“I know,” I murmured into her head. “You’re pretty cute when you’re jealous.” The familiar scent of her hair filled my nostrils and set my mind at peace, and I let myself relax into it.
“Lux?” she asked after a long pause.
“Hmm?”
“Are you falling asleep?”
“Mhmm.”
“Maybe you should have gone easy on the wine,” she laughed. She got up out of her chair, forcing me to stand on my own instead of leaning on her shoulders. “Let’s go to bed.”
“I’m fine,” I said, drawing out the words as I followed along behind her towards the stairs.
“Sure you are.” We made our way quietly up to the first bedroom with an open door. It was furnished like the others: a large bed with two bedside tables, a chest of drawers on either side of the room, and a single cushioned chair in the far corner. Despite my protests, Lia helped me unbuckle and remove my armor before attending to her own. I stripped down to my underwear, leaving my clothes in a messy heap on the floor, and slipped into bed.
While the room was plainly furnished, what little it did have was made of the highest quality materials. I sank down into the thickly cushioned mattress and pulled the sheets up over my shoulder, marveling at how soft the fabric surrounding me felt. My head was perfectly supported on a stack of down pillows, which were miles ahead of the straw or cotton stuffed pillows I had encountered during my time in Kaldan. “Oooh,” I groaned as my body relaxed, releasing tension I hadn’t realized I was holding in my joints and muscles.
Lia joined me in bed after she finished changing; as most of her belongings were still in Marten’s wagon at the warehouse, she was stuck wearing her underclothes without her usual nightgown, and she let out a soft yelp when the cold blankets touched her skin. “How d-do you sleep like this all the time?” she asked through chattering teeth.
“You get used to it,” I said, clamping my arm around her waist. She squealed as I pulled her across the silky sheets and held her close against my chest. “It helps if you have someone next to you, though.”
I felt a shiver run down her spine as she pressed her body against mine and pulled my arm tighter around her. “I could get used to this.”
The long-buried feeling of desire fought for control of my mind when the heat from her bare skin warmed mine, but before I could form the feelings into words, the exhaustion of our long trip finally caught up with me all at once. I gave her a final squeeze and mumbled something resembling, “goodnight, Lia,” before falling asleep.
---
Morning came far too early and brought a flurry of activity along with it. Hana knocked and stuck her head into the bedroom to wake us while the sun was still pink in the sky. Elise had failed to come back in the night, as I had expected, but she had kept her promise of setting our new lives into motion. Three officials arrived at the house exactly at sunrise, each toting a satchel full of tightly wound maps, and were intent on choosing the exact location of the new Corell homestead.
Once we were all assembled back in the dining room, we began the arduous process of homing in on a property. As the residential areas of Mayaan were already full to capacity, our choices were limited to plots outside of town in the surrounding forest. The maps showed four main roads leaving town, one in each cardinal direction: west to the coast, east to the Mountain Gate, south to the Lybesian capital, and north towards Doram. While the southern, eastern, and western roads were all wide and well-marked on the maps, the northern road looked to be little more than a dirt path that wove upwards in an increasingly circuitous route towards the mountains.
All of Marten’s decisions were made in the interest of a single goal: attract as little attention as possible. After deciding on the northern road, we were presented with a series of maps that increased in detail with every successive decision. Large blocks of the forest were marked out in color-coded sections that indicated the price and availability of all land within the town limits, and I took careful mental notes as to where those borders ended. Each choice led to another choice, and after what felt like hours, we had focused in on three separate plots of land, all roughly four miles outside of Mayaan’s center. When the plots were selected, we were immediately escorted outside to an awaiting carriage that would take us to view the land.
After an hour of travel, we reached our first potential plot, and the next phase of our work began. The rest of the morning and most of our afternoon was spent inspecting each of the three properties, all of which were entirely undeveloped and covered in emberwood trees. Our attendant officials showed us the various boundaries of the lots, marked by small colored flags hanging from trees next to the main road. According to our main guide, unclaimed land became a much more closely regulated affair after a large surge in emberwood exporting caused issues between logging companies and landowners who had conflicting ideas of property boundaries.
Of our three stops for the day, the last proved to be exactly what we were looking for. Situated on a particularly sharp bend in the road, the lot extended back into the forest for nearly half a mile before widening into a square perfectly sized for a house and an adjacent barn. The lots on either side of it were designated as logging sites, with the back property line bordering unincorporated forest land to the north.
When Marten informed the officials of which lot we had chosen, we traveled back to Mayaan to finalize the deal. We arrived at Three Barrels,
