A Quick Note on Chapter Numbering:
On 24 Sept 2022, I added the Foreword. This means that all the chapters were pushed up a number. So now Chapter 7 is labeled Chapter 8 in navigation. Please note that reviews made by that date refer to the actual chapter number. So reviews for this chapter made by 24 Sept would be labeled Chapter 7, but after 25 Sept they'll be Chapter 8. I'm sorry for the confusion.
A/N I really wanted to capture the mood of the morning after. Also hope this explains Van's perspective a little bit.
Now updated and perfected. Thanks for reading.
Standard disclaimer: I don't own Escaflowne. This story was inspired by Suilsafir's Black and Gold one-shot, Home is Where the Heart Is.
Song inspirations for this chapter include Missing Piece by Vance Joy and September by The Shins. Updated version would like to thank F+tM's Cosmic Love, which I recently had the honor of seeing performed live.
Check out my complete playlist on Spotify. Look up CovertEyes and/or One Night for the Heart if you're interested.
Chapter 7 – Foresight and Afterglow
Van drifted awake as the morning light peeked through the bed curtains. Rubbing his eyes with his palm, he took in the mess that was his bed. The sheets were twisted, the duvet was practically falling off the bed, and the curtains askew. Meanwhile, a naked Hitomi curled up asleep next to him, sharing the soft warmth of her body. His arm was falling asleep under her shoulders, and he readjusted it carefully, sliding it into the crook of her neck. After pulling the duvet over their bodies, he kept still, not wanting to disturb her.
They'd done it. They'd broken through whatever awkward barrier had stood between them. Van had made her his wife.
He could honestly say that he never expected anything quite as overpowering as that night had been with Hitomi. The entire evening had gone completely different from what he might have expected. From the dinner, to the conversations, to their first kiss on the couch, to the...act itself. It all surpassed any expectations and imaginings his mind might have conjured, had he let it… both in gracelessness and gratification.
Van took a minute to take it in. He'd spent so much of his life suppressing his desires, focusing his thoughts, bridling his imagination. He needed a moment to accept what had happened. To accept that he and Hitomi had been intimate in the most profound way they could be, physically.
After dinner, once the protection of the table had been removed, anxiety had underscored his anticipation and undermined his ego. When she had returned from the washroom without the cover of her robe, his insides had tied into inflamed knots and his mind had blanked. He had hardly known how to speak, let alone move forward with this woman, his wife, who was barely dressed and sitting both too close and too far away from him. It wasn't necessarily fear over what to do so much as it was the deluge of novel sensations all at once: her scent, her warmth, her hair, the thinly veiled curves of her body—all things so new to him that the combination overwhelmed his senses, and he needed time to acclimate to them, to tell himself it was okay to do more with her.
Silently, he thanked Hitomi for her patience. And her humor. Had she not had that ridiculous conversation with herself, exposing her own nervousness in the doing, it might have taken him even longer to grow comfortable with her. From there, however, it hadn't taken long to move forward, and once her nightgown strap snapped, their instincts had served them well enough.
Neither of them had known what they were doing, but it hadn't mattered. She didn't seem bothered by it, and he certainly wasn't going to worry either. Besides, Hitomi's knack for playfulness helped smooth over the awkwardness. It took more than a few private laughs together, but they figured it out.
But the moments after, when they lay together, voices quiet, bodies warm and intertwined, were perhaps more profound than the initial act had been. As he gazed into the softly shadowed face of his wife, Van had a surreal realization not just that something so intimate could be done with a woman, but that he rather enjoyed the experience with her. And he wanted to enjoy it again. After that, he'd drifted off into a relaxed and contented sleep in her arms while she'd peppered his face and neck and shoulders with hot, lingering kisses before, presumably, falling asleep herself.
Then, sometime in the night, the warm, unfamiliar friction of their intertwined limbs reignited his desire, and it hadn't taken much to convince her likewise. He liked how she clung to him, how her hands moved over his body, the feel of her lips on his. He liked her all-encompassing warmth. She was better than any fantasy.
In actuality, with the demands of the mantle of a king, Van had been given very little spare time for fantasizing. But he hadn't been sheltered. He'd heard people talk, he'd seen men sneaking around with women, he'd been approached. Even at formal social events, there had been ladies—given away by their smiles all too reminiscent of a stalking-dragon—who whispered insinuations in his ear. Some did it for their own entertainment, others hoped such things would somehow endear him to them or their daughters, and some were flat out offering themselves up for an illicit affair. In order to cope, he'd honed his stony exterior almost to imperviousness.
