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The library smelled faintly of dust and sun-warmed vellum, though the light had long since faded to amber along the tall windows. The hearth had been lit hours ago, casting a low, steady glow across the scattered pillows she’d long ago dragged into their reading corner—improper, perhaps, but entirely worth it.
Quistis shifted slightly where she sat among them, one leg tucked beneath her, the other stretched out to accommodate him. Seifer lay half on his side, turned in toward her, his head in her lap.
As though he couldn’t bear not touching her. Even after a long afternoon spent doing just that.
The cushions still held the shape of it.
The air, too warm for the hour, still faintly unsettled.
It was a good thing he’d had a drawbar added so they could bar the library door, she thought.
Her fingers slipped into his hair, gentler now, absent, though not without purpose. There was a languor in the motion, a quiet indulgence that had not been there earlier…
The courtyard had been chaos.
Not formally—never that. Grendich ran too well for disorder. But the energy had shifted the moment the outrider had been spotted at the ridge.
Even through the dust, she knew him—by the way he rode, by the cadence of it, a familiarity so deep it required no thought.
By the time he rode through the gates, she was already there.
He’d looked—
Gods.
Dust-streaked. Armor dulled by road and weather. A line of something dried and dark at the edge of his gauntlet that she had refused to identify.
Alive.
His eyes had found her immediately.
Burning.
He hadn’t waited for assistance. Hadn’t waited for his train. He’d swung down from the saddle with a sharp, impatient motion and crossed the space between them in long strides.
The steward—dear, long-suffering man—had been standing just behind her, ledger in hand.
There had been a time when he would have stepped forward. Cleared his throat. Begun, with careful efficiency, to list the matters they had saved for her lord’s return.
No longer.
Seifer reached her, one arm slipping beneath her knees, the other at her back, and lifted her clean off her feet.
As though a month apart could be gathered up and undone in a single motion.
She remembered the sharp, breathless laugh that had escaped her, the way she’d clutched at his shoulders, the roughness of his pauldrons beneath her palms.
“It is good to see you, Lord Marshal,” the steward had said, very carefully, after a respectable pause.
Seifer didn’t so much as glance at him.
Quistis had already reached for him—her hand rising almost without thought to cup his cheek, thumb brushing along the line of dust and stubble there.
He leaned into her palm with a quiet, unguarded sound—something dangerously close to a groan—eyes closing for the briefest moment.
“Yes, Halvern,” he said, voice lower now, rough with it. “Tomorrow.”
And then her lord carried her inside.
A heavy exhale left her as she blinked back into the present.
Her hand had stilled again in his hair.
“Reading,” Seifer murmured, voice low, roughened—not by sleep, she thought, but by something else entirely. “Or thinking?”
She glanced down at him, the corner of her mouth lifting.
“A bit of both.”
His fingers, which had been idly tracing patterns along her wrist, shifted—sliding down the length of her arm in a long drag made goosebumps rise across her skin.
She cleared her throat softly and looked back to the page.
“This one is… curious.”
“Mm.”
“A poem,” she continued, settling her tone into something composed, something studiously normal, as though she had not spent the better part of the afternoon utterly undone by him. “About a summer harvest.”
“Sounds riveting.”
She ignored the sarcasm and read aloud.
The fruit yields best to bite, not blade,
So softened with the patient press of sun.
Its skin, a hue no painter ever made,
Begs caress before the tasting’s done.There is a moment—brief and aching—
Where sweetness waits just out of claim,
Where breath comes soft, nearly breaking,
And wanting has no gentler name.A fragrance rich as summer air,
A spill of gold against the hand,
It cannot last beneath such care—
At last, it yields at soft command.And those who taste it taste it twice—
Once for hunger, once for yearning—
For all things bright will e’er entice,
And each delight is owed its earning.
She lingered on the final line a moment longer, eyes tracing the ink.
“Gods be damned,” came the voice in her lap. “That might be the best poem you’ve ever read.”
She glanced down at him in surprise. “Really? You like that one more than The Song of Roland?”
He snorted, eyes closed. “No comparison.” He nudged his head deeper into her lap, a low chuckle following. “You know, it’s customary for noble houses to have official poems. Maybe this one should be ours. We’ll have a bard put it to music.”
