Chapter
Rizeth sat with his chin in his hand, watching Ashenivir clear away the dinner things. He needed to get up and ready himself for their outing—they were expected at Trollskull Manor for some sort of pre-wedding celebration this evening—but he couldn’t bring himself to move. It wasn’t as if it would take him long to change clothes and run a comb through his hair, and this brief domestic vignette was all the peace he was likely to get tonight. The combination of Ashenivir, his House friends, and alcohol was not one conducive to a particularly serene evening.
Ordinarily it wasn’t the sort of event he’d have any interest in attending. But Ashenivir had asked—while on his knees in perfect position, having gone there the moment he returned from his studies, and the level to which that small act filled Rizeth’s heart could not be understated—and so he was going. Goddess help him.
“Other way up, Ra’soltha,” he remarked, as Ashenivir began putting the mugs away upside down, then swallowed a grimace. The argument that had spawned the last time he’d said that…the look of hurt on Ashenivir’s face was burned into his memory.
Ashenivir glanced over his shoulder, then continued to do exactly as he’d been doing, but with more exaggerated movements, setting the mugs down so they clicked audibly against the shelf. Even with his head turned away, Rizeth could see the edge of the smile he was biting his lip over.
“Ra’soltha,” he said, harder, and this time no guilt compelled him to an apology. There was only the snapping into place of a thread of power as familiar as his own Weave and twice as potent.
“It’s my kitchen too, and this way the rims don’t dirty,” Ashenivir said. Then added, in a disrespectful afterthought; “Master.”
He gasped at Rizeth’s hands on him; again as he was shoved against the counter. Rizeth pinned him there with the weight of his body, trapped facing the cupboard he’d so incorrectly made use of, and fit a hand around his throat to keep his head up. Ashenivir squirmed in a transparently useless attempt at getting free.
“Pay attention,” Rizeth growled, near enough to his ear to conjure a shiver. With one hand he yanked Ashenivir’s leggings down, and as he did so, a tiny, fading voice in his head tried to reprimand him; this isn’t a scene, you can’t turn your whole life into a—
“Make me,” Ashenivir whispered, and his voice became the only one that would ever matter.
“Hands on the counter,” Rizeth ordered, and bit his neck when he didn’t immediately obey. “Keep them there. It seems, apprentice”—Ashenivir’s breath hitched at the title—“that you need some instruction regarding appropriate methods of organisation. Look away, and you won’t come for three days. Am I understood?”
“Yes, Master.”
Like the well-trained boy he was, he kept his hands in place as Rizeth worked him open, his only movement a mostly unconscious rocking onto Rizeth’s cantrip-slick fingers, which Rizeth allowed; it was undeniably precious when he just couldn’t help himself. His flat palms went to fists over a moan when Rizeth finally pressed his cock into him, hilting in one smooth motion. He started to tip his head back, but caught himself in time. Rizeth stroked his throat. “Very good. Now—observe.”
Keeping one hand on Ashenivir’s hip, he shook the other clean with a cantrip, then reached past to flip the mugs over one by one. With each he turned, he thrust deep, pushing Ashenivir into the edge of the counter to marry pleasure with discomfort. Once he reached the end of the shelf he stopped, buried in Ashenivir’s heat, feeling the pulse of him around his cock, delighting in the rough edges of his breath.
“Your error has been corrected,” he said. “Is the proper arrangement clear to you?”
“Y-yes, Master.”
Rizeth flipped the mugs back upside down, then took Ashenivir’s hand and fit it around the furthest one. “Demonstrate your understanding.”
He did so, grip faltering as Rizeth fucked into him, yet he completed the instruction nonetheless—when he was done, the mugs ran in a crooked line across the shelf, unacceptably uneven. Rizeth dug his fingers into Ashenivir’s hip. “Almost, Ra’soltha,” he crooned, as if he were sorry about the failure, even sympathetic to it. He reached up and reset the mugs. “Try again, and keep them tidy this time.”
Biting his lip in concentration—muffling his moans, which was a great loss, to be certain—Ashenivir tried again. And again, and again; each time he failed to execute the task perfectly, Rizeth reset the lesson, until he was whining and panting, the arm supporting him on the counter trembling. On his next attempt he couldn’t quite maintain his grasp on the second to last mug and it slipped from his fingers. Rizeth caught it before it could shatter on the floor and tapped it to Ashenivir’s lips.