He was a king, he'd been obligated to bridle his natural desires, and he resented those who thought he could be swayed by a nice figure and a suggestive comment. What some people took to be uptightness was simply a fierce protectiveness of his own vulnerability, and he'd never understood people who didn't experience the same instinct to protect and preserve the most private parts of themselves.
Two years ago, he had a couple hunting companions who, in an attempt to break him in, had hired a prostitute and brought her to his tent. Van had thrown out the woman and stripped both men of privilege, banishing them from his company. The last thing he needed were people close to him who didn't care about his personal boundaries.
While he sometimes questioned whether or not that reaction had been extreme, now he knew he was justified. What he and Hitomi had done was an incredibly intimate act, and even now that he'd tasted its ecstasy, he couldn't imagine acting on his desires with just anyone. It had taken enough effort just to get this comfortable with her.
But now, his body was more relaxed and he lay more comfortably than perhaps he'd ever been in his life. While his mind wandered down all these pleasurable avenues of thought, he enjoyed the feel of her sultry, naked body close to his while their bed and the room lit up with the gentle morning light.
A knock interrupted his reverie, announcing that breakfast had arrived.
Hitomi stirred as he peeled himself away, and he tossed the bed curtains closed to protect her privacy. Clumsily stepping into his discarded silk pajama bottoms, he hopped to the door and opened it to a young kitchen maid with a cart full of platters.
He heard a subdued, "Morning, your majesty," as he rubbed the sleep out of his eyes. It was a polite formality he didn't feel the need to respond to, but when he finished his yawn, she was still standing frozen before him as if she were waiting to be released from a salute. He dropped his hand impatiently before noticing that her face had turned an unbecoming shade of scarlet and her eyes were frozen on his exposed torso.
Rolling his own eyes, he tossed an arm towards the table. "Do you want my help?" he said.
His tone shocked her into action, and she made short work of delivering their platters from her cart to the table before scurrying away.
When she was gone, he stepped into the washroom for his morning ritual. He shoved his head under a cold stream of water, shook his wet hair out, and prepared to shave. As he worked the brush and foam, cold water dripped from his hair to his shoulders and down his back, further serving to wake his body. It was then he noticed the red scratches and burgundy love bites across his shoulders and chest. He twisted to see that his back was also scored red.
Hitomi had done all this.
Heat rushed to his face and through his body.
That's what the maid had been staring at. He paused from his shaving to chide himself for thinking she had been flustered by his half-nakedness. Servants often dealt in secrets, and now that one could tell all Dryden's staff that his wife had left her marks all over him.
Van took a moment to decide how he felt about this. Yesterday such a thought would have horrified him. Today, though, coming off the salubrious high of love-making, it occurred to him that those marks were physical evidence of her pleasure. As he'd made her his wife, she'd marked him as her husband.
A sensual pride welled up within him. He liked that idea, that she'd marked him. Besides, her reactions to him had been potent and exhilarating. Automatically, his body began to heat with the thrill of eliciting such things from her again.
Van took a deep breath and summoned that self-control he'd honed through his life so far. He could let his desire simmer for now, just while he shaved—no use rushing and drawing blood—but as soon as he finished….
He climbed back into bed and nuzzled into the curve of her neck, skimming his hands down her body. Now he had her marks upon him, he realized his negligence towards her in that regard.
"Good morning," he whispered into her ear as he pressed kisses down her neck.
Hitomi gasped as she awoke to the sensation, her hands automatically threading through his hair. "Your hair's wet," she complained, her voice scratchy with sleep.
"Yeah, morning habit, sorry," he said between kisses.
"Do I smell breakfast?" she said through a stretch.
"Yes."
"Good, I'm famished."
He began to nibble on her shoulder. "There's something I need to attend to first," he said between drawn-out bites.
She giggled and dodged away from his teeth, her hands on his shoulders. "My Lord Dragon," she said, her voice low, "what could possibly be more important than breakfast?"
Van froze.
She'd teased him yesterday with honorifics, which he'd found more annoying than endearing. He didn't need his wife to remind him of his title, especially in the bedroom.
