The First Crown

Warm Spiced and Messy

Lilliana

His mouth crashed onto mine, rougher than I’d ever known him, yet threaded through with that maddening patience. His lips coaxed and commanded in turns, until I no longer knew whether I was yielding or chasing. My hands gripped his broad shoulders, desperate to hold him closer, and when his tongue teased mine, the world tilted, bright and reckless.

Reade groaned into the kiss, the sound low in his chest, and in a dizzying moment I was lifted clean off the ground. My toes dangled above the pasture grass, my back pressed to the solid heat of him, and he kissed me as if he could drink every ounce of hesitation from my body.

I thought he might never stop until, with infuriating ease, he set me back on my feet. The night rushed in cold where he had been, and I gasped, lips parted, utterly undone.

“Don’t—” I began, though I didn’t know what I was begging for.

He only grinned, rare and wicked, brushing his thumb across my swollen lower lip as if to admire his work. “Careful, dove. Any more of that and you’ll have me forgetting all my fine manners.”

A cloak swept suddenly around my shoulders, its weight grounding me, though his fingers lingered a heartbeat too long at my throat. His smile widened, openly amused at the disappointment I could not hide.

“Tell me,” he drawled, voice rich with mischief, “will anyone notice your bed empty tonight?”

I forced my breath to steady, though my lips still tingled. “Briallen will,” I said, lifting my chin in mock defiance. “But who could she tell, with the duke not in residence?”

Reade’s grin split wider, delighted. He caught my hand, tugging me with him as the pasture path stretched toward the lantern-glow ahead.

“To the tavern, then,” he said, glancing back at me with that same crooked grin. “Best not keep them waiting.”

He took my hand and led me along a narrow path that hugged the fence line, then dipped into the hedgerows. The fields fell away; the keep’s walls blurred into ink and stone behind us. Far ahead, faint at first, came the sound of laughter the bright burst of it, the low hum of many voices then the scrape of chairs, the slam of a door, the wild, high keening of a fiddle racing to keep up with its own tune.

We rounded a stand of willows, and Reade slowed, tucking me close to his side. The building crouched at the edge of the lane like a beast at rest. Small and stout, tar-dark timbers crosshatched against whitewash, lamplight leaking through the leaded panes. A painted sign swung overhead—The Red Hart—its antlers flaring when the wind took it. Smoke puffed from the chimney, rich with meat and ash.

My steps faltered. The laughter spilling through the door seemed too loud, too near. What if someone knew me? What if word found its way back to the keep?

Reade felt the hesitation in me and slowed, his thumb stroking lazily over the back of my hand. “Second thoughts, dove?”

I swallowed, eyes fixed on the door. “What if they find out? What if—”

“They won’t.” His grin flashed, easy and sure. He tugged the cloak more firmly around me, the hood shadowing my face. “To them, you’re just a girl in an old cloak. You don’t look anything like a duke’s daughter tonight.”

I glanced down at myself, at the hem already gathering burrs from the hedgerow, at the wool that smelled faintly of smoke and horse. A shiver of nerves raced through me but it was chased by a dangerous kind of exhilaration.

“They’re a friendly lot,” Reade went on, leaning down so his breath stirred the hair at my temple. “No one will ask who you are, only if you’ll drink with them.”

His words should have comforted, but instead they set my pulse racing faster. He must have felt it, for his grin deepened as he pulled me toward the tavern door.

Heat washed over my face. Light and smoke and sound crashed together, fiddle and pipe and the thunder of boots on planks, mugs thumping like drums. Men crowded every table; women laughed and dodged and scolded, weaving through with platters. The air smelled of roasting pork, spilled ale, damp wool, sweat, and something resin-sweet from a pan of apples stewing near the hearth. The floor was sticky in places. The rafters were hung with bundles of drying herbs and a rack of antlers that looked like a crown.

Nothing in Father’s hall, no feast or festival, had ever felt like this. This was untidy and alive, loud as a river in spring.

Reade bent to my ear. “Keep the hood up,” he said, his breath warm against my cheek. “And your hand on me.”

"I thought you said they were friendly." I muttered, tugging the hood down further to hide my face.

I clung to his forearm as he cut a path through bodies with a tilt of his shoulders and a quiet, stubborn confidence that made room where none existed. He was part of this noise in a way that startled me; the crowd seemed to know him and also not know him, eyes skipped over him and then back, like he was both familiar and slightly dangerous.

We reached a corner where the lamplight softened and the shadows pooled. A rough-hewn table, two stools. Reade slid onto one and drew me to the other, angling his body so mine was sheltered the wall to my back, his shoulder to my side. He lifted a hand, and a woman with hair the color of steeped tea barked something like a laugh and slapped down two clay mugs without pausing her scold of a lanky boy who’d dared to pinch a roll.

“Food?” Reade called.

“Aye,” she shouted back. “And don’t glare at me tonight, Ashford, you’ll curdle the custards.”

“You know everyone,” I said under my hood, both teased and uneasy.

“Only the ones who don’t throw me out on sight,” he said, eyes bright. He nudged one mug toward me. “Sip.”

I did, cautiously. The cider was warm and spiced, honeyed at the edges; it slid down like silk and settled low in my belly. I dared a second sip, then a third, and felt my shoulders loosen despite myself.

Reade watched me over the rim of his cup, faintly pleased. “Good?”

“Wicked,” I said, and he laughed a quick, startled sound that made something inside me unfold.

Plates arrived thick slices of pork, a heel of bread, a knob of butter in a little wooden cup, and those stewed apples shining like coins. We ate with shared hands, tearing, dipping his fingers brushing mine, staying a fraction too long. Our knees touched under the table.

Every time the crowd surged, he leaned in to keep me out of its wake, and I breathed him in, leather, smoke, steel, the clean wild of the night that clung to him like a promise.

“Why here?” I asked at last, low.

His mouth tilted. “Because I wanted to see you where the world is messy. Because I wanted you to know it can be loud and rough and still good. And because—” his gaze dropped to my mouth, then up again, softening—“I wanted to sit with you where we aren’t only shadows.”

A warmth that was not the cider swept through me. I reached beneath the table and found his hand. He turned his palm up at once, catching my fingers and tucking them against his own, thumb sweeping the thin skin of my wrist in slow, idle strokes that had my breath going wrong.

“Reade!” A voice crashed over us like a wave.

He went still; the smile faded into a flat line. I turned.