Quistis blinked.
“…It does make me wish we had peach trees. But to make it our house ballad? I had no idea you were so passionate about fruit, Seifer.”
A long pause.
“Quistis.”
She looked down.
He’d opened one eye now, gaze fixed up at her. Sharp. Amused.
“That poem’s not about fruit.”
She blinked again.
“…It all but states as much, of course it is.”
“No. It’s not.”
Her spine went stiff.
“My lord, I flatter myself the superior between us when it comes to poetry.”
Those steely green eyes cut into her, amusement at the edges.
“You’re certain?”
She glared.
“I am.”
He wet his lips, slow, deliberate.
“Then read that line about the painter again.” His thumb traced the inside of her wrist as he said it.
She glanced back at the page.
“‘Its skin, a hue no painter ever made,
Begs caress before the tasting’s done.’”
His full gaze was on her as he lifted her arm, dragging his teeth lightly along the inside, before his lips followed, unhurried, towards the bend of her elbow.
“Mm.”
Heat crept along her spine.
“I fail to see—”
“Keep reading.”
Not a suggestion.
And as she drew breath—
He rose.
Up onto one elbow, then to his knees. The cushions shifted beneath her, her balance yielding as he pressed her back into them with quiet inevitability.
“There is a moment—brief and aching—
Where sweetness waits just out of claim,”
Her voice faltered.
The whisper of her skirts answered in its place.
He pushed the fabric up, past her knees, the roughness of his palms beneath. Agonizingly slow. Deliberately so.
“Where breath comes soft, nearly breaking,”
Oh.
Her pulse stumbled.
His hands slid higher.
The cool air kissed her skin where he bared it, the contrast sharp enough to make her draw in a breath—
And then stop.
Because he had bent. Slowly enough that she saw it coming. Slowly enough to watch him. To feel her skin prickle in anticipation.
The brush of his lips against the inside of her thigh was brief—almost idle. But it sent a sharp shiver through her.
Oh no.
“Seifer—”
“Go on,” he murmured, the words warm and smug against her skin.
Her fingers tightened around the book.
Want coiled low and sharp—
and she saw it now.
Gods, of course she did.
She forced her eyes back to the page, more breath than voice as she finished the stanza.
“‘And wanting has no gentler name.’”
His mouth curved where it lingered, his breath warm against her skin, his gaze lifting to hers, dark, and certain.
Heat flooded her, immediate—familiar.
Her body remembered too well the way he’d take his time. The indulgence of it. The pure wantonness of coming undone against his tongue.
And—
how wonderfully hard he’d be after, the way he always was.
Its own reward.
His eyes tracked her face—that grin splitting wider when he found what he was looking for.
“Knew you’d come around,” he murmured.
A spark of irritation flared through the desire.
The utter gall of that man.
She lowered the book, lifting her chin. Defiant.
“To what? That it’s a poem about peaches?”
He just looked at her. Blinked.
His hair still mussed from her hands. The line of his collar undone, his breath not quite steady. His eyes—
Hungry.
Something in her chest tightened as she watched her husband lean back, never breaking eye contact. His hands slid from her hips with deliberate slowness, fingertips dragging just enough to make the loss felt, before he settled upright again—still kneeling between her thighs.
The way he wanted her was unmistakable—burning through him like a torch.
And yet—
“You’re probably right,” he said easily. Too easily. “What do I know about poetry.”
Her eyes narrowed.
“Whatever my lady says it’s about,” he said, infuriatingly mild. That familiar edge of a smirk tugging at his mouth, “then it must be so.”
Oh.
Oh, how dare he.
She reached for him without thinking, fisting her hands in the front of his jerkin and dragging him back down to her. He braced those strong arms on either side of her head, catching his weight where she pulled him in.
“Fine,” she snapped. “It’s not about fruit.”
His smirk deepened.
“No?”
“No.”
He tilted his head, voice soft now—coaxing, patient, and utterly merciless.
“You are the expert. What’s the poet talking about, then?”
Her throat went dry.
She should simply refuse to be baited into his little game.
