"You know," Farina said as she sat on the edge of his bed and pulled off her boots and stockings, her pegasus milling about on his balcony, "I'd always promised myself I'd never do this with an employer."
"I'm not your employer anymore."
"But that's how it started."
"Does it bother you?" he asked, coming to a stop before her. It was too hard to see her face, with how late it was. His room was nearly pitch-black. "Should I send you away?"
"If I didn't want to come," she said, "I wouldn't have come, Hector."
That was enough for him. He buried his hands in the hair at the back of her neck, pulling her face up, and leaned down to kiss her—a little hard, but not fiercely. She responded eagerly, as she always did, parting his lips with her tongue, wrapping her arms around his waist when he sank down to sit beside her.
She had always been as impatient as he was, and she'd pulled off his doublet and shirt and was sliding her cold hands over his chest before he finally pulled away. "Farina…I'd made a promise to myself, too. And I've broken it half a dozen times, now."
She froze for just a minute, and then leaned forward to press her lips to the hollow of his throat. "Don't think about that now."
"I can't help it."
"Why tonight, of all nights? We've been doing this for half a year already."
He cupped her cheek in his hand and leaned back to look at her, once again trying to read her face and once again failing in the darkness. In retrospect he thought perhaps he shouldn't have confessed that he loved her, once the war ended, since Uther was dead. Since he'd have to return to Ostia, marry a noblewoman, and become a proper marquess—a plan an Ilian mercenary could have no part of, no how much he wished it could be. But he knew he could never have kept himself silent. He felt more strongly for Farina than he'd ever felt about anything in his life, and she deserved to know it. All the nights she'd spent in his tent weren't because he simply found her attractive, or because he had hired her and figured he should take advantage of her company if she was willing to offer it (and she had been quite willing). He wanted to tell her it was love; that he'd never loved anyone before.
The confession was bitter, and difficult to make, knowing they would have to part. That he wanted to wed her and couldn't. Her response surprised him: she loved him too. She loved him so much that if his marriage ended up unhappy, and he needed proof of that love, he had only to summon her.
"Growing up, I never wanted to have an affair," he said then, dodging her question. "Never."
"I don't understand why. It's practically expected that noblemen do. You can't marry for love, but why should it be denied to you completely?"
"She's still my wife," he insisted. "That has to mean something, otherwise marriage is a sham. Love or no love, I promised in front of gods and men that I would be faithful to her."
"Well, you've broken that vow. Six times. And it's never seemed to bother you before."
He looked over to the other side of his bed: always cool, always made up. Eliwood and Ninian shared a bed, he knew, as Lord Elbert and Lady Eleanora had supposedly shared one, but that was always rare for royal marriages. His own parents had separate rooms, and his father only came to his mother to get her with child, or when he had an urge he couldn't sate. Hector was young when his mother died, too young to have thought to ask her if this bothered her, but he wondered it for a long time afterward.
In many respects, these days, he was like his father. But despite his distant relationship to his wife, his father had never had an affair.
His own wife was surely asleep now, in her rooms on the other side of the castle. Completely ignorant of all of this. She was a good woman but nothing like Farina, not bright or strong or stubborn. He felt nothing for her. Even then, it had taken him a few months after the wedding to summon his old mercenary, with a trepidation he'd never experienced before. What if her feelings had changed, for him? What if she refused to come?
But she came. In every sense of the word. And she wept when he held her afterward, wept for missing him, wept because he hadn't asked for her sooner. After that they'd agreed she should come every month, during the few days she wasn't fertile. She'd fly onto his balcony, stay the night, and leave on Murphy's back at dawn. No one would ever catch a woman who could fly. No one would even notice her: who looks up when searching for a human being?
Farina leaned into his touch, breaking him out of his thoughts. "Something's happened. What's the matter?"
