KISS IT BETTER #3
“Bal is fine,” he told her. “’Night, Mina.”
Both Bal and Esme watched her slip past the curtain and into the bedroom.
It took Bal a second to blink back to reality before finally finding Esme.
He looked like he wanted to say anything but had lost the words in that pit of lust Esme could feel yawning wide in her own stomach.
He gave an awkward laugh and asked her, “Did you know there’s a courtyard between the towers? ”
Esme knew very well. Still, she said, “Is that your secret spot?”
Bal grinned. “One of many.” He nodded her on and Esme shoved her feet in a pair of slippers before following him down the hall. Esme didn’t let on that she knew where they were going, impressed that Bal had learned the castle’s twisty halls so quickly.
He brought them to a rooftop courtyard between the Wraith and war towers. The space was maintained, if rarely visited. A circle of grass surrounded by wrought-iron tables waited for them.
“How’d you find this place?” Esme asked, stepping onto the lush grass for the first time in…
a century, just about. Her stomach turned, even as she tipped her head up to scent the air.
The night was quiet, windless. Beyond in any direction was noise—the Wyvern bashing the cliffs to the east, Magic bashing Amaris to the west.
Bal didn’t answer immediately, instead grabbing a blanket from under a table. When he came over to Esme, standing on the grass, he stopped as if realizing he had only one arm.
“Here,” Esme said, and took the blanket and laid it out on the grass, realizing he must have brought it up here earlier. Hmm. He’d planned to sneak to her room, not just abandon a feast because she wasn’t there.
“Thank you,” Bal said, grinning, before sitting down. “And it was an accident. Just sort of stumbled upon it while I was wandering.”
Esme’s eyes thinned. One did not stumble on something buried so deep. This courtyard was one such sunken secret.
Omniel had built this place for her. Esme was no lover of the sun.
She’d used to stay up just to bathe in the light of the moon, with Omniel finding her asleep on their balcony half the nights they spent together.
So he’d built her a tiny courtyard with a perfect view of the moon.
She could watch it from right here at any point in its dance across the sky.
The courtyard could only be accessed from the Wraith tower, through a door so deep in the castle’s guts that the only way Bal could have found the entrance was if he had purposefully gone snooping.
Esme couldn’t figure out if Bal had shown his hand or if he was letting her catch onto him on purpose.
He took the plates from his little sling with his good hand. Esme was mostly sure his injured arm was no trick—she’d seen the eagle tear into him herself—but there was a veneer to Balthazar Joh’el. He wasn’t clean, just oiled enough to look shiny.
“Do I have something on my face?” he asked, flashing her a grin, and set a plate down in front of her. “You should eat.”
Esme took the dome off the top of hers, and then understood now why Mina had been surprised.
Every item of food on this plate was her favorite—her favorite meat, favorite veggies, favorite type of potatoes.
It could have been a coincidence, but then again royal feasts were luscious buffets.
He would have had to have chosen these foods.
Bal stared at her with a pleased smirk.
He was doing this on purpose.
Esme took a bite, unable to hide the fact that she did, indeed, love whatever the palace kitchens seasoned these beans with. Balthazar watched her eat, the dome still in place on his plate.
“Are you not hungry?” she asked, barely covering her mouth.
He bit his lip. “I lied about not eating. I heard Wraiths need more food than humans do, so I got multiple of the same plate.”
Esme gulped against the onslaught of sweetness. Some distrusting voice from her gut cautioned her against getting even an inch closer to a man who’d obviously been keeping meticulous tabs on her. Another part found it romantic that he’d devoted so much time to spying on her.
She swallowed. “What do you want with me?” she asked him. “Because it’s obvious you want something.”
“I can’t court you?”
“You can. But you have bigger things to do, don’t you?”
“Maybe.” He shrugged, leaning on his good hand. “Though whatever this is feels plenty big to me.” He eyed her hand like he wanted to reach for it. The hand in his sling flexed.
Esme’s urge to unravel him seared through her. She needed to slip her fingers into him and learn his every edge and slope. Maybe she’d never know all of him, and that excited her even more.
She gave up being coy. If she wanted to crack Bal, there was only one good way to do it.
She moved the food from between them and leaned forward, placing a hand on his shoulder.
