Chapter 35
“Home,” Tamsin repeated, lingering over the word. “I’m home.”
She had to keep saying it out loud. Not because she didn’t believe it—she’d felt a click like a puzzle piece settling into place the moment she’d walked through the front door. No, she kept saying it just because she could say it. Because it was true.
“Home,” she sighed in utter contentment, savoring that warm, tingling feeling of rightness. “Home.”
“Home,” Cuan agreed, smiling.
He’d been watching her with that small, wondering smile ever since they’d arrived at her cottage. As she’d fussed Angus and watered her wilting herb garden and squawked in horror at the disgusting state of her fridge, he’d been mostly silent. Just a quiet, comfortable presence.
A right presence. As right as the vintage stove, or her granny’s handmade quilt, or Angus.
She snuggled closer into Cuan’s side. They were curled up on the sofa together, in front of the embers of a log fire—well, she was curled up. Cuan had taken off his armor, but he was still rather straight-backed and stiff.
“Nothing’s going to leap out of the cushions and challenge you to a duel.” She poked his side. “You can relax, you know.”
He let out an amused breath, his smile quirking wryly. “I do not know, actually. It occurs to me that I have never actually been anywhere I could completely relax. Even in Maeve’s court, I was always on my guard.”
“Mmm.” She pushed at him, bodily hauling him about until he was arranged in a posture that was slightly less soldier-on-duty. “Guess I’ll just have to teach you.”
His arm curled around her shoulders, pulling her close. “I would like that very much.”
With another happy sigh, she leaned her head against his chest, listening to his slow, calm heartbeat. She watched Angus’s paws twitch, chasing rabbits—or possibly evil fae—in his dreams.
Cuan’s fingers traced slow spirals over her shoulder. “I…never actually asked if you wanted me to stay.”
She lifted her head to shoot him a mock glare. “Cuan. Don’t make me chain you up.”
A low laugh rumbled through his chest, even as his eyes lit with a certain wicked heat. “You do not need to put me on a leash to keep me at your side. Though I very much hope that you will do so anyway, on occasion.”
“Good.” She stretched up to claim his lips. “That’s settled then.”
He rumbled agreement, mouth busy on her own. For a while, she lost herself in that wonderful, silent communication.
She felt his chest move under her palm in a slight sigh. He pulled back a little, looking rueful.
“Your friends Jack and Cathy cornered me while you were speaking with Betty and Hope,” he said. “They wished to impress certain things upon me. They were, ah, very forceful about it.”
Tamsin’s eyebrows rose. “Oh? What sort of things?”
Cuan gazed at the ceiling, his expression turning rather pained. “It was difficult for me to interpret some of their metaphors. But unless I am very much mistaken, they threatened to insert a very wide and very sharp length of cold iron in a rather private and uncomfortable place, should I seek to move too quickly with you.”
Tamsin smothered a giggle. “I bet. And what did you say in return?”
“The truth.” Cuan looked down at her again, his face still and solemn once more. “That I belonged to you, body and soul. But that you must choose what you did with me, and when.”
Tamsin traced the lines of the faemarks curling across his high, sharp cheekbones. “You promised me that you wouldn’t ask me to mate you, not ever again.”
“I did.”
“And unseelie fae can’t break promises.”
“No.” His eyes were dark as a solar eclipse, his irises just a thin ring of gold. “They cannot.”
His faemarks were gleaming now, shimmering with those iridescent shades of blue and green. Tamsin moved her hand lower, across his lips, and felt his breath catch.
“But you aren’t unseelie anymore,” she murmured.