Chapter 56: Quality Time
On another night a few days later, Isaac and Kyrie were savoring their time together, especially so because he wasn't around every night anymore. As one of Isaac's hands soothingly rubbed against Kyrie's scalp, he spoke softly to her.
"Show me some of your drawings, Kyrie."
"Eh...?"
Kyrie looked up at Isaac from her snuggled up position beside him, and Isaac pulled her in briefly to give her a soft kiss to the forehead. She tasted of sweat now, and Isaac found that he had to fight not to get more of that salty taste with kisses. It wasn't necessarily that he liked the taste so much as he liked the fact that he was the one who'd made her that way. Her breathing had finally calmed after the night's activity, and as she gazed up at him, Isaac couldn't help taking her lips in yet another kiss.
This kiss lingered for a while, and Kyrie almost forgot the question by the time that he released her. Isaac didn't though, because he promptly went on to clarify.
"Your drawings, Kyrie. I haven't been able to sit with you out in the gardens in the evening to watch you as you draw. I wish I could though: the stablehands at the castle are just not great company. I only hear them talk on and on about how great the new King is, though I've yet to hear what exactly about him is so great."
Isaac let out a soft sigh before continuing on with another tidbit.
"Did you know that when the previous King came to power the populace was equally excited? They had expected him to change their lives for the better, but just look at how that ended up."
Usually Isaac wasn't one for just blabbing about what was going on with him, but Kyrie imagined that he was under a lot of stress lately and had to let it out one way or another. The female slaves and Renard had gotten used to the current political state simply because it was an out of sight and out of mind kind of thing, but Isaac was always in the thick of it. If he was worried or stressed he had no one to talk to until he came home. Kyrie would always receive him with open arms though: she knew that just as he was an immensely comforting presence to her, she was equally so to him. Even when he came back and forcibly pushed her down with an almost desperate aggression she was happy to be with him. That hadn't happened often, but when it had her heart had tightened painfully in empathy; she could feel just how much he'd missed her with his every movement on her and the sheer amount of affection that he held for her touched her every time.
Tonight hadn't been one of the aggressive nights though: this time they'd gone slow, spending more time just enjoying each other's company instead of slamming into one another. It meant that both of their moods were a little more relaxed, and it was likely why Isaac was offering up more of his thoughts than usual. Kyrie didn't mind, she quite liked it, actually: not only did it get her closer to Isaac, but it also meant she was learning something rather interesting. Isaac religiously read the daily news, and he seemed to have a pretty good knowledge of recent affairs; Kyrie knew almost nothing about either of these things, mostly because her free time was spent drawing rather than catching up on the world. As a result, having Isaac give her occasional updates like this was something she appreciated. It had also inspired some drawings on her part more than once, and perhaps an imagined picture of the previous King standing out among ecstatic subjects was in the near future.
Kyrie let out a soft hum as she shifted in Isaac's arms, sitting up to peer into the gloom in an attempt to find where her dress had ended up. She had to fight the urge to huddle back into the encompassing warmth, and even as she began to move away from him she could tell that Isaac felt her absence just as keenly by how his hands lingered on her body.
In an attempt to distract them from how much they wanted to be back in each other's arms, Kyrie tried to make a little bit of conversation.
"Have you actually seen the new King yet?"
As Kyrie leaned over the bed to grab at her dress, she blushed a little as Isaac let his hand run along the curves of her body. He wasn't trying to be sexual though, just touching, and Kyrie found that she really didn't mind his hand there after the initial shock of it.
"No. He's never left the castle, from my understanding. He made an appearance in the royal plaza, but that's basically the castle and we weren't around for that."
As she emerged from the edge of the bed with her notebook, Isaac's hands slid up her body, resting around her waist now as he sat up against the headboard and guided her into his lap.
"Do you still not know what Lady Dandridge does in the castle?"
"Well... I think I'm starting to get an idea of that just by listening to the slaves. She and Lady Deveris spend a lot of time in private audiences with the King, and they spend so long in these that the two ladies often spend the night. I'm pretty sure what they're doing is getting their foot in the door, so to speak. I honestly don't know why they were able to do this so easily while the other nobles are floundering so hard though. Terra politics really are the worst: you have to be able to be allied with one person and then be able to immediately flip to their enemy at the drop of a hat. It's no wonder this country's so well known for being volatile and manipulative."
There was almost a bitterness to his voice as he spoke, and Kyrie looked up at him with a sad expression her face. When Isaac noticed this it prompted him to soften his features and lean down to kiss her forehead.
"Sorry. Just sometimes I wonder if we would have had a better life in one of the other countries."
Kyrie looked down at the notebook in her hands then, and lightly ran her hand along the simple leather of the cover.
"Maybe... But Lady Dandridge is better than a lot of masters, even the masters in the Dominion."
"I can't argue with that."
Once again Isaac let out a bit of a defeated sigh, and he wrapped both of his arms around Kyrie and pulled her in close, letting his hands rest over her stomach while his head settled onto her shoulder.
"Perhaps that's why I get so agitated with all of this. We have it so good right now, I don't want all of that to just go away."
Letting one hand leave her notebook, Kyrie reached down to give one of Isaac's hands a gentle squeeze before looking at him with a soft smile.
"Well I'm not going anywhere."
A swell of love rushed through him then, and before she could turn her head to look back down at her notebook, Isaac leaned in to take her lips in another one of his sweet traps.
