Good As Dead

Chapter Sixteen

It's Sunday morning and for the first time in a year, I'm in a bed that isn't somewhere in Mercywing. The sunlight feels warm and clean on the areas of my skin not underneath the sheets. I doze, dimly aware of ink humming against my back. Gideon stayed in his undershirt and jeans when we went to bed last night, even pushing the covers over to my side to rest on the bare mattress. The sheets are still between us, but I can feel how we're tangled together, him on the single lumpy pillow and me using the hollow of his throat. I'm surprised I'm not suffocating him with my hair.

Eventually, I'm awake enough to stretch. In response, the sore spots on my body from last night's fight flare up. Gideon's arm moves against me, brushing hair from my shoulder as I settle back against him. I don't want to go anywhere today, not when I feel like this. "What time is it?"

"Early yet. Just past seven." His voice sounds clear, alert, and I get the feeling his version of sleep is different than mine. "How do you feel?"

"Like hell." Especially my throat, which hurts not only from Frankie, but from all the growling and snarling I did as a wolf. The pain is enough to make me reach over him and grab one of the free candy drops left on the bedside dresser, hoping a coat of artificial peppermint will help the words come out more easily. "I'm going to be limping around when I finally haul my ass out of this bed. Right now, a hundred-year-old could outrun me."

It's only a joke, but his arm tenses around my ribs. Oh. He still feels bad for not fighting alongside me. What was that phrase he used? Unbecoming conduct. For all that he made fun of those knights he and his brothers were named after, I bet they're stuck deeper into his mind than he'll admit. I shift my head enough to look at him, ignoring the pain lancing down my spine as our noses brush. "It digs at you, doesn't it? You think you did something wrong by letting me take on Frankie alone."

The line of his jaw goes tense. "Yes."

Now that we're not being chased by a vampire, there's time to shove back irritation at the suggestion I can't do something myself. "I won, didn't I? Got through everything he tried. It worked out fine."

He doesn't say anything, but his thumb brushes my mouth, stopping just by the split in my lip. The feeling sends a thrill through me, but his pupils are dilated with worry, not teasing.

Okay, he won't be persuaded by that line of thinking. "Those knights you talked about. You know, how they were all about honor, and conduct, and, um..."

"Valor."

"Sure. Well, the women knights were expected to be the same way, right?"

"There weren't any." He eyes me, trying to figure out my angle.

My argument pops like a balloon. "Why not?"

He shrugs. "It was simply unheard of for that culture in those times. Only men could be knights."

"You mean, women just didn't matter?" If that's true, it explains a few things.

He shifts a little, hand absently sliding down to my shoulder while he thinks. "They mattered very much. There are many stories of knights doing magnificent deeds for the women they loved. The highest level of triumph a knight might achieve was to be deserving of his lady."

"What she'd do for him?" I run my fingers along the neck of his shirt, trying to take it all in.

"She was his lady," he says, as if that explains everything.

"Okay. But what did she do? Fight by his side? Give him a home to live in? Breathe?" When he looks at me like it's something no one considered before, a lady having to do something to catch and keep a knight's attention, I try again. "What made her so special that he'd go out and do these amazing things?"