His eyes lowered to her lips closing in on his.
She got close enough to nudge his nose with hers, and Bal’s pulse kicked into an indecipherable rush as she moved her hand to curl around his neck.
She shifted to sit on her knees, an inch higher than him.
But just as she dipped in to kiss him, she lost her balance, and she and Bal fell together onto the blanket behind him.
One of her hands stayed on his neck while the other caught herself.
Bal’s good hand flew to her cheek. His bad one?
His bad hand splayed on her spine, his sling a limp piece of cotton looped around his elbow.
Esme grinned down at him, legs thrown over his waist. “Liar.”
She grabbed the hand on her back. Bal let her move it between the two of them. “Seems this works just fine.”
Bal scoffed in disbelief. “You pretended to seduce me just to check if I was injured?”
“No. I got very close to you, and you became so distracted that you gave yourself up.” Esme sat back in his lap with her full weight and his jaw flared. “Just like you’re going to tell me everything else you’ve been lying about, Balthazar Joh’el.”
“Only if you promise to keep grinding on me and holding my hand,” Bal growled.
Esme wanted to tell him that she was not, in fact, grinding on him or holding his hand, only to find she was indeed shifting on his hips, still holding his hand.
Her nightgown had ridden up with all their movement, the splits drawn so high that her thighs were completely bare.
“Promise,” she whispered.
Bal grinned below her, but his smile dimmed. “Just tell me one thing first,” he said.
Esme nodded. He’d only said she’d have to tell him something, not that she’d have to tell him the truth.
“When the will lost its shit at the Valosia, that was you, wasn’t it?” he asked.
Esme’s back went straight. She’d hurt Bal a little, but nothing like she’d done to anyone else. Before she could answer, he stole his hand from hers, caressing the line of scabbing over the wound Esme had given herself.
“It was me.” As soon as she’d said it, she wanted to reel the words back in.
“Just like the sword was you.” He referenced the shadow blade he’d used to carve the eagle’s heart out. “So much of my success here has been yours.” He swiped his thumb lightly across the inflamed wound before his hand rose to cradle her chin. “Why?”
Esme leaned to the side to kiss his palm. “I think you know why.”
Bal gave her a small smile. “You know about Janos, then. I guess I owe you an explanation.” He rose from the blanket, but when Esme tried to move off his lap, he wrapped his no-longer-hurt arm around her and held her in place.
It wasn’t out of need; he held her like she was the nail keeping him from sliding off of the roof.
“It started fifteen years ago. Turiel commanded the Scourge to lie in wait around the borders in case Lukas fucked up his coup. While we were there, we saw what the Wail was doing. Things you wouldn’t dream.
But Yavere Gustoe had a letter from Turiel giving him full reign over his methods.
And when it was over, he inked another deal with Lukas to keep his killing going.
Janos rides out with them to collect the taxes, but they burn the villages because they want to.
Because they enjoy it—the screams. I’ve seen Wail men dance to them, like it was music.
” Bal blinked his glassy eyes. They refused to focus, falling back through fifteen years to those dances, that music, to the pyres lighting kicking feet and swaying shoulders and severed limbs and lifeless eyes.
Then he blinked, and the dance was done.
“So Darius began evacuating villages. But when he left the Scourge to me, I decided we take another route.”
“Engaging in open warfare?”
Bal shrugged that off. “It’s the only way to stop them.”
“So the Wail’s numbers…” Esme thought back to the papers she’d stolen from Turiel’s desk.
“Mercifully dwindling,” Bal spat. “One day I’ll round them all up and throw them on one big pyre.
No wasting wood for caskets. Burn them all and let the kids dance around their bodies.
” He practically sang the vision, and if Esme caught him at the just the right angle, she would swear embers floated in his eyes.
“Do you always kill them? Is there no hope of change for them?” Esme grabbed his shirt and rubbed over the old fabric. She realized that immortal reek of blood on him was all from Wail men. The tiny specks still embedded in the weave of this shirt were from them, too.
“The only good Wail man is a dead one.” His sneer nearly made her flinch, and his cruel tone was the same one he’d used with Janos at the first trial. Esme hadn’t heard it in so long, she’d forgotten it existed.