My Second Chance Mate is a Barbarian (Sera and Fenris) novel Chapter 319

Irina

I stood at the vanity and watched my hands move. They were steady. That was the part that didn't fit the rest of the morning. My fingers picked up the silver brush, worked it through the ends of my hair, and set it back down in the exact center of the silk runner without a single tremor. Outside the window, the sun was hitting the white stone of the courtyard, flat and bright and indifferent to the fact that I had not slept for more than an hour at a stretch in three weeks.

The room smelled of lemon oil and the lavender water the maids had brought up at dawn. It was a clean smell. A southern smell. It was supposed to be the scent of safety, the smell of a house where the rules were written in ink instead of blood. But underneath the lavender, tucked into the heavy velvet of the curtains and the deep pile of the rug, I could still catch the ghost of the North. It was a sharp, metallic note that stayed at the back of my throat, reminding me that the walls of this palace were thinner than I had ever imagined.

I adjusted the collar of my morning gown. The silk was heavy, a deep bottle green that Aldric liked, and the high lace neck hid the place where the pulse in my throat was currently running too fast. My side ached. It was a dull, rhythmic throb that pulsed in time with my heart, a reminder of the thread the healer had used to knit my meat back together in that freezing Northern room. The meat had closed, but the memory of the steel was still in the bone.

The door didn't creak. The hinges in this house were oiled every Tuesday, part of a schedule that ran on a clock I had never seen. I caught the shift in the air first, the change in pressure, a weight that hadn't been there a second ago.

I didn't turn around. I didn't reach for the small iron knife I kept under the hairpins. I just watched his reflection arrive in the mirror.

Kark.

He didn't belong in a southern bedchamber. He was too large for the frame of the mirror, his shoulders blocking out the light from the hearth. He wore the dark, rough wool of his people, a texture that looked like a slur against the silk of my chair. He stood at the foot of the bed and watched me brush my hair, his face a complete, immovable blank.

"You're late," I said. My voice was a dry scrape.

"Climbed slow tonight," he rumbled. The sound of him was a low vibration that I experienced in my bossom.

"The wallwrights fixed the gap at the third turret. I told them there was a draft."

"They missed the one at the laundry chute." He took a step toward me. His boots made no sound on the rug, a trick of the trade that made my skin go tight. "You're wearing the green."

"Aldric likes it."

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