The room was quiet in the way only a room could be after too much tension had finally broken.
The summer air still moved faintly through the cooled suite. Somewhere beyond the heavy doors of Arion's private rooms, the palace continued with its usual indecent efficiency - guards rotating, staff moving, reports being delivered, ministers existing in ways Dean preferred not to think about. But in here, all of that felt very far away.
Dean lay half-tangled in sheets, and Arion, warm and heavy and utterly unwilling to let him drift more than an inch from the line of his body.
That, more than anything else, felt correct.
