’s because he’s a thief, she knows; he lives for the moment, and hang the consequences. He’s chosen this moment, and all the ones that follow, however long they get. She supposes there are worse philosophies to live your life by, but it’s not one she lives by. He cannot dare to let himself hope; she cannot dare to do anything but.
"What did I ever do to deserve you?" He leans forwards to kiss her, pulling her up onto his lap. He tastes of brandy. His arms shift around her waist, and then he’s pushing her plait back, kissing her throat instead. "You know," he says idly, "if you’re really determined to warm me up..."
"You seem to have warmed through perfectly adequately," she says primly, but she laughs as he leads her to bed. There are some consolations to living for the moment.