Lysara stood beneath the steady stream of hot water in the modern ensuite, closing her eyes as the warmth slowly eased the tightness that had settled between her shoulders.
Sleep.
That was what she needed.
A few hours at least, before dance class. Afterwards she would lose herself in drawing until it was time to meet Celeste, wherever the impossibly self-assured woman intended to take her. Perhaps she would begin another painting. There was a peculiar comfort in stretching fresh canvas across a frame, in that brief moment before the first brushstroke when every possibility still existed.
With any luck she could avoid her parents entirely.
The engagement weighed far more heavily upon her thoughts than the emerald itself weighed upon her hand, and she wasn't yet ready for the conversation that inevitably awaited her.
She reached to turn off the water.
A startled yelp escaped her as a towel appeared in front of her.
Her feet slipped on the polished tiles as she spun, only for a firm hand to catch her elbow before she lost her footing altogether.
"I did ask you to stay where you were." Daevyn's voice was quiet.
He had evidently changed in haste. Dark jeans and trainers had replaced yesterday's tailored clothes, while a charcoal T-shirt stretched comfortably across broad shoulders that looked as though they hadn't relaxed for hours. His hair remained damp from a hurried shower, pale strands escaping untidily from where he'd evidently abandoned any attempt to tame them.
He looked exhausted. Not merely tired. Utterly exhausted.
Steam drifted lazily between them, softening the edges of the room until everything beyond the two of them seemed strangely unreal. And then her eyes caught the smear of crimson near the corner of his mouth.
Lipstick.
Aurora's.
The sight landed somewhere beneath her ribs with surprising force.
Daevyn reached behind the bathroom door, lifting her bathrobe from its hook before holding it open.
She slipped her arms into the sleeves automatically and tied the belt tightly around herself.
"Right," he said at last.
Before she had the faintest notion what he intended, he bent, slipped one arm behind her knees and the other around her back, then lifted her cleanly from the floor.
She gave a completely undignified squeal.
"Daevyn!"
The world lurched alarmingly as he shifted her over his shoulder with effortless confidence.
"What are you doing?"
"Taking you back."
His answer arrived with infuriating simplicity as he carried her out of the bathroom and across her bedroom.
"I can walk perfectly well."
"I'm aware."
"Then put me down."
"No."
She planted both hands against the broad expanse of his back, discovering to her considerable annoyance that attempting to push him proved about as effective as attempting to move one of the ancient oaks surrounding House Vale.
"You cannot simply abduct me."
"I believe you'll find," he replied, opening her bedroom door with his free hand, "that I've already done so."
She made an exasperated sound. "This is absurd."
"It certainly is."
He carried her out onto the landing without breaking stride.
"Daevyn."
"Hm?"
"I am being perfectly serious."
"So am I."
They reached the staircase.
"This is profoundly undignified."
"I imagine so."
"I shall never forgive you."
"I suspect you will."
She opened her mouth to deliver a suitably cutting reply just as a familiar door eased open on the upper landing.
Her mother peered sleepily into the corridor.
For one dreadful heartbeat Elowen simply blinked.
Then her gaze travelled from Lysara, draped over Daevyn's shoulder like a particularly indignant sack of flour, to Daevyn himself.
He inclined his head with impeccable courtesy despite the circumstances. "Good morning."
Elowen regarded the pair of them for another thoughtful second. "I'll pretend I haven't seen this," she decided at last before quietly closing the bedroom door once more.
Lysara closed her eyes. "Oh, gods."
"I thought she took it rather well," Daevyn observed.
"I can never return home."
"I believe we're leaving it now."
She gave up entirely.
By the time he stepped out onto the front porch she had ceased struggling, partly because it achieved absolutely nothing and partly because the position really was astonishingly uncomfortable.
"This," she informed him with considerable dignity despite her circumstances, "is not improving my opinion of you."
"I'm disappointed to hear it."
"I should hope you are."
