Chapter 2: The Mill of Fire

The days that followed blurred at the edges, as if time itself had softened. Elara moved through Marrowden like smoke—untouchable, unseen—but her body remembered everything.

She still knelt beside her mother’s hearth, still walked with her eyes downcast through the square. But her thighs ached in the mornings, and the scent of grain-dust and candlewax clung to her skin. Her nipples stirred at the brush of fabric. Her pulse quickened at nothing, at everything. She would wake with phantom heat between her legs, breathless, undone by dreams.

She could still feel him—inside her, not just in memory, but like breath, like hunger.

Their meetings became ritual.

By day, the mill remained hollow to the town’s eye. But by night, it bloomed. Jorah brought candles scavenged from ruined houses, stringing them along the rafters until they glowed like stars. Elara brought linens, salt bread, and wild mint. The space grew thick with scent—smoke, sweat, wax, wheat.

And each time they touched, the fire inside her grew more insatiable.

One night, she arrived barefoot, her hem damp from the river. Jorah had laid out blankets on the grain sacks. He looked up as she stepped through the doorway, his shirt already unbuttoned, eyes dark with want.

“You look like a storm,” he said.

She knelt before him, lips brushing his jaw, the damp heat of her breath teasing his skin. “Then hold on.”

Her fingers found the rest of the buttons and made quick work of them. His cock was already hard, flushed dark, the head slick with readiness. She didn’t undress fully—just hiked up her skirts, straddled him where he sat on the sacks, and kissed him like she was starving.

When she sank down onto him, they both gasped—his hands tightening on her hips, hers tangling in his hair.

There was no gentleness that night. Only the slap of skin and the hiss of breath. Her thighs slapped his, rough and wet. She bit his shoulder when she came, hard enough to bruise.