“Break one, and I will break you,” he said.
“It didn’t break,” Ashenivir gasped out.
“Not for lack of trying on your part.”
“It wasn’t on purpose, I promise, I—”
Rizeth bit his earlobe, tugging sharply until he stopped talking. “You are making us late to our evening’s engagement. So unless you wish to explain to Mr Blackwind exactly why we were delayed, I suggest you complete the lesson, apprentice. Quickly and accurately.”
One last time, he set the mugs out. And one last time, Ashenivir flipped them over, and when they all sat in the correct position in a straight line, Rizeth finally allowed him to look away from the cupboard so he might be bent properly over the counter and fucked as he deserved. Then, since he’d taken his lesson—and his fucking—so well, Rizeth obliged his begged desire to be filled, and came inside him to a rolling, breathless pant of thanks.
He kept Ashenivir pinned there, over the counter-top, and remained buried inside him to stroke him to his own finish, which also came with an accompaniment of thanks, though these were far less coherent. He stroked along Ashenivir’s trembling side, admiring the heat and pulse and loose-limbed sprawl of him.
“You did that on purpose,” he murmured as he withdrew, pressing a kiss to the sweaty side of Ashenivir’s neck.
“Maybe.”
Rizeth gave his hair a light tug. “Whatever did I do to deserve such a wilful apprentice as you?”
“Let me into your quarters for a private meeting,” Ashenivir said. “It was all downhill for you from there, Master.”
Rizeth laughed and drew him around into a proper kiss. “Hurry along and clean up before we truly are late.”
“Yes, Master.”
He tugged up his leggings and went off into the bedroom, gesturing a cleaning cantrip around himself as he went in a confidently fluid motion. Simple magic, but he cast so well; there was so little about him Rizeth didn’t admire. Rizeth closed the cupboard and went to find his own change of clothes, his skin and all that lay beneath it, muscle, bone and soul, abuzz with afterglow.
Apprentice, Ra’soltha; Master, partner—they were all as one, just as Ashenivir had said. It was futile to force them separate. A part of him still felt as though at any moment someone would burst in to tell him how wrong that was, that he knew nothing about love, only an ugly craving for control.
But if such a feeling as Ashenivir’s submission inspired in him wasn’t love, then what else, he had to wonder, could it possibly be?
Someone had let slip that their table was celebrating tonight, and as a result drinks kept appearing without anyone having asked for them. This was a very generous phenomenon, and Ashenivir was as grateful for it as River and the others were, but it was making his current mission of getting Rizeth to choose his drinks for him rather difficult.
“They do count as food,” he said, for the fourth—or perhaps fifth—time. “They go in my mouth and I swallow them.”
River and Cain snorted simultaneously into their ale. The two were sat across from him and Rizeth at their corner table, and Mara was in Xalin’s lap at the outer end—had been in Xalin’s lap all night, and the priestess hadn’t stopped blushing since she’d arrived. Not helping matters was the fact that Mara’s idea of sharing drinks involved carefully tipping her latest beverage into Xalin’s mouth and staring into her eyes the whole time she did it. If the tavern hadn’t been so crowded, it was the kind of behaviour that might have gotten them thrown out for sheer indecency.
“A great deal of things go into your mouth, Ra’soltha,” Rizeth said, “and a great deal of nonsense comes out when those things are alcoholic.”
“You don’t like my nonsense?”
“I tolerate your nonsense.”
Ashenivir beamed, and shifted his chair another inch closer. Or at least he tried to—it couldn’t really get any nearer, given it was right up against Rizeth’s already. But River was in Cain’s lap, and Mara in Xalin’s, and he wanted very badly to be in Rizeth’s. They were in public, though, and therefore such a thing was a hard ask—even if Rizeth seemed to be alright kissing him in front of people now, delight of all delights. He settled for wrapping himself around Rizeth’s arm and pressing his face to the soft material of his sleeve. It was a very nice sleeve. All Rizeth’s clothes were very nice. Not elaborate, the way Kelran’s were, or showy like Mara’s, but nice. And they fit so very well it was a wonder every other person in the tavern wasn’t making eyes at him.
“Good grief, anyone would think it was your wedding we’re celebrating tomorrow,” River said, rolling his eyes.
“Oh, we could have another one the day after!” Mara said. “Lady Alvanriel would love to do another one, wouldn’t she, Xalin?”