But this one had a different connotation and thus a different effect. Whatever sensibility he had been holding onto began to evaporate as it was burned away by a virile, heated pride at being called such a name in his bed. It swelled from his core to his chest and made his head spin. Nevertheless, as he slowly lifted away from his wife, he restrained himself to glower at her.
Hitomi was smiling gleefully at him, her green eyes sparkling with a satisfaction that he caught and understood.
Van realized with a smirk that she knew full well what she was doing and what his reaction would be to that title. While her body began to shake with silent laughter, Van rolled his eyes and lowered himself to her neck with a little more gusto.
After all, he didn't want to disappoint her.
They ate their breakfast cold, on the couch.
Van marveled at the difference in the atmosphere between them from the evening before, how naturally he lounged with her, sharing a meal. Hitomi sat close, her legs crisscrossed as she bent over to mend that fateful broken strap on the nightgown. Where her robe gaped open, he could see his own love bites on her chest and shoulders.
She'd lost her naive nervousness, too. "Enjoying the view, Van?" she asked, glancing over at him. She put down her needle and thread to take a bite of her breakfast.
He forced himself to sound nonchalant as he shrugged and said, "I'm just admiring my handiwork."
She chuckled as she searched for the needle, which had a habit of slipping into the folds of her silky robe every time she took a bite. When she picked it back up again, Van offered a solution.
He scooped up some eggs. "Here, I'll help you eat," he said, holding it out for her. "Open up."
She did a double take, her eyes growing large. Covering her mouth, she exclaimed, "What? Why?" in much the same manner as the night before, when he had asked to brush her hair.
Van summoned his poise to keep a straight face. "Every time you take a bite, you lose your needle. This way, you get to eat while you sew, and I get to practice feeding you."
Her face blossomed bright red. "Practice feeding me?" she repeated.
Van let his answer be a smile and a wink.
She whispered a curse that may have included the word cake as she turned and attempted to focus on her sewing, but she squirmed under his gaze and ended up poking herself with the needle.
He reached for a napkin and handed it to her.
"Thanks," she said, with a sigh, as she squeezed it around the pricked finger. "I'm just so clumsy."
"I've never thought you were clumsy," he said honestly.
Her head snapped back up in surprise, but she didn't say anything or ask for elaboration, which he thought was a shame. When he lifted the waiting spoon again, she gave him a dubious look before opening her pretty mouth and allowing him to feed her.
Afterwards, she worked with a little more fluidity, and within a few bites, she'd altogether stopped shaking her head at him in disbelief.
Van, meanwhile, felt as if he'd stepped into a dream existence. As a king, he'd never shared a plate or a utensil, nor had he ever considered feeding someone. Yet here he was using the same utensil for himself as what he used for Hitomi, picking food off both his plate and hers. It was a comfortable intimacy that he found all the more enjoyable because of its simplicity.
"This strap needs to be mended, too," she said, holding up the nightgown to show him that the other had barely held on by a few threads.
"It looks fine to me," Van said, keeping his face serious. "Just leave it."
She scoffed and jabbed him with her elbow, releasing his smile. "You realize I have nothing else to wear until I get my clothes back, right?" she said with raised eyebrows.
He answered her by flashing his eyebrows and offering her another bite of food.
She shook her head as she chewed, her cheeks turning rosy, and proceeded to work the first strap. "I didn't expect you to be the spoon-feeding kind," she said.
He took a bite of his own food as he thought about what she'd said. "What did you expect?" he asked.
She adjusted her thimble. "I didn't really have any expectations."
"None? Of me?" he asked.
She shrugged and said, "I expected you not to hurt me, but otherwise, no. Why? Are you bothered?"
He furrowed his brows as he fed her another bite. Admittedly, the thought that she hadn't expected anything from him stung. It made him want her to want more from him. Yet, perhaps her approach had helped her remain patient while he grew used to her. He'd needed a lot of time, and she'd given it. She'd allowed him space and, looking back, he could say that he'd never felt anything other than acceptance from her.
Sometime soon after their marriage, after a morning session at court with the people, she had asked him how he spent his afternoons. At that point, Hitomi sitting on the throne next to him had just been a formality he'd put up with. She wasn't helpful yet with judgements and mediation and was really just acclimating to her duties. He could restrain himself from snapping at her before the people, though she hadn't done much to snap about, but when sessions ended, it was much harder to control his tongue. Court was something he both loved and hated. He loved how he felt helping people but he suffered through dealing with them. It drained him. Usually, as soon as Court was over, he'd escape to his study for lunch and some much needed quiet time. Very few people were allowed to visit him in his study.
