The room was warm.
Not the estate's warmth, which was old stone and radiators and the accumulated heat of a building that had been occupied for centuries. This was different. The specific kind of warmth of two people sharing a bed who had spent a night very close together and had woken up still close, the kind of warmth that didn't require the building's help at all.
Valerian opened his eyes.
The London morning was doing its thing outside the tall windows—grey-gold, the light that wasn't quite cloud and wasn't quite clear, the light this city produced exclusively and seemed to consider adequate. He didn't look at it immediately.
Aisha was asleep against him.
Not in the careful, contained way she did most things. Fully asleep, her face soft and blank, one arm across his chest and her legs tangled with his under the sheets, her body seeking his warmth with the specific physicality of someone who had spent months keeping careful distance and had, overnight, completely stopped.
