Chapter 5
For as long as I could remember, my family had visited the Citadel every month or so as guests of the queen, but it wasn’t until I was twelve years old that I understood this was because Yvaine was lonely.
Ours wasn’t the only family she regularly entertained, of course. She invited the Basks too, and every other Anointed family in the world, and low-magic families, and families who possessed no magic at all. Not a day went by when there weren’t at least half a dozen families being hosted at the Citadel, each with their own lavishly appointed apartments, supper with the queen every day, and unchecked use of every luxury the Citadel had to offer: the royal baths, the stables full of gleaming horses, the acres upon acres of royal gardens. You could spend an entire day wandering the palace grounds and see only a sliver of their splendor. Then you would stumble to your bed feeling giddy and blissfully tired, your eyes sore from drinking in every bit of grandeur they could find.
But not every family was gifted an entire house of its own, as my ancestors had been. We called it the Green House, and it was a pretty cottage on the edge of the city, large enough to hold our family and any guests who accompanied us. In the center of the cottage was a gorgeous winter garden, which the queen had commissioned for my mother when I was very small. They were good friends, the two of them, always strolling about the grounds in private conference while my sisters and I romped at their feet. No one understood it. What did the queen of Edyn, the most powerful creature in the world, chosen by the gods, find fascinating about Philippa Ashbourne? My mother was only an elemental from a low-magic family; she had an admittedly keen eye for botanical magic, but that was the extent of her power.
Yvaine loved her, though. As a child I didn’t know why; I simply accepted it as the way my world worked. But as I grew older and started paying attention to such things, I noticed that the queen was more relaxed in my mother’s presence. She was more like a child, more open and funny, less regal, less frightening. She would sit in the dirt with all of us when Mother started teaching little Gemma about seeds, and she would play our silly card games like Slap the Rat and Jill-in-the-Dale and shriek and laugh just like the rest of us. I grew suspicious and started watching the queen closely; was she seducing my mother? Were they having an affair under my father’s nose? I was relentlessly sneaky. I eavesdropped on their conversations when I was supposed to be watching my sisters; after we’d all been put to bed, I crept down the stairs and listened to them chat easily by the fireside over tea and cookies. Sometimes Father would talk with them late into the night; sometimes he would sleep on the couch beside them, snoring; sometimes he would go out, and they would be alone.
But Mother and Yvaine never spoke of anything untoward, and I never caught them in a compromising position. After a long while, I felt satisfied that it wasn’t like that between them. And then, when I was twelve years old, I finally understood why Yvaine clung to us so fiercely.
Mother left us in the middle of the night that year. One morning, I woke up to find the house feeling tense and strange, an echo of thunder pulsing in my ears. At first I thought perhaps a nightmare had followed me out of sleep; maybe it was yet another dream about the shining boy and the fire and all that smoke choking my lungs. I picked up a sleepy Osmund, tucked him into my robe, and hurried down the long corridor to my parents’ bedroom, but it was empty. The bed linens were mussed; broken glass glittered across the rug.
I stood there feeling sick, staring at the shards of glass, terrified of their wrongness. Osmund poked his head out of my robe and meowed at me unhappily.
And then I heard my father roaring downstairs, and more glass shattering, and doors being slammed open. I raced down to find the source of the noise, thinking someone or something had invaded our home and my father was fighting them. The Basks, maybe, though I knew they were trapped in a forest; my parents had told us all about it, hoping it would comfort us in the wake of the fire. Though they hadn’t confessed to hiring the elementals and beguilers who had crafted the cursed forest, I could see it plainly on their faces, and the truth sat like a slimy thing in my chest. I was glad the hated Basks couldn’t hurt us, and I took great pleasure in imagining them trying and failing to hack through trees that wouldn’t break, but at the same time it frightened me that my parents possessed the capacity for such cruelty. I blamed the Basks for that too; my parents wouldn’t need to be cruel if the Basks hadn’t forced their hand.
But that morning, the thing making my father crash through the house wasn’t the Basks or any sort of invader; it was grief. I watched from the shadows under the entrance hall stairs as he tore through every room, looking for my mother and shouting her name again and again in great booming tones: “Philippa! Philippa! ” Standing there shivering, Osmund tucked under my chin, I realized that the echo of thunder in my ears hadn’t been the remnant of a bad dream. In my sleep, I’d heard the cracked roar of Father’s voice calling my mother’s name, and the sound had pulled me into an actual, true nightmare, one from which I would never wake. Only a few weeks prior, the Warden had taken Mara from us; now my mother was gone too.