“She would, but we wouldn’t—do you have any idea how overboard she’s gone for this?” Xalin shot River and Cain a sympathetic look. “I hope you’re prepared to have the entire Haven turn out for your ceremony.”
“I’m sure it’ll be fine,” Cain said. He smacked a loud kiss on River’s cheek. “It’s the place puppy wants, so it’s the place puppy gets.”
Ashenivir very valiantly didn’t think about joining ceremonies or how many moths the concept of Ashenivir of House Velkon’yss spawned in his chest. He finished his ale in a long swallow and thunked the mug down. “Oh look, we ran out of drinks. I’ll get us some more.”
Before anyone could point out that there was, in fact, still a tray of gifted ale in the middle of the table, he was up and away. Barely had he made it two steps into the crowd when Rizeth’s hand caught his.
“I can get drinks by myself, I’m not that drunk,” Ashenivir protested, though it wasn’t much of a protest. The crowd forced them close together, and Rizeth’s hand went from entwined with his to around his waist, keeping him from getting swallowed by the drunken throng. The sober, logical part of him knew that nobody was looking and even if they were, nobody cared. The tipsy, Ra’soltha part of him was spinning in delighted, Mara-esque circles at having his Master’s hands on him in a public place.
“What are you so worried about, Master?” he asked, when they made it to the bar and a pocket of slightly more breathable space. He hopped up onto a just-vacated stool. “I’ve been here a dozen times or more, nothing’s going to happen to me. Unai doesn’t stand for bad behaviour.”
“I would beg to differ on that point,” Rizeth said, casting a meaningful look at where two patrons were wrestling atop their table. No, wait, not wrestling. There were mouths involved. Hm. Now there was an idea. He hooked his legs around Rizeth’s and took two handfuls of his very nice robes and pulled him into a kiss. Ale on his tongue, nothing on Rizeth’s. That was alright, he supposed, for it meant he tasted only like Rizeth, and that was a taste Ashenivir very much liked. Rizeth tapped his arm three times. He broke away.
“Sorry.”
“Order your drinks,” Rizeth said. “There are others waiting.”
“Tell me why you’re so worried about me, and I will.”
“I am not worried about you.”
Ashenivir did his very best impression of Rizeth’s disbelieving arched eyebrow. That got him a huffed laugh and a kiss on the forehead. “I confess, I am still somewhat concerned about that priestess.”
“Zelka? Oh, she’d never come somewhere like this. And it’s been days—she’s not going to do anything to me.”
“That may only be because you have not been to the Haven.”
He was worrying too much, as usual. Ashenivir flapped a hand at him dismissively—Rizeth caught it, lacing their fingers together. “Order whatever terrible idea you’ve had now and let us return to your friends before they concoct some mischief without you.”
“Our friends,” Ashenivir corrected. Rizeth looked…not quite confused, but certainly off-balance, which was silly because it wasn’t a complicated concept. Ashenivir kissed him again—short and sensible this time—then ordered his terrible idea.
Mara exclaimed in delight when they returned and almost knocked the tray of multi-coloured drinks out of his hands in her rush to claim one.
“Fun drinks! Xalin, I can’t believe I haven’t shown you fun drinks yet.” Something bright pink and faintly fizzing found its way into her grasp. “Try this one—it tastes like the Feywild.”
“How do you know what the Feywild tastes like?” River said. He took a shimmering blue glass for himself, and a green one for Cain.
“Verin’s friends with an eladrin, and she tastes like the Feywild, and this drink tastes like her.”
“Tastes like her what?”
Mara fluffed her curls. “A lady doesn’t kiss and tell.”
“Oh please, you’d put an announcement in the broadsheets every time you had a good orgasm if you could afford it.”
Xalin almost sprayed her mouthful of Feywild over the table. Ashenivir, relieved of his tray, seated himself in Rizeth’s lap without asking. He’d beg forgiveness later—and perhaps not even have to do that, for Rizeth not only didn’t push him away, but put an arm around his waist and held him closer. That was good. That was extremely good. He drew the tray towards them.
“Pick one, Master.”
Rizeth eyed the remaining glasses with suspicion. “I have seen what happens to you the morning after fun drinks have entered the equation. At least one of us ought to be able to function tomorrow.”
“Oh, please, Master Velkon’yss,” Mara begged. “This is the last time we’ll get to drink with either of you, you have to have something.”
