Chapter 137: AFTER I LOVE YOU

DIANA’S POV

Vharos finally settled shortly before dawn.

By then Diana had been awake long enough to become offended by the concept of morning.

She sat beside Raigoro in the lower cavern while Master Clair reviewed the final overnight observations. Vharos lay with his head turned toward them, one eye closed and the injured wing supported along the stone platform.

Healer Lou had already examined him twice. His breathing remained stable, with no recurrence of the collapse, and the agitation that had seized him before Raigoro arrived had faded enough that Master Clair no longer seemed prepared to summon half the Dragonkeeper staff without warning.

The old dragon had attempted to stand only once more before abandoning the idea after Master Clair objected with enough authority to make even Vharos reconsider the usefulness of arguing.

Diana’s dragonstone had remained warm through most of the night rather than burning, another distinction she had learned to respect.

Raigoro had felt Vharos’s agitation through the bond before they entered the cavern. He had described it to Master Clair as urgency mixed with discomfort, different from the pain that accompanied the earlier collapse. Nobody attempted to translate the bond into a neat human sentence because it did not work that way.

Diana recorded the timing anyway.

Clair closed the chart.

"He needs sleep."

Raigoro looked toward Vharos.

"He appears to agree."

The dragon opened one eye.

Clair regarded him.

"He does not."

Diana lowered her eyes to hide her amusement.

Raigoro noticed, and the warmth between them returned with uncomfortable ease. It was the same warmth that had filled his study before Daric knocked on the door and became, briefly, the most hated man in Blackharrow.

The memory returned with inconvenient clarity: Raigoro’s mouth against hers, her fingers hopelessly rearranging his hair, and the look he had given her when she informed him that she was not finished kissing him.

Apparently, knowing her husband loved her had made her considerably less capable of behaving sensibly around him.

Diana looked toward Vharos and found the dragon asleep again.

Traitor.

Raigoro stood.

"I should let him rest."

Master Clair answered, "You should both let him rest."

Diana gave the keeper a look that had no effect whatsoever.

Professional authority was exhausting.

They climbed from Vharos’s cavern through the secured northern passages together.

The Citadel had not yet fully awakened. Ward lamps still burned along the corridors, their pale light responding as the morning maintenance cycle began. Near the upper crossing, an artificer stood on a short ladder replacing the cracked housing around one of the corridor heat stones.

The magical stone glowed faintly inside its metal frame while someone still had to repair everything around it.

Painfully Blackharrow.

At the household crossing, Raigoro stopped where they usually separated, with Government Terrace in one direction and Diana’s apartments in the other.

He looked tired enough for Diana to take out her slate.

SLEEP.

Raigoro read it.

"You first."

She frowned.

"I have council at second bell."

Diana wrote:

THAT IS NOT A MEDICAL ARGUMENT.

Raigoro smiled, familiar and entirely different now that Diana knew he loved her.

"I have heard that before."

Apparently repetition could improve a man.

Raigoro glanced down the household corridor.

"Breakfast?"

Diana blinked.

He was asking about breakfast with no work, Vharos, or report attached to the invitation.

She nodded.

They ate in Diana’s smaller morning room rather than the formal household dining chamber. Alma arrived ten minutes later, found Raigoro already seated at the table, looked at Diana, and wisely said nothing.

Diana disliked the look Alma gave her. She clearly intended to remember everything for later.

Alma took the chair opposite Diana without asking why Raigoro was there, which was worse than asking. Diana could have answered a question; Alma’s silence gave her nothing to deny.

Diana pulled her slate closer.

DO NOT.

Alma read it and folded her hands.

"I haven’t said anything."

YET.

"An accusation without evidence," Alma said. "Commander Voss would be disappointed."

Raigoro glanced between them.

"What has Daric done?"

NOT DARIC.

"Then I sympathize with him."

Diana stared at her husband.

He was enjoying this.

Alma looked down, but not quickly enough to conceal her smile. She had apparently decided that breakfast with Raigoro was a development worth observing at close range.

Diana wiped the slate.

The morning was not yet fully underway, and already two people who claimed to care about her had become intolerable.

Unfortunately, Diana was beginning to suspect she liked it.

The servant brought tea, bread, eggs, preserved fruit, and frostberry. Raigoro moved the preserve toward Diana without asking.

Diana stared at his hand until he noticed.

"What?"

She reached for the jar.

Their fingers touched, and neither withdrew immediately.

The contact was ordinary enough that Diana could imagine a hundred married couples doing the same thing without noticing. Her body had apparently received very different instructions.

Raigoro’s thumb moved once against the side of her hand before he released her. He returned to his tea as though passing the preserve was all he had intended.

Diana appreciated that.

Last night’s kisses had made an ordinary breakfast considerably more complicated, yet Raigoro sat across from her discussing Vharos and passing the preserve as though closeness did not require a reckoning. Only yesterday, Diana had struggled to tell him the truth about her name. Now he knew, had accepted her confession, and had come to breakfast without turning either revelation into a debt she had to repay. When their hands separated over the preserve, he simply let them.

Alma was still watching them with increasingly offensive interest.

Diana decided to ignore her.

For now.

Raigoro passed the bread basket. Diana accepted it and found herself smiling at something as ridiculous as being handed bread by her own husband.

Raigoro caught the smile.

"What?"

Diana shook her head.

"You are not going to tell me?"

She reached for her tea.

A household clerk arrived near the end of breakfast carrying a sealed file.

"Your Grace."

Raigoro took it.

The outer cover carried several registry marks rather than one sovereign seal: Blackharrow’s Warden office, Astevan treaty registry, Merovian diplomatic acknowledgment, with Belland and Westmere routing marks beneath them.

Diana studied the mixed registry marks.

The Five-Crown notice had gone out before the Hollow Bridge inspection. While Diana and Raigoro traveled north again and returned to their ordinary duties at the Citadel, Blackharrow’s treaty offices had continued exchanging reports with the other governments.

Apparently, the replies had produced more questions.

Raigoro broke the seal and read the first page. As he did, the private warmth between them receded behind the concentration Diana associated with command.

When he finished, he said, "Daric was right."