"Once a month isn't enough." He pulled her close and kissed her again, fists bunching in the fabric of her dress, pulling it off of her. She wasn't wearing anything underneath. When she felt him smile against her mouth, amused with how she'd clearly planned out the night, she pushed him back against the pillows and he moaned to feel all her skin slide along his. She began pressing kisses down his neck, chest, stomach—
"Hold on," he said before she could get too low, and flipped her over, beneath him. It was still too dark to see but he ran his hands up her legs, and then her sides, slowly, searching. "Anything I should watch out for, this time?"
"Here," she said as she guided his hand up to her right shoulder. He ran his thumb over her skin to find a wide slash, newly scabbed.
"A sword wound?"
"Gods-damned wyvern rider. Murphy was faster, though."
He shut his eyes at all the different thrills that ran through him: fear for her from the battles she'd been fighting without him, lust from the familiar curve of her shoulder, the desire to heft Armads again and get back into the fray, even if it meant his death. "I hate that you're still doing mercenary work."
"Don't talk about that right now. Don't you dare."
He dipped his head down to her neck, obeying just this once, and her harsh whisper melted into a mewl as brushed kisses lower and lower, sucking where her neck met her shoulder. She couldn't leave a mark on him, but he could leave as many as he wanted, which was a partial consolation. When she tossed her head to the side to grant him better access he moved his lips to her breast instead, dragging his tongue over her, knowing she was trying not to moan again by how her breath caught. Determined to draw it out of her anyway, he kept teasing her with his tongue while he slid a hand between her legs and began to stroke her, quickly, too impatient to start slow. He was rewarded right away: the moan slipped out of her, long and low. She was wet already.
"That was fast," he teased her.
She arched into his hand, her voice already unsteady: "I-I've…been thinking about you all day." Too competitive to stand feeling like he had her under his control, she reached down the front of his pants and wrapped her hand around him. He bit his tongue to keep from gasping. "I think I know what you've been thinking about."
"Yes, if you're guessing that I love you," he answered. It sounded so sappy, so fake, those words that so many threw about so easily. But he meant them. He wasn't afraid to let her hear. Even without being able to see her face he knew she was smiling.
"Show me," she insisted. He smiled too and slid a finger into her, slowly, enjoying how she bucked in frustration against him. He kept going, drawing in and out as lazily as he could, eventually slipping a second finger alongside the first, and then returning his tongue's attention to her breast, enjoying how her grip tightened around him. Eventually she gave a frustrated groan and grasped the short hairs at the nape of his neck with her other hand. "Stop teasing and love me properly!"
She helped him out of the rest of his clothes, fast. When he pushed into her, she lifted her hips to encourage him, and he took that as permission to fuck her as hard and as fast as he could. Without light, everything he heard seemed stronger, made his blood pump faster: his ragged breaths, her fists clenching in the sheets, their flesh meeting with every new thrust, the way her gasps escalated to moans.
He knew she was close when she started to beg—"Please, Hector, please"—because she never begged, she was too proud, and he tried to hold on for her, but the way she was saying his name—he released inside of her, trying to avoid her right shoulder as he clutched her to him, muffling his cry in her hair.
"No," she said, sounding nearly in tears as he rolled off of her to catch his breath, "no, I was almost—"
"Give me a minute," he told her breathlessly as his fingers slid between her legs again. "I'm not through with you."
She quieted at his touch, collapsing back to the pillows as he stroked her, eager for her to feel the pleasure he'd just felt. Already sensitive from having him inside her, soon she was rolling her hips under his hand, silently urging him faster, harder. She wrapped her hand around him again, teasing his head with her thumb, stroking him with her palm, matching the pace he was setting on her until he was hard again.
