Air caught in her chest and she found herself choking. Though on a sob or a panic attack, Rhosyn didn't let her body register it, and she slipped beside Karsyn feeling rather small—and not due to his height.
"Lady—" Karsyn began and caught himself.
She wasn't sure what he saw when he looked at her, but she found it hard to pull on her guard, especially against him. He had a way of seeing things she thought she hid. Noticing things that people wouldn't bother searching for and it aggravated her.
"Let's dance," he easily decided and in a room this busy and loud, it was probably the only place to be 'alone'.
Rhosyn took his hand, a little too easily, but the fight had been burnt out of her already. Edrien had drained her, and sucker punched her, and befuddled her in the most disturbing way.
Things moved swiftly. Her mind was drowning her and when she surfaced, she had travelled to the centre of the room, already wrapping herself around Karsyn.
His eyes tracked her. Caught the way she submerged into her thoughts, suffocated there, before returning at a new touch of his. His palm in hers. His hand wrapped around and found the small of her back. The warmth of their bodies meeting. His cheek brushing hers.
It was the only thing that anchored her.
The room all but flashed by, yet her eyes always managed to find Edrien.
"...you're not here," Karsyn mumbled close to her ear and she barely caught it.
Rhosyn felt like she was drowning, that the room was closing in on her and it was all her own doing.
"I'm here," she lied, but it was the safest she felt. Clinging to him, whispering grounding words and breathing. One step at a time.
"Would you like to tell me what that was back there?" he asked, his expression hidden from her and she wouldn't even be able to focus long enough to read him even if she could see it.
"It was nothing," she fabricated again and he didn't press.
"Fine," Karsyn sighed. "What did the King mean by your 'new' Marriage Clause—and I don't want another lie from you."
From one complex conversation to another. She really knew how to pick men.
"He thinks he won and he's gloating," Rhosyn retorted.
"And what did he win?"
"Money, a time extension of receivership—the only language he speaks," Rhosyn said listlessly.
Karsyn hummed, though she couldn't work out if it was in agreement or bitter assessment. Maybe simply to cut off his own harsh words. But Rhosyn didn't care anymore. The night spun—and not just because they danced. There was something sickening curdling in her stomach and the more she held Karsyn, the more her fingers curled into him.
The music dwindled to a halt and he didn't move to untangle them. Not yet.
Maybe he could feel how her heart hammered against its cage. Or maybe it was the necessity in the way she clung to him, sure that if she let go, she'd fall—and she wasn't sure where she'd end up.
She fractured. Shattered. And all that was left was haunting honesty. Though even she wasn't ready to admit it yet.
Rhosyn pushed out of his hands, turning for the garden exit. Something small and overlooked. Something she wished she was—insignificant. But then, she felt that way now.
The cold clawed at her first. The sudden quiet of the outside and for a moment she could've fallen into the stars blinking in the sky. There was something about being in the cold, dark and alone that amplified all her other senses. And she'd never felt so exposed.
She was familiar with the weight of his boots on floorboards, gravel, and grass. That she didn't need to turn to know Karsyn stood a few paces behind her.
Her head spun and she wouldn't have been surprised if she was just drunk—except for the truth that she hadn't touched a drop. The cold seeped into her bones and she realised she was only ever cold when she was not near him.
"Lady Valewyn—"
"Please..." her voice shuddered out of her. "Just call me my name."
Silence won the moment, a bitter breeze brushing past her that won a shiver.
"Rhosyn," his voice lulled over her name and her heart sang.
He took a step, but she had already turned toward him, eyes roaming his features, catching on his opening mouth and she was closing the space. Thoughts, warnings, fantasies are all but forgotten as she wrapped her arms around his neck and locked her lips on his. She caught the word on his tongue and tasted his curiosity.
His hands sought purchase, one losing itself in her hair, where the other traced her waist. They shared breaths like sharing heat and Rhosyn lost herself in the depth of his lips. He was exactly what people used to say—a man with many words, but needing none.
Her body arched into him as if answering a long denied desire and her fingers ran along his jaw. Each locking of lips and whisper of tongues purring within her. But sadly, everything ends, and Rhosyn could feel reality tug at her in the form of a chill wind.
She managed to pull back, come up for air, but neither one unwrapped themselves.
Karsyn's thumb traced the line of her cheek, a smile lighting his winter grey eyes.
"I knew you find me attractive," he hummed, delighted to be right, and she realised how long she'd been fighting it—him.
"You're insufferable," she huffed, the hint of humour imbued in her words.
"Maybe." Karsyn smirked. "But, I'm hardly wrong." The words ghosted a memory and Rhosyn found herself falling into it.
A stony beach. A pebble offered. A stranger.
It echoed the same candor as her Mr Hardly Wrong and the image finally became solid and clear—Karsyn standing over her. Something whispered authentically and it shook her to her core.
He could feel it in the way she dithered, fingers clinging tighter to him while at the same time she pushed away.
"I said people prefer honest things," he said, the words mimicking the memory and it twisted more.
"Some truths are too late," Rhosyn breathed, feeling regret pool in her stomach as she pushed out of his arms, heading for the door—the exit, home.
The hall's music and babble slammed into her. Bodies moving like insects slithering past each other and slipping into sly coquetry, while swallowing lies and compliments as though it was substance.
Rhosyn bypassed the mess, keeping to the dim corridor, heading for the quiet exit—the one she often used.
Something inoffensive and unassuming caught her attention and Rhosyn stopped short.
"Lady Valewyn," the beautiful woman huffed with all the air and arrogance of someone who had already made up their mind about her—so the usual. "I see you are a passionate woman," her accent played on the words like violins on notes, it was musical and pretty in a strikingly strange concoction.
This feathered dressed woman was a princess wrapped in lilac and silk, finery and fashion at its pique—Rhosyn was sure—and as entitled as all royalty was.
"I suggest you curtsy, or bow—or whatever Riverfolk do—Lady Valewyn," she warned, her accent sapping authority from her bite.
Of course Edrien's betrothed would be badgering her here when she was trying to escape. It twisted a fire within Rhosyn that she thought had burned out.
"I don't bow to foreign royalty—it's treasonous." Rhosyn straightened, her court-hall face sliding into place and she looked down on the princess.
"But I am betrothed to the Crown Prince, I am—"
"Betrothals break all the time," Rhosyn cut her off, venom dripping from her words.
She was angry. She'd been fractured, shattered, broken and beaten, and this princess from nowhere of any consequence, thought she could stomp Rhosyn down another step. Well, she refused.
Princess Claude regarded her with open hostility, she'd probably never been told that she was a no-one. Well Rhosyn had, and it always rolled off her. Oh how the high and mighty fall so far.
The princess tensed her jaw. "Just take this as a warning; you show your face in court again, you won't wake from your next sleep."
Rhosyn laughed, almost maniacal. Princess Claude shrank back in disturbed confusion. Rhosyn couldn't help herself, she'd had a target on her back for as long as she could remember, that it amused her when an amateur attempted to intimidate her.
"You won't have to worry about that," Rhosyn concurred. "I have no interest in keeping any of you royals company."
With an over the top curtsy, Rhosyn turned from the open-mouthed princess and finally slipped from her palace. Again the cold greeted her and she begrudgingly let it. Her breath pooled in clouds and her fingers went numb.
"Sir Caerwyn," her teeth chattered.
He came up beside her like a pillar and she fell into him—her legs giving out.
"Get me home," she begged.
"Yes, My Lady," he answered, lifting her into his arms and carrying her toward the carriages. She'd brave a carriage, as long as she was alone, only then could she let herself fall apart.