And Hitomi was not one of them. His servants knew that, and this day she found it out, too.
When she'd asked how he spent his afternoons, he'd answered with what civility he could muster. When she inquired about perhaps visiting him in his study, he'd snapped and flat out told her she wasn't welcome.
She'd certainly been taken aback by that, but Van couldn't look at her. Instead, he'd walked away and kept to his agenda as usual. From then on out, after court, she'd smile, wish him a pleasant afternoon, and go her own way.
Had she expected anything of him, she would have been disappointed. She might have lashed out, pressured to visit him, held a grudge—none of which would have helped him warm to her. She had been in a tough spot, certainly, but she'd handled it with grace. It had been uncomfortable enough for him having a woman in his life, let alone having someone share his home and duties after over a decade of being alone. How much more uncomfortable would their marriage have been if she had expected him to open up immediately? How unhelpful would it have been for her to have demanded he be anything other than who and what he was?
Ultimately, he knew she was right to not expect anything of him; and for as much as it stung, it also stirred that warm gratitude he felt for her yesterday.
He let out a breath. "It was wise of you, I think," he said softly.
Her eyes fluttered before she turned back to the nightgown in her hands. "You're cute when you're humble, Van," she said with a smile and a quick glance at him.
Van's face began to flush with the compliment, and, feeling unworthy of it, he scrambled for something to ask her. "So what did you expect to get from marrying me, then?
Her smile froze as she slowly turned to look at him. "What are you asking?"
Feeling suddenly cooler, he looked down and played with his food. He'd asked the wrong question. Now she might think he was accusing her of chasing his title. Swallowing, he tried a different angle. "I meant, what made you accept the proposal?"
She let out a long breath, and he looked up to see her rubbing one arm, her brows drawn and lips a thin line. She met his eyes briefly before resuming her mending. "The short answer is that I felt called to Fanelia."
While her words pleased him, he wanted to know more. "Really? What's the long answer?" he asked carefully.
She stiffened and shook her head. "Intuition," she said, closing the gap in her robe with a fist as she bent closer to her sewing.
Eyeing her, he sensed that there was more to it, but he knew when someone needed space. He stood and took her empty plate to the table. "Would you like some water?"
"Yes, thank you."
He brought her a glass. "I'm going to call a maid to bring you clothes," he said when she accepted it.
She raised an eyebrow at him. "I thought you liked that I had nothing else to wear?"
"I do," he said. "But I still have to meet with the other leaders, and I'd like you to come with me."
"Oh," she said, sitting up as a pleased smile touched her lips. "Yes, I'd like that."
He nodded, went to ring for a servant, and returned to the couch.
"You're still hungry, right?" he said, offering her another bite.
She gave a little nod and accepted his offer. There wasn't much left on his plate, but he was content to let her have it. She was thinner than she used to be, and something about that bothered him.
His eyes were drawn to her lips as she chewed, and Van couldn't help recalling how soft they were. Last night, when they first kissed, she was a little aggressive about it, too, as if she wanted him. He swallowed as heat started swirling through his body again.
To distract himself, he fed her another bite and reached for the cuff of her robe, the backs of his fingernails brushing the skin of her arm.
"When are you meeting with the others?" she asked.
"Mid-morning," he said. "As soon as you're dressed."
"You don't have to wait for me," she said.
"I'll wait," he said definitively. He returned to what he had wanted to ask her. "What did you mean by intuition?" he asked forthrightly.
She sent him a sharp look and returned to tying off her mending.
Van waited for her to answer. When she didn't, he asked, "You don't want to tell me about it?" He shifted his fingers from her robe to stroke her arm.
She cut the thread and pulled away from his touch to hold up the nightgown by the straps. Van took it and ran his rough fingers over the silky fabric. The new seam was straight, the stitches fine, and the edges folded under and secured. "It looks good," he told her as he placed it back in her lap.
"Thanks," she said quietly.
"Hitomi?" he asked softly.
He rarely used her name and she knew it. Her guarded eyes darted up to his.
"Will you tell me, please?" he asked.
She matched his stare for two breaths before beginning slowly, "It's not that I don't want to tell you, I just…."
He watched her patiently as he slid his hand under the loose sleeve of her robe to feel her soft skin again.