He'd always loved to do this to her, he thought as he watched her dark figure writhe on his sheets. Sometimes just pleasuring her was even better than making love to her. It had taken her so long to let her guard down around him, and she always worked so hard, and seemed so tense…to see her bared like this, to see her lips parted and her muscles slack, always made him so glad. When she finally climaxed she threw her arms around his neck, fingernails digging hard into his skin, and a cry tore out of her throat even though he knew she was trying to swallow it. He grinned despite himself. His rooms were large, and his bedchamber was separated from the rest of the castle by his receiving chamber, but it was always best to keep quiet, they had decided, just in case. Still, it was gratifying to know he'd pleasured her so well that she couldn't keep quiet.
She caught her breath slowly, one hand drifting from the back of his neck and down his chest to caress the length of him again. He closed his eyes at her touch. What if he had been able to marry her? What if every night could be like this? No guilt, no risk, no…new obligations to worry about?
He shoved the thought aside and pushed her brusquely underneath him. "Let me have you again."
"Took you long enough," she teased, and he nipped her earlobe hard to shut her up as he thrust inside of her, making her laugh a little.
This time he lasted much longer, and was determined to savour every moment that he could. How she wrapped her legs around his hips to drive him deeper, strong and lean from all those years of steering flying horses with just her knees and her force of will. How her hair smelled, just as it used to smell during the war. How she cried out for him when she finally came, biting his shoulder savagely to muffle the sound, like she'd had to the first night they'd spent together, after a battle and a healing he thought she wouldn't survive. He'd been too idealistic, then.
Once she had finished, falling back and shuddering from the pleasure of it, all she did was say that she loved him, groan it out with every thrust, until he followed soon after. For a long moment afterward he couldn't think clearly, couldn't speak, could only hold her slick body against his and try to shove away his shamed conscience long enough to make a solid memory of the moment. After a while he forced himself to sit up, because he was exhausted but didn't dare fall asleep. He wouldn't get to see her for another month, after this, and there was so much more to do than lovemaking: conversation, simply holding her.
"I want to see my neck," she said, and pulled him out of bed to a square of moonlight that the window let in. "Is it bad?"
"Awful," he answered with a smile—he'd sucked clouds of bruises to the surface of her skin, some hardly noticeable but two or three quite dark. He always tried to leave as many marks as he could on her, after she admitted that having them to hold on to, until they faded, made missing him a little more bearable. He wished he could asked her for the same, but that would cause a scandal immediately. No one would believe they came from his wife; they never even spoke to one another. He only even saw her once a week, as required, to ensure an heir.
Farina smiled back, but wryly, and pressed her thumb over his right shoulder, where she'd bitten him. The pressure ached. "I'm so sorry. You're going to get a huge bruise here."
"I'll just wear a shirt when I spar for the next few days," he said with a shrug. It was worth it. "Besides, now we match."
Her smile quirked up, more genuinely, but he found he couldn't return it.
"Farina…you can stop fighting for a living. You know you can."
"Hector, I told you—"
"I'll take care of you," he pressed. "Send you money. You could live comfortably, and safely, and—"
"I'm not accepting your money."
"That didn't stop you before."
"I earned it before. And on the battlefield we weren't a hero and a damsel in distress; we were a team. That's why I fell for you."
"And I for you," he argued, "but it was good because we looked out for each other. And I can't…" It burned to say, but he had to do it: "Damn it, I can't look out for you from here. I can't be there if you need help, I can't pick you up if you fall, I can't slay the opponent that sneaks up behind you. I'll be behind this castle's walls for the rest of my life, never knowing what you're doing out there, going weeks wondering whether you're alive or dead—surely longer, in the future, if you get a mission that lasts longer than a month!"
"Don't feel guilty about it," she said, reading him all too well. "This is my decision. I am proud to be a mercenary, and pride will keep me from stopping."
"Damn your pride."
"Well, damn your guilt. About everything. I won't stop fighting. I won't stop loving you. And despite what you say about being a good husband, you've asked me to come every month, so you must either stop summoning me or set your guilt aside."
"I…I won't be able to set this aside," he told her finally.
The moonlight let him see her sad but very knowing glance. "So you've started to feel for your wife."
