Had the Prince of Yarzat not been sitting directly across the table, Alpheo was certain the young couple would have ventured even further into their indiscretions. They were bold enough to slip away in the middle of the feast, returning hours later with ragged breath and hair that told a tale of passion rather than pageantry.
It was an awkward sight at a banquet held in Merelao's honor, but passion is a difficult fire to douse, and who in the camp was brave enough to voice a complaint?
Alpheo himself felt the sting of it. He missed his wife with a hollow ache that grew sharper in the frost of late October. Every morning he woke to an empty bed, a cold pang of "nothing" settling in his chest where her warmth should have been.
But he was at war, and husband missing wife were probably the warmest of preoccupations.