He crossed to the waiting Aston Martin before lowering her with surprising gentleness into the passenger seat. Only once he was entirely satisfied that she was properly seated did he straighten and close the door.
A moment later he settled behind the wheel.
The engine started.
They rolled quietly away from the Ashwyn estate.
"We should still manage a few hours' sleep," Daevyn observed, his attention remaining upon the road ahead. "Provided neither of us decides to disappear again before dawn."
Lysara folded her arms. "Look, Daevyn."
"Hm?" He glanced across at her.
"There is a considerable difference between being an UnSeelie Lord and being a complete arse."
To his credit, he managed almost three seconds before laughter escaped him. "I'm sorry I've offended your dignity."
She continued glaring.
He considered the statement. "No," he corrected himself thoughtfully. "That isn't true at all. I'm not sorry in the slightest."
Her jaw tightened.
"I was worried sick." The humour vanished from his voice. His hands remained steady upon the steering wheel. "I returned to an empty bed after asking you to stay where you were. You had vanished between realms without leaving so much as a note, your phone was beside the bed, nobody had seen you leave, and..." He drew a slow breath before continuing more quietly. "Lysara, by the time I reached your parents' house I'd imagined half a dozen possibilities, and not one of them ended well."
Some of the indignation leaked quietly out of her. "I didn't want to become another problem for you."
“You have never been a problem for me, Lysara,” he said quietly.
Silence settled between them again.
After several miles he glanced sideways at her once more. "For the record… if you ever decide to flee from me again... Please leave me a note."
She looked out through the windscreen, scowling. "I'll consider it."
"I shall regard that as progress."
"And I," she replied with false sweetness, "shall spend the remainder of the day deciding precisely how to repay the indignity of being carried over your shoulder."
His smile returned. "I look forward to discovering what you devise."
"I’m not joking. I'm still half-drunk from the champagne," she said, staring stubbornly through the windscreen. "And I simply don't have it in me tonight to think clearly enough to have a sensible conversation about any of this. Which is why I left. But you seem determined to make a conversation unavoidable.” She threw him a glower.
"I could tell you there isn't a conversation to have." His voice remained remarkably even, though the restraint behind it was becoming increasingly obvious. "And that I have no desire to spend what's left of the night quarrelling with my fiancée."
"And I could point out," she replied, unable to keep the edge from her voice, "that you still have another woman's lipstick on your cheek."
The colour drained from his face before he reached up almost instinctively, rubbing at his cheek with the back of his hand. He glanced briefly into the rear-view mirror as if to confirm that she did not lie.
"It isn't your shade," she added more quietly.
The weariness that settled over his face seemed suddenly far older than the few hours since Aurora had appeared at House Vale.
The Aston Martin slowed as the familiar stone archway of the Fae Gate appeared between the trees.
Daevyn drew the car to a halt. "The situation is..." He searched for the right word before exhaling quietly. "Complicated."
"Yes." She rested her forehead briefly against the cool glass of the passenger window before looking back at him. "I've realised that." Her eyes drifted once more to the fading trace of lipstick that stubbornly remained against his skin. “And it’s the other side.”
For the first time since leaving her parents' house, he looked genuinely stricken.
"Lysara..."
He turned towards her fully then, one hand still resting upon the steering wheel, the other falling uselessly into his lap. "I am sorry about that… scene."
She reached for the doorhandle. “We’re both tired. Let’s just go to bed and get some sleep.” She closed the door before he could reply. “Bare feet in the forest sounds romantic until you’re actually barefoot in the forest,” she grumbled as she tightened the robe around her waist and began to pick her way across to the gate.
She heard the car door close and the beep of the lock as he followed.
“Lysara.” His voice was subdued. “Please let me carry you. You’re woefully underdressed.”
It was on the tip of her tongue to snap at him about whose fault that was, but she was exhausted and emotionally overwrought, fighting back tears and instead just stopped walking and nodded.
He lifted her carefully, tucking her under his chin. She felt him lower his face into her hair and breathe in with a sigh. “Thank you.”
They crossed into Fae.