"Yes and no."
"Oh, what kind of answer is that?" she asked as she turned away from him.
"I don't love her, Farina. Not at all. But she has become more special to me, she must become more special to me."
She turned back, slowly, shaking her head as if to ward off his next words, but he had to say them:
"She's carrying my child."
She stared at him for a long, long time. Then her breath hitched. "When did you find out?"
"She told me this morning."
There was another long silence, and then: "Please don't call for me again, then. Goodbye, Hector."
She brushed past him, trying to get to his bedside where her dress was crumpled on the floor, but he grabbed her arm: "Farina, wait!"
"Let go of me!"
"Farina! What else would you have of me? Uther is dead and I'm the last of Roland's line; I need an heir!"
"B-but I…"
"What?" He tried to turn her around to face him, but she wrenched out of his grip.
"Forget it!"
"Tell me!"
"I wanted it! I knew it could never be, but I wanted to have a child with you!"
His chest felt like someone had slammed a war hammer into his ribs. He held out his arms to her. "Farina. Come here."
"No." She turned to look at him but took another step away, and he dropped his hands back to his sides.
"Farina, if that's what you wanted…Elimine, we could have tried six months ago. I could provide for the both of you, financially. It would be hard for us, I'm sure, but at least I'd know you weren't alone. You could take pride in being a mother, instead of a mercenary. And you'd have a child of mine to look after you when you're old."
"The great Marquess Ostia, willingly sire a bastard?" she scoffed.
"You don't think I didn't want you to mother my children? You don't think that every time I lie with her, I wish she was you?"
"So instead you'll get me with child here, in secret? Send me gold for the rest of my life?"
"If that's what you want."
"You think that's what I want? To go back to Edessa with a bastard, and raise it alone in an icy wasteland? To take the scorn of the other knights? To watch it grow, grow to look like you, without it ever being able to meet you? To tell it that its father, its all-powerful, noble father, would try to fight a dragon before he would try to marry a commoner?"
"I did try!" he shouted, past caring if anyone heard. "The League denied me! They approved of Eliwood marrying a damned dragon, and I was forced into wedding Khathelet's whelp!"
"Quiet down!" she hissed.
"I won't!" He crossed the distance between them in one stride and took hold of her chin, forcing her to meet his eyes. "You thought this of me, all along?"
"What else was I to think? You never told me you asked the Lycian League!"
"Because I fought for you, and I lost. Why would I tell you about such a defeat?"
"And you say I'm the prideful one."
He let her face go, but she didn't drop her eyes. "Well, now you know. I destroyed a dragon and lost to old, unarmed men."
"So we were both unworthy of marrying each other, huh." She seemed darkly amused by this, and walked to the side of his bed to pick up her dress, shrugging it on quickly.
He gave a start. "What are you doing?"
"Like I said, I have to leave."
"Farina. You don't. You're already here; at least stay the night." He followed her to his balcony, feeling pathetic: a marquess begging like a common man.
"Everything's changed, now. It's for your child's own good." She stopped before the closed double-doors and looked into his eyes again. "What if it's a daughter? Don't you know that she'll look up to you; what she knows about men will come from you? What will happen if she learns that the father she loves is unfaithful?"
"He is unfaithful." But her words stuck fast. He didn't want any girl of his to come to fear men because of his actions. Florina's fear was hard to overcome just to earn her friendship; Farina's fear was even harder.
"Well if he is, it won't be my fault. Not any longer. I'm sorry."
As dread settled in his stomach, he realized he had known this moment would come since the night began.
"I understand," he said, and then, before she could get away, he pulled her close and gave her a long, chaste, goodbye kiss. He wanted to tell her that he loved her, that he'd miss her terribly, but that would only weaken his resolve. "I order you to leave. And to not come back."
"Yes, my lord." She dipped her head, slipped onto his balcony, mounted her pegasus, and was gone.