Her jaw clenched. "I just don't want to be treated like a tool, Van," she said, her eyes steady and serious. "Or like I'm some sort of seer, because I'm not."
His hand froze at her words. In their talk of expectations, he had not expected her to preface any answer that way. "What? Why would I think you're a seer?"
She forced out a breath and cocked her head. "I'm not a seer."
"Okay," he relented. "But I want to know what you mean by intuition?"
"I have dreams, Van," she said, letting out a heavy breath. "Sometimes. Sometimes they're symbolic and hard to interpret. And sometimes, things from my dreams actually happen. Usually, they don't. Usually, I have normal dreams. But every now and then, I'll have recurring dreams about something, and those tend to happen."
He gaped. He could tell by the slant of her green eyes that she meant what she said. Her pursed lips told him she worried about his response. Looking down at his empty plate, he gathered his thoughts.
Unwilling to disbelieve her, he considered the possibility that she did have dreams that came true. Van had heard of seers, people who claimed to know the future. Sometimes these seers had tried—usually unsuccessfully—to help in war. Sometimes people came to them demanding their fortune be told. He couldn't imagine Hitomi doing either of those things. No wonder she prefaced it by saying she didn't want to be used as a tool. Van as a king had never heard a word breathed of her gift, either before or after their wedding, and now he wondered if anyone else knew about it. If anyone did know, they might automatically venerate her as a seer.
Van's breath hitched.
Hadn't he had a taste of such a gift just yesterday? Those moments at Dryden't window, when he'd seen images of himself with Hitomi... Van had forgotten them in the rush of everything that had happened yesterday, but just an hour ago, he'd felt a raw sense of deja vu. He'd been gazing down at Hitomi when she smiled up at him and ran her nail provocatively down his arm. Something about it had felt so strangely familiar and evocative, but he'd bent to kiss her and forgot all about it.
Now he realized it was the same moment he'd seen by the window in the council room.
Chills rushed up his back. Nothing like that had happened to him before, but that little glimpse gave credence to what she said.
Van let out the breath he'd been holding and looked up soberly. "What were your dreams? The ones that called you to Fanelia?"
Her eyes widened a bit as she met his. A smile flickered across her face before she subdued it with a press of her lips. When she looked down at her sewing, though, her shoulders lifted and relaxed. She picked up her little scissors and began cutting through the threadbare left strap, presumably to give it the same repair as the broken strap. Her smile grew. "I saw Fanelia. Dragons. You," she said with each snip.
A thrill shot through his body, down his arms, into his fingers. He opened his mouth to speak but was interrupted by a knock on their door.
Guessing it was a maid, he jumped up and quickly relayed that Hitomi needed proper clothes to meet with the council, before shutting the door promptly and returning to the couch. "You had dreams of me? When?"
A blush dusted her cheeks. "Does that excite you, Van?" she asked with a teasing smile.
"Very much," he said, not hiding his satisfaction. "Will you tell me about them?" he asked as he bent forward and peppered kisses on an exposed part of her shoulder.
She shivered and shied away from him with a faint giggle.
"Please," he said again, running his fingers up her arm with one hand and replacing her robe over her shoulder with the other.
After letting out a long sigh, her eyes darted to him and back to her mending. "When I was twelve and thirteen, during the Freidian-Basramian war, I was sent to live in Adom with my nanny and her family."
"I think I remember something about that."
"Do you?" she asked with a quirk of her eyebrows.
Van shrugged, but didn't say more. He barely remembered that conversation anyway.
"So did you know my maternal grandmother is from Fanelia?" she said.
Van looked away and swallowed. "I should know that," he admitted. Whatever pedigree his advisors had touted about her hadn't really mattered once they were married. The deed was done and he hadn't before seen the use of committing such information to memory.
Hitomi didn't reply, and Van brought himself to meet her eyes with what he hoped was an apologetic smile.
With a little sigh, she shook her head at him and cleared her throat. "I began to have two dreams, almost every night. In one, I would come over a hill to see a city wrapped in the arms of a mountain and crowned with a great tree."
Her concise description of his capital stirred his insides pleasantly.
"Usually, in my dreams, the tree sparkled in the sunlight that came after a storm," she continued. "But not always. I saw it in all seasons." She took a break to re-thread her needle.
He could almost see the tree himself now, and a heavy homesickness opened within him. He let his forehead fall upon her shoulder as his hand unthinkingly grasped her arm.
