After a moment she stirred slightly, her head still on his arm as she looked up.
"Now you will take me with you?" she breathed, in delicious content. "Now you will not leave me with the Emperor, Feodor?"
For the first time in many weeks Stanief laughed, reveling in their knit gaze.
"Poor Adrian! How can he punish his rebellious Regent, since he must leave me you? In a garden of fire my lily has opened. Where shall we go, Iría, on our golden journey? To your perfumed South?"
"May I choose?"
"You may command."
"Then take me to your own old castle in the hills. Shall it not be our home?"
"Hush, you have spoken a word I never knew; let me listen to it for a moment."
Outside the city roared unheeded, unheard.