The fire had burned low, embers pulsing lazy and sluggish in the hearth, their underglow casting heavy-footed shadows into the wooden beams. Outside, the wind whistled in the cracks between the eaves, but inside, sprawled beneath blankets, the three bodies—limbs tangled—were heavy and warm.
Still.
There was nothing but them and the quiet of the morning.
No threats looming in the dark. No blood to be scrubbed from their skin. No wounds to tend, no betrayals gnawing at the edges of their thoughts. Just breath and warmth and the quiet sound of slow, steady heartbeats.
Lucien woke first.
He simply lay there, looking at the ceiling, trying to recall how mornings were supposed to make him feel. His body still hummed with fatigue, but differently—not the sort of deep-in-his-bones fatigue that came from fighting or fleeing, but one more gentle.
Something easier.
That alone unsettled him.