When we visited the Citadel for the first time after that dreadful day, Father refused to stay at the Green House. It held too much of my mother in it; the winter garden was bursting with greenery she had coaxed into brilliant life. Instead, he dumped Gemma and me at the palace and left us to entertain ourselves while he wandered from tavern to tavern. He came home every morning stinking of smoke and drink, and he never woke until late afternoon.
The first time this happened, I was so unspeakably angry for too many reasons to name that I broke my father’s rules for the first time in my life. I fled to the Green House and took Gemma with me. She didn’t want to go, the poor thing; I think I must have frightened her, silent and furious as I was. But I dragged her there anyway and then sat in the unlit parlor for hours, dry-eyed, Osmund sleeping in my lap, while Gemma wandered the cottage grounds, crying and miserable, little Una anxiously trotting alongside her. Gemma was only eight at the time; it was terrible of me to abandon her to her own despair like that. But I was too mired in my own to care.
And then the queen came, right as the parlor clock chimed the nine o’clock hour. Gemma had fallen asleep in the grass at last, she and Una a pile of blond curls and stained skirts and gleaming white fur just outside the windows. I hadn’t moved from my spot all day, as if keeping vigil over the parlor my mother had loved would somehow summon her back to us.
Yvaine joined me in silence, her long white hair tangled and dull, her eyes red from crying. She wore a plain gray gown, and her feet were bare. She sat on the divan opposite me, hands clasped tightly in her lap, and stared at the fire. I watched her for a long time, refusing to speak. In that moment, I hated her; this was our grief, not hers. And anyway, wasn’t she high queen of Edyn? If she wanted to, she could find where our mother had gone and bring her home.
But then Yvaine said, very quietly, “I’ve tried to find her, and I can’t. What do you suppose that means?”
I could only blink at her in astonishment. Had she heard my thoughts? Beings who could do such things existed in the Old Country—they were called readers—and perhaps the gods had given the queen that power too, along with all her other ones.
“I know it’s terrible of me to be here,” she continued. “She’s your mother, not mine. I should grant you privacy. But you see, I’m supremely selfish.” She looked up at me, and then her face did that extraordinary thing it so often did, when the strange frozen years she had lived melted away, and all that was left was a child not much older than me, looking lost and afraid.
“If I once had a family,” she told me, “I don’t remember them. Maybe I did. Maybe I was an orphan. I don’t know how old I was when the gods chose me. I remember nothing before that, except that I felt very small.”
She whispered this in a rush, as if she knew she shouldn’t be confessing such things to me but couldn’t help herself. “Yours is the only true family I’ve ever known. I’ve always thought I should be part of it, which I know is absurd. But when I’m with you and your sisters, and most of all when I was with your mother, I felt not like a queen or some perverse, godly thing. A creation .”
She spat the word, her eyes glinting with tears. I’d never seen her in such a state. Listening to her, I could hardly breathe.
“When I’m with all of you, I just feel like…a girl. A person. It’s such a relief. Next to all of you, my power feels muted. Easier to carry. And now she’s gone, and I can’t find her. If I try, I can find anyone, anywhere in the world. Did you know that? Thanks to our ever-wise gods”—the words sounded bitter—“I can do most things if I put my mind to them, though sometimes it takes me far too long and I fall prey to exhaustion before I can properly finish. But I can’t find her. And I didn’t know you were here tonight. I thought the house was empty. And then I came in, and what a surprise to find you and Gemma here. What do you suppose that means?”
“So…you can’t read my thoughts?” was the only thing I could think of to say.
Yvaine shook her head and closed her eyes. “No, and it’s wonderful. Everything’s so quiet here. You’re all so quiet.”
Part of me wished to argue with her; she’d spent enough time at the Green House to know that when we were all together, my family was anything but quiet. But we weren’t all together, not anymore, and perhaps we would never be again.
So I said nothing else; listening to the queen had worn me out. The hot fist of anger I’d held tight in my chest all day melted away without me even realizing it. I watched Yvaine hug her knees to her chest and cry, and I slid