The gathered celebrants all focused their attention on Rizeth. The bards on the other side of the tavern kicked up into an even raunchier tune that shook the very beams. Rizeth turned the tray until a tall, thin glass of deep purple liquid sat before him. He ran his finger around the rim in a way that tugged a hook of lust in Ashenivir’s gut, then picked it up.
“Alright,” he said. “Just one.”
They had to tip the hire-coach double. Well, maybe not had to, but it’d only seemed fair given the poor woman had opened the door to let them out while Rizeth had one hand up Ashenivir’s shirt and the other down the back of his breeches. Ashenivir was sure he felt bad about it somewhere. Would feel bad about it tomorrow, maybe. Right now there were far more important things to feel—Rizeth’s hand down the front of his breeches, for example.
He rocked into the touch, and Rizeth pushed him more firmly against the door. Goddess, he tasted so good. Not like the Feywild, since he hadn’t had any of the pink drinks, but like…like…
“You taste like faezress,” Ashenivir panted. Rizeth bit his lip. “You do. I want to taste the rest of you.”
“I imagine it will taste much the same.”
“I need to check.”
Rizeth bit his neck this time, sucking what felt like a very large bruise right over his pulse. Ashenivir let his head fall back with a moan. The hand on his cock wasn’t doing much more than grope with far less than his Master’s usual finesse, but it sent lightning dancing down his spine anyway. Fun drinks made everything better. Made everything spin, too, and sometimes go a bit sideways. That was alright. It was part of what made them fun.
They stumbled in the vague direction of the bedroom, shedding clothing along the way. He managed to get his hands mostly everywhere, and Rizeth didn’t make him stop even once, which was a crying shame. He took Rizeth’s hand and put it to his throat, over his collar.
“No. No,” Rizeth said, shaking his head. He kept on blinking as if it would help; Ashenivir knew from experience it would not. “You’re drunk. I’m drunk.” He blinked again. “I am drunk. Gods. You did this to me, you wretched boy.”
He followed his complaint with a furiously hungry kiss that took them to the bed and very nearly rolled them right off the other side of it. Ashenivir ended up on top of him, his grinding encouraged by a firm hand on his ass. He wriggled in place, but the usual result was not forthcoming.
“Spank me.” It wasn’t quite a whine, but it was close.
“Absolutely not.”
“Please, Master—”
“I’m too drunk to bruise you the way you deserve,” Rizeth said, surprisingly coherent for having faced down fun drinks—though the slurred edges of his speech were doing some very pleasant things to Ashenivir’s insides. He kissed the pout from Ashenivir’s mouth and turned his whine into a moan as his fingers slid lower, teasing. “I am not too drunk to fuck you, though.”
“Yes,” Ashenivir said eagerly. He started to roll off of Rizeth. “Do that, do lots of that.”
Rizeth gripped him tight, holding him in place. “Where do you think you’re going?”
“Somewhere you can fuck me.”
“You are in exactly the right place to do that.” Rizeth pulled him down to suck a bite into the other side of his neck, then followed it with a hot stripe licked all the way to the tip of his ear. His voice was low and throaty and burred with desire that twinned itself in Ashenivir’s suddenly aching cock. “Ride me, Ra’soltha.”
Darkness wrapped them, the burnt orange flicker of a streetlamp outside catching all Rizeth’s perfect edges, setting his eyes ablaze. He kept his hands on Ashenivir’s hips as Ashenivir reached down between them to take his cock. Hot and hard in his grip—and hard to imagine a time before he knew every inch of it. Those inches filled him now as he slicked everything he could reach, messy and poorly cast, and sank down onto Rizeth with as much restraint as he could manage.
“Fuck.” The word slipped from him extended and raspy. His head swam, the music of the tavern still thumping time in his temples, weaving with the heartbeat thumping in his throat—and Rizeth’s pulse thumping deep within him.
“Such language,” Rizeth murmured, stroking his hip.
“I say fuck all the time, Master.”
“Not like that, you don’t.”
How else was he supposed to say it when he felt more full of his Master than he had in days? Ashenivir rocked his hips experimentally, and a flash of pleasure knocked a moan out of him. Why hadn’t they done this before? He leaned forwards to brace his hands on Rizeth’s shoulders, and moved as his Master had bid him.
