78. Maren #2
Kye raised a brow at his brother, whose gaze didn’t leave Diara’s shoulders until she turned a corner and disappeared from sight. “Are you two…all right?”
“There is no us two, Kye,” Hadrian sighed, fishing a missive from his pocket. The paper was shabby, painted with fingerprints of dirt and oil, but I recognized the patterned creases as Kye lifted the folded edges away.
This was a note sent from one of the King’s spies.
“Diara found it among the letters to be transferred to the King’s desk,” Hadrian said, lowering his voice, warm eyes delving into ours.
In the center of the missive lay a single scrawled line: Vladca Skorpio may be posing as a civilian under the name Cerbin.
“The Rivean King’s nephew is a bit of a drifter, apparently,” Hadrian said.
“Will sneak from the royal palace from time to time, playing commoner among the towns in the north. Not that that reminds me of anyone I know.” A slash of white from Kye.
Hadrian promptly ignored it, settling his attention on me.
“Kazimir gave you this name, didn’t he? He knows a man named Cerbin? ”
“Yes.” I let my teeth sink into my lip. “He’s very…protective over whoever Cerbin is.”
Hadrian crossed his arms, leaning against the wall next to Selena’s dancing crane. “Well, of course he would be, if Cerbin is his prince.” His brows lifted. He left his words to sink through the air like stones tossed into a dark pool before pushing off the wall and striding down the corridor.
I huffed a small sigh. I’d never relayed my conversation with Kazimir about Cerbin to anyone, even Kye. With the revelation of Thaan and Selena on Neris Island, I’d all but forgotten it.
“Whatever Hade says,” Kye said slowly, gazing at the end of the hall where his brother had curved around a corner, “I’ll not forget that Kazimir stepped between you and Thaan when he could have freed his blood by leaving you to die.”
I threaded my fingers through his. “Nor will I.”
We made our way to Kye’s tower slowly, unbothered by the slipping minutes as we crossed the sun-drenched sky bridge.
Kye pulled his solar flares across the windows of the spiral staircase, flooding the windows with more color than stained glass in one of the Aalton temples of the city.
He dragged his feet behind me, watching me with craving in his eyes as I traveled up ahead of him, climbing sideways with both my hands sliding over the railing, capturing his fiery gaze over my shoulder.
I couldn’t help myself. There were moments like this, corda-cruor or not, where he looked at me as though I hypnotized him.
Like he might become drunk on the simple act of following my steps, abandoning any sense of time or reason.
We crept past the door across from ours like teenagers hiding from their parents, though I was sure Kazimir heard the drum of our hearts.
Latching his door, Kye leaned into its frame, tugging my hand past his mouth to kiss and nip and bite at my wrist.
The glow under his skin flickered. I snaked my fingers up his hard abdomen, counting the gilded sunbeams threaded in his skin. They wove through his Leihaniian tattoo, lighting the black ink so that it smoldered.
Our clothes wandered to the floor in small hills of silk and leather.
When I rose to my toes to reach his mouth, he reached under my legs, wrapping them around his waist without his lips ever leaving mine.
One knee over the mattress, then two, he laid me down and kneeled over me, warm rays streaming through the windows to splash through the curls hanging over his eyes, illuminating them in strands of hickory and umber, caramel and gold.
He tasted like gardens and rain and thunder.
Like power and safety, the kind I could give but also that I could take, without ever having to forge myself into a blade for the sake of finding my own peace.
He kissed my knees as he took me slowly, the rock of his hips a deep collision that perhaps only the stars might understand.
Maybe that’s all we were—echoes of constellations, the ash and dust of ancient stars that found each other again after an endlessness apart.
We lay strewn together after, too boneless to untangle our legs.
Kye’s fingers stroked the inside of my wrist, his face buried in fur so that only one eye peered out, though it eventually closed.
I listened to the soft song of his breathing, brushing my fingers through the curls at the back of his neck.
They grew more tightly coiled there than the lazy spirals at his crown.
I waited for sleep to carry me away as well.
It didn’t. Eventually I slipped from my place beside him, folding my byssus sheath around my neck and across my waist, not caring that it wasn’t a very tidy wrap, and stepped into the cool comfort of the evening air.
Kye’s balcony was larger than the little stoop I’d once let Diara invade with pillows and blankets.
It spanned the south-western length of his tower, enough room for two long lounge chairs, an assortment of potted plants and greens the servants tended to—or tried to attend to, as I had claimed all nursery duties for myself—and the little gnarled juniper Selena had given me on the day I married Kye.
This was my favorite time of day. When the sun hovered low enough to melt into the surface of the ocean, light and water twirling as if they were created for the small chaos of changing each other’s shape and color for a few stolen moments each day.
I leaned against the railing, keeping the wind company as it tousled my hair, wild from lovemaking and languishing amongst fur blankets.
It had been a few days since the fistful of shield weed had been slathered over my face, but with the moon in shadow I’d only regained a bit of my water-calling.
I played with the small amount of moisture that would answer, only enough to fill a thimble, tracing it in a sleepy line across the horizon, as though I, too, might join in with the sun and sea.
“Homesick?” asked a voice near the door.
A voice that did not belong to Kye.