As if she sensed his feelings, her hand covered his as she pressed a lingering kiss into his hair. She cautiously continued, her voice low in his ear. "In my other dream, I explored a wild garden, following its paths until I discovered a secret stairway cut into a cliff. Upon ascending that, I found myself in an overgrown grove, a statuary, strange and sacred."
Van didn't miss her choice of words or how the quiet cadence of her voice evoked the wonder she must have experienced. At the mention of the cut stairs, Van lifted his head and met her eyes. "That's a poetic way to describe my family's garden," he said softly when she finished.
Their faces were close. He could feel her breath as she replied, "I've had a lot of time to think about it."
He tucked some of her hair behind her ear. "I like it," he said soberly, but he knew that was an understatement. This had been the longest he'd been away from home, a home he'd been told didn't exist anymore, and the ache and emptiness hollowed him. Her words filled that hole just a little, and the stirring from before spread and gave him hope that he might see it again almost as it was.
Returning his hand to run up and down her arm, he closed the distance between them, leaning in to cover her lips with his. It was a soft kiss, tender and brief. Just long enough to feel her, taste her, thank her.
Before he got too carried away, he pulled back. "Will you tell me more?"
Cheeks flushed, she touched her lips with her fingers and nodded, before turning to stare at the sewing in her hands. With a shiver, she picked it up again. "A white dragon began appearing in my dreams, either wrapped around the palace or curled up in the grove."
Numbly, his hand dropped to her leg. He blinked.
After a quick scan of his face, she turned back to her sewing. "I had heard terrible stories of dragons. The idea of them frightened me. They hunt close to Adom, you know, and even though the dragon in my dreams never hurt me, I couldn't sleep. Finally, I told my nanny of the dreams and the dragon. She told me to keep them close, to not tell anyone, but she said I needed to be prepared. She introduced me to a man who could teach me about them. That man took me into the forest with other village children, where I learned about dragons and, by consequence, survival in the mountains."
Van knew who that was and sat dazed, his hand mindlessly rubbing her leg over her robe. That explained so much.
"The dreams mostly stopped after I returned home, but I remembered them very clearly when I toured Fanelia a few years later, when I saw the capital for the first time in person." She paused from her work and looked up before her, her eyes distant, following whatever it was she saw in her memory. "There was the city wrapped in the mountain. There was the great tree glittering in the sun after a storm. But thankfully," she said with a shake of her head, "there was no dragon wrapped around the palace." She let out a breath. "I remember feeling so relieved about that."
"Dragons that big don't exist," Van said in a desperate attempt to relieve the pressure in his chest.
"Thankfully," she said, sending him a little smile.
His hand still rubbed up and down her thigh, but she didn't seem inclined to go on. "What about the other dream with the stairs, the one with my family grove?" he prompted. "Did that one come to pass?"
After letting out a very long breath, she continued. "Well, we toured the palace gardens on that trip. Of course, because of my dreams, I already knew all the paths. It was… uncanny," she said with a minuscule shake of her head. "My parents didn't understand how I knew where I was going. I kept leaving them behind. There I was, sixteen years old and as excited as a child." She bit her lip, shaking her head again. "I certainly embarrassed them that day, but…" Her voice trailed off and she shrugged at the memory.
Van smiled wistfully at the thought of a young version of his wife excited to run through his gardens. It was a bittersweet thought.
"Anyway, I took us beyond the bounds of where the public was allowed, telling them I knew about a secret stairway that led to these strange statues, and they tried following. Of course, I found the way and rushed up, but my parents got stopped by a guard." She paused with a furtive glance at him. "So I was alone as I ran up the stairs," she said slowly, significantly, as she turned to look at him with raised eyebrows. "You'd been king for about a year, if I remember correctly. My hair was cropped very short at the time."
As if a great fire had suddenly heated the air in the room, a hot wave flared up his chest, his skin prickled, and his mouth was parched. His hand on her thigh tightened involuntarily as his eyes grew wide.
"That was you?" he said with a croak, his heart skipping a beat.
She laughed, her eyebrows pinched together. With a nod, her blessedly cool hand pressed against his burning face. She dropped her sewing and twisted so her other hand could cool his neck. "Are you upset I didn't tell you before?"
What would he have done if she had? Would it have changed how he saw her? Would it have softened his heart to her sooner? He didn't know. Probably, he would have dismissed it as coincidence. But within the context of her dreams, it felt more significant than happenstance. He was that dragon in her dreams.