But—
One hand slid back under her skirts, coming to rest on the curve of her hip. His thumb traced a slow arc atop her thigh that was anything but idle.
Waiting.
She felt it—his restraint, his certainty, the way he held himself just shy of taking what he so clearly wanted.
Her stubborn knight would hold there until she gave him what he asked for.
Her fingers tightened in his collar, assessing.
The cost of winning was perhaps too high.
Very well.
“It’s… unladylike to say.”
He scoffed, his mouth finding her neck, the brush of lips and quiet amusement against her skin unraveling her composure in sinful, deliberate strokes.
“Being as you are a lady,” he murmured, “whatever you say is ladylike.”
She drew in a breath, sharp and unsteady.
“It’s—”
Gods.
“—about… oral stimulation,” she said, the words clipped and precise, as though that might somehow save her. “Of… of a woman.”
A breath left him, lower now. Rougher.
“Big words,” he murmured, voice dipping, the amusement thinning into something warmer. “Say it in a way your poor knight might understand.”
She made a sound of pure frustration and seized his face, dragging him into a kiss that was far from composed—sharp, heated, decisive.
He answered it instantly.
A low sound slipped from him—pleased, caught somewhere between restraint and want—as he leaned into her. One hand braced hard at her side, the other sliding up her back as she arched into him, giving as fiercely as she took.
When she broke it, her breath was uneven, her composure in shreds.
“Seifer,” she panted against his lips—
and he stilled.
Waiting.
“If you do not put that clever mouth between my thighs this instant and lick me until I come undone, I will have you thrown back out that gate you came through.”
She watched the wicked satisfaction settle in even as his hands slid down, firm and certain. Gripping her thighs and drawing them wider as he shifted lower, his gaze never leaving hers.
“You could have said so sooner, lady.”
She hadn’t the time to roll her eyes before his mouth found her—and set her arching against the pillows, stars bursting behind her eyes.
Some battles were worth losing.
Quistis was deep into the household ledger when Mira interrupted her.
“My lady—” she began from the doorway, hesitant.
Quistis did not look up from the ledger. “If this is about the west field accounts, I told the steward I would review them this afternoon.”
“’Tis not that, my lady.”
Something in her tone made Quistis pause.
She set the quill aside. “Then what is it?”
“There has been a delivery.”
Quistis frowned.
“A delivery?”
“Yes, my lady. They are asking for you.”
With a quiet exhale, Quistis rose, smoothing her skirts as she crossed the room. “Very well. Show me.”
The courtyard was already in motion when she stepped out—hands hauling, voices calling, the creak of wood under weight. Half her household had abandoned their duties outright, drawn by the commotion—clustering at the edges to see what had arrived.
And then she saw them.
A line of wagons stood just beyond the gate, laden with cloth-bound roots and slender trunks, their leaves just beginning to unfurl in the early warmth.
Peach trees.
Two dozen of them.
For a long moment, she simply stared.
“Lady Quistis of Grendich?” one of the men called, stepping forward, cap in hand.
She did not take her eyes off the nearest sapling.
“Yes.”
“I’ve a message for you, madam.”
Now she looked at him.
He cleared his throat, uncertain, then—rather dutifully—
“For my lady, who taught me about poetry. All moments without your sweetness are—ah—”
The messenger stumbled, cleared his throat.
“—aching.”
A soft sound rippled through the gathered maids—half sigh, half stifled delight.
Color swept up her throat, sharp and immediate.
That man.
She could feel them watching. Gods, did he make gossip easy.
“Well!” she said, precisely, her voice lifting just enough to carry. “This is excessive. Impractical. Entirely unnecessary.”
The man froze, staring at her, his eyes wide.
“Sh-shall I have them taken ba—”
“You will do no such thing.”
The words came too quickly.
Quistis glanced once more at the nearest sapling.
At the careful way it had been packed.
Transported.
Delivered.
Her mouth betrayed her, just slightly.
“…bring them to the south orchard,” she said. “Take utmost care. Mira, it will need to be expanded. Tell the head gardener I will oversee it myself.”
Mira, beside her, made a small, knowing sound. Quistis did not look at her. This would be all over the house by supper.
Her only solace was that they didn't know the half of it.