One of his hands lingered on her cheek even as they pulled away, and for a couple moments they did nothing but stare into each other's eyes. Both of them were perfectly content to do this: Kyrie because it was so warm and comfortable and Isaac because she was so very precious to him that he would never tire of looking at her.
Eventually though, Isaac remembered what he'd originally asked for and let her go to light up the candle at the bedside. He was fairly quick to wrap his arms back around Kyrie though: he could never get enough of the feeling of his lover.
Now that they were all settled and Kyrie could see that Isaac had his eyes watching the cover of her notebook, Kyrie flipped through the pages until she got to one of the more recent ones she did. It was the picture she'd drawn of the rabbit sitting in her lap, and she spoke as she displayed the page to him in the candlelight.
"One of the rabbits actually sat in my lap the other day for a little bit! Usually they're such skittish creatures, but when I was sitting in the menagerie one of them came up to me and sat down near me so I took a bit of a risk and put it in my lap. As much as I work with the animals I don't actually touch them all that often, so I felt like I had to commemorate the occasion."
This was radically different from what she did with Renard. Whenever he looked at her drawings, she was silent unless he asked her a question. He really seemed to want to study her pictures in detail himself before having Kyrie say anything about it. Isaac, while he did appreciate the artistry of the pictures, didn't really internalize it much. He always gravitated towards what the picture was rather than why it was. As a result he would ask her for the contexts behind them, and Kyrie had gotten so used to hearing the question that she offered the explanations on her own now. Isaac quite liked it, because that way he was getting snapshots into Kyrie's mind and her day. He loved hearing her express her experiences in her own words to accompany the pictures.
Another thing that that was quite different between the two men was that Isaac rarely touched the notebook, and he especially didn't touch it to turn the pages. Kyrie was the one determining the pacing for them, which was good because she could skip ones that she didn't want to think about or didn't want to share. The ones in that category were those of her imaginings for when Isaac was away. He really didn't need to see that, most of them weren't too kind to him, and they were little more than her mind's fretting solidified. She'd gotten over it for the most part already so there was really no need to dredge them back up with Isaac.
Kyrie did show him plenty of other pictures though: pictures of animals, pictures of various plants, but most of all the other people of the house. There was an almost comical picture in there of Dessi cutting her thumb in the kitchen and the two other female slaves looking completely at a loss and panicked, there was Renard crouching down next to the children pointing out some of the plants while Vivian looked fondly on, there was Isaac coming back home from the castle with a smile beginning to light up his face at the sight of her... Lots of little scenes like this around the manor that got explained in Kyrie's voice, and Isaac only wished that he could see the world as Kyrie did.
Letting out a contented sound before gently kissing her cheek, Isaac smiled softly at her.
"You see the world in such a unique way, Kyrie. There are no details that escape your eye, and you're able to see beauty no matter whether it's mundane, extraordinary or completely awful."
He had seen the pictures that she'd done of the attack, and when he'd seen them and flipped through them at Kyrie's behest, that had ended with him hugging her close and kissing her over and over. It had been truly relieving to share that pain with Isaac, and she'd cried a bit in his arms before finally falling asleep that night.
For now though, she blushed from his comments and kept her eyes firmly down out of embarrassment.
"I-It's not that special, really."
"Do you say that every time because you know I'll dispute you?"
Getting a bit flustered by this light teasing, Isaac chuckled softly, leaning in to kiss her cheek.
"You are special, Kyrie. How many times must I say it before you believe me?"
Fighting her instinct to bundle up and hide her face from him, she set her book aside before turning around and just kind of falling on him in a hug She was still kind of hiding, just in a way that showed her appreciation for him better. Isaac eagerly returned her hug with another soft chuckle, and soon he was gently kissing her head.
"Thanks for always being there, Kyrie. And thanks for showing me your drawings as well; I can't imagine how nerve-wracking it would be to show someone something that you spent so much time creating."
Practically glowing with love for Isaac, Kyrie nuzzled her face against his, the stubble of his face scratching against her in a way she was so accustomed to now.
"And thank you for asking about them... It's nice to know that you care enough to see them."
Her voice was a little muffled from her shyness, but Isaac heard her and was pleased nonetheless. Blowing out the candle next to them, he sunk down in the bed until the two of them were snuggled close in a good sleeping position now.
"They're important to you so they're important to me."
Kyrie let out a hum of contentment then, and she closed her eyes as she laid on Isaac. She really did love him. She loved him so much that it was hard to really put into words. She felt it when he sat with her, she felt it when he had sex with her, and she felt it whenever she looked at or touched the necklace around her neck. Nothing could top the feeling of absolute comfort she had right now and as she held onto Isaac, she couldn't help but think that she never wanted to lose him.
To that end he could never know about her liaisons with Renard: as much as Isaac had understood and accepted so many other things that she'd offered to him, he would never understand that. Never understand it and never accept it either. It would be a terrible blow to him, one that Kyrie really didn't want to give.
Tightening her grip around Isaac briefly, he simply rubbed her back rhythmically until her tenseness slowly melted away. Even when she was a little worried, he still had a magical power to soothe her, and just as Kyrie thought that he was too important for her to lose, he was thinking the same exact thing. Both were secure in their beliefs that they had the other quite firmly for the moment, and they drifted off to sleep perfectly happy.
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