He snapped his gaping mouth shut. "Keep going," he managed to say.
Her eyebrows arched up and a tiny, knowing smile curved her lips. "You know what happened," she said.
"You knocked me over," he said.
"Yes," she nodded. "I ran up the stairs and around the trees expecting to find nothing, but there you were," she said. As she did, she stroked the backs of her fingers down his cheek and let them drop to her lap. He thought he heard her whisper, "My dragon," but between the blood rushing in his ears and the shiver elicited by her touch, he couldn't be certain. His brain briefly reminded him of the nickname she'd used just a little while ago, and that perhaps she'd had it in mind for much, much longer than he thought.
Hitomi turned to finish her mending. "I was running so fast I couldn't stop. I'll never forget your face just before I hit you, though." She glanced up at him with amusement on her lips.
It had been such a small moment that, had it not been for the cut he got on his elbow and the fact that was the only time as a king he'd been mowed over by a strange girl in his garden, perhaps he would have forgotten it. Van had been returning to the stairs after visiting his parents' graves when a figure had come around the trees at full speed. His panicked focus had honed in on shocked eyes and a halo of flying golden hair just before she collided with him at full speed. She'd laid them both out on the ground and his elbow had hit a rock. He remembered sitting up and watching dumbstruck as she scrambled up and back the way she came without so much as looking back at him.
"I cut my elbow," he said to her, lifting his arm to show her the mark where he'd needed five stitches. A strange, almost giddy feeling of awe began to grow in his chest, replacing his somber mood.
"Oh!" she looked up, eyes wide, and gently fingered the jagged scar. Her eyebrows pinched and she bit her lip. "I'm sorry. Did I apologize before I took off?" she asked with a pained smile. "I was terrified and don't remember. I jumped up and ran back down the stairs as if you really had been a dragon. I think I even knocked over the guard on my way down."
He smiled for the first time since her revelation. "It happened so fast I don't remember. Mostly, I was annoyed that someone had intruded upon me in my private family grove."
"I'm sorry," she said, her smile turning guilty.
"You got away pretty fast," he said. "By the time I got down the stairs, you were long gone." The blood dripping down his arm had distracted both the guard and him, aiding in her escape, no doubt.
"Yes," she said with a laugh. "I ran back to our family carriage without even waiting for my parents. I bolted right past them and didn't stop. I just remember feeling grateful I knew how to get out of that garden." Her happy smile slipped off her face then, but she shook her head and began tying off the thread on the second strap.
He wondered if she was thinking about the current state of the garden but was afraid to ask; really, he didn't want to know right now. Instead, he asked, "Did you realize who I was?"
"Deep down, I think. I'd heard some of your people calling you Dragon King, but I didn't make the correlation until later when I got your invitation. It was too much to take in at that age."
Snipping the thread, she finished her mending before saying, "To be honest, I tried not to think about the dreams or running into you in the garden. I went home. I had my family. I had my education. When we received the invitation to your gala, we were all taken completely by surprise." Looking up at him with quirked, curious eyebrows, she added, "You hadn't been holding court when we visited, so my parents didn't think your advisors even knew of our existence."
Before Van could answer her implied question, there was a knock at the door. A maid had Hitomi's clothes for the day, a dress picked by Queen Millerna herself, and the item initiated an abrupt change in topic and activity for the king and queen. The council would start soon, so they transitioned to getting ready. Van still had other things to discuss in that regard, and he could already tell it was going to take much more effort than normal to turn his focus to the logistics of war planning.
As they spoke of those things, though, Van couldn't help marveling at the unfamiliar peace and warmth that had settled within himself. He could only attribute it to the things she'd shared with him, the secret parts of her she'd kept for him—not just her body, but her dreams and her stories and her touch. It all left him feeling somehow more content and hopeful. Even just watching her brush and braid her hair was gratifying, and he wondered whether it was because of the simplicity of the moment or something else that he couldn't quite put his finger on.
Hitomi caught him staring at her in the mirror and smiled up at him, her green eyes warm in the morning sunlight.
His cheeks burning, he rushed out to put on his boots before she could see him blushing.
Such feelings wouldn't help him win a war, he told himself. He would have to channel and sequester them, keep them where they were safe and protected, only calling upon the memory of them for motivation. It was unpleasant, but it had to be done.
He had to do it to return to her.