Rizeth held him tightly, his lips parted over breath that gasped louder from him than Ashenivir had heard before. Sex like this or the drinks? Probably both, Ashenivir thought, then decided he wanted more sound from his Master, and so pulled his hair. Rizeth cursed, loudly and overtop of a moan more like one of Ashenivir’s than his.
“Behave yourself.”
“No,” Ashenivir said, and a moment later his grin was devoured in a fierce kiss, and Rizeth’s hands were knotted in his hair as he drove himself onto Rizeth’s cock again and again and again. Rizeth fucked into him, matching pace, yanking his hair, raking deep scratches down his back that had him crying out for more, kissing every last breath from his lungs.
Heat coiled under his skin, tension desperate for release. The sparking pleasure of his ride needed his Master’s hand to complete it, but his Master’s hands were busy getting all over him, covering him in desire. He whined, struggling to remember how to work the complex apparatus of throat and mouth and tongue to put together words.
“What do you want?” Rizeth asked, reading him as clearly as ever. “Tell me what you want, Ra’soltha, and maybe you can have it.”
“I want to come with you inside me,” Ashenivir managed. “I want you to feel me like that—like this. Please. Please-please-please—”
Rizeth had started doing something very distracting and definitely bruising just below his ear, and he lost track of everything but that. Nothing existed but his Master’s hands and mouth and skin and breath and sound beneath him. Teeth sank into his earlobe, and he wished he’d worn earrings tonight for Rizeth to bite.
“As you wish, then,” Rizeth breathed. His hand wrapped around Ashenivir’s cock, and Ashenivir pressed his face to Rizeth’s neck as he stroked, fighting to keep his hips moving—his Master’s pleasure was incomplete, and his role was to provide it. A wave of heat rolled through him, then another and another, each stronger than the last as he crept closer. He whispered his need against Rizeth’s pulse, kissing it, daring and drunk enough to suck his own mark over it, and the sound his Master made at that seared itself into his brain.
“Come for me,” Rizeth said. “Come for me, Ra’soltha.”
Disobedience wasn’t an option. Ashenivir gripped Rizeth’s shoulders tight as he came, then tighter as Rizeth caught him around the waist and fucked his pleasure-wracked body through every last twitch and spasm until his own orgasm moaned directly into Ashenivir’s ear. Full, he was. So full, so owned, and he never wanted to move from this spot. Didn’t think he could move from this spot; all the energy had entirely drained out of him.
Rizeth rolled him over, slipping free as he did so—Ashenivir whimpered, unable to keep from shuddering. Aftershocks had him twitching in Rizeth’s arms for uncountable minutes, the entire room spinning around him even when he closed his eyes.
“Thank you,” he said eventually. He dared to open his eyes—things were still very rotational, but Rizeth seemed a stable enough point lying next to him. His back stung, his neck throbbed, his thighs ached.
It was, in all, perfection.
Rizeth, leaning on one arm, reached out to stroke his cheek. “How beautiful you are,” he murmured. “I do not tell you enough.” His kiss this time was sweet and slow, the taste of something unspoken on his lips. “Xi’hum, ussta xukuth h’ros mir dos.”
Ashenivir’s fogged brain recognised the words in some vague place beneath the alcohol and the sex, but there wasn’t the slightest chance at all of translating them at that moment. So he simply smiled, and kissed Rizeth back, and passed into a deep, blissful reverie in his arms.
The pulsing, infernal heart of the Hells beat in Rizeth’s skull, which seemed to be too small to contain his brain. It took a great deal of convincing to get his body to leave the bed, and then a good deal more persuasion besides to make it take the few steps out of the bedroom. Some manner of undead had wheezed its last in his mouth at some point during the night—a very small mummy lord was his best guess, given his tongue had taken on the texture of sandpaper.
“You were right,” he said—rasped—on seeing Ashenivir sat with his head in his hands at the kitchen table. “Fun drinks ought to be illegal.”
Ashenivir groaned. “I was going to make tea,” he said. “But tea has too many steps. So there is no tea.”
Laughing shrank Rizeth’s skull another half-inch, so he stopped. Gods, the last time he’d been that drunk it’d been Kelran’s fault. Dwarven liquor was lethally potent stuff, yet it had absolutely nothing on whatever Unai put into those tall glasses of colourful suffering.
Last night was a haze of broken fragments, the first of which was a violently purple drink, and the last a vaguely uneasy sense that he’d said something strange to Ashenivir. Thinking too hard brought nothing but an unpleasant surge in his stomach, and given that Ashenivir made no mention of his saying anything of note, strange or otherwise, Rizeth decided it was most likely nothing.
More pleasant fragments swirled as he settled himself on the couch, moving as carefully as if he were made of glass. The hire-coach. Ashenivir on top of him. The origin of the inch-wide bruise on the side of his neck—and of the scratches striping Ashenivir’s still-naked back. Did he have healing balms left for those? Somewhere probably. Illusions might be easier, if he could summon the wherewithal to cast anything. He pressed a hand over his eyes and tried to will away the relentless throbbing.
“What do you need, Master?”
He lifted his hand. Ashenivir had come to kneel at his feet, his posture slouched and determination in his tired eyes. If there was any guilt left in him, Rizeth couldn’t feel it under the nausea and the pounding headache and the intense relief at having Ashenivir be there like that. It wasn’t a point of lust, it was an anchor to hold on to, the shape of this thing between them. He tucked Ashenivir’s hair behind his ear.
“I need you to come and sit up here,” he said. “You are going to drink water whilst I run you a bath, and then you are going to take your bath whilst I see about fetching us some breakfast.”
“But—”
“You are mine,” Rizeth said, letting his hand come to rest cupping Ashenivir’s cheek. “And I take care of what is mine.”
Ashenivir kissed his palm, and the touch of his lips skipped straight to Rizeth’s heart. “Yes, Master.”
He did as he was asked, and curled against Rizeth’s side, warm and half-naked and exactly where he belonged. Rizeth kissed the top of his head. “Fortunately for our foolishness, we have until this evening to recover.”
“Mm, River planned things well.”
Now that Ashenivir was next to him, Rizeth didn’t want to move. He managed a mage hand on the second try, and put together two glasses of water, thanking Gond for Waterdhavian interior plumbing, and the city Guilds for making it drinkable. It didn’t taste as fresh as water in the Underdark, but one couldn’t have everything.
He was so busy concentrating on not getting water everywhere that he didn’t notice Ashenivir’s mage hand until it bumped into his chest. Or rather, what it was holding bumped into his chest.
“Please?” Ashenivir said, as Rizeth curled his fingers into the end-loop of the leash. “I just feel…I just want…”
Rizeth clicked the leash onto his collar. “I know.”
It wasn’t the usual thread that clicked into place with it. Oh, he’d felt it without lust before, but this was different. Warmer. Deeper. It was that sense of right again, more tangible than ever before. He sipped his water, rubbing the leather end-loop between his fingers, and it was only a placebo, but Ashenivir’s body resting against his, with that chain connecting them, settled every exhausted, wrung out part of him.
He finished his glass before Ashenivir did, and forced himself to stand. Ashenivir grabbed after him, pouting. Drink exaggerated him, even after the fact—it was equal parts aggravating and endearing. Which is what you get, Rizeth thought, for letting him become such a brat. Given how wretched they both felt, he opted for indulgence this morning, granting Ashenivir a brief kiss.
“Finish your water.”
“Yes, Master.” Then, “You could join me in the bath instead of getting breakfast.”
“For one thing, I will not fit with you,” Rizeth said. “And for another, I am in no condition for you to be playing with.”
“I wasn’t going to do anything.” Rizeth arched an eyebrow. Ashenivir hid his smile in his water glass. “I wasn’t going to do much.”
“Finish your water,” Rizeth repeated, then went to run him a bath. When he got back from finding food, he’d take one himself—sweat and the sickly-sweet smell of whatever fun drinks were made of clung to his skin even after a quick prestidigitation. He paused at the bedroom door on his way to call Ashenivir, a soft smile catching his mouth. Eyes closed, head in one hand, the end of the leash looped around his wrist and his tangled hair spilling over his shoulders, aglow in the morning light. Tired, but peaceful. And beautiful. So very, very beautiful.
“Come, Ra’soltha,” he called quietly, and Ashenivir came.
Rizeth helped him into the bath and made certain he was comfortable, then readied himself to an approximation of respectability to leave the apartment. Rest, then food, then the wedding—and in three days the caravan he’d made arrangements with would take them away from all of this.
Away from Waterdeep, he amended, as he stepped out into the street. City and friends they might leave behind, but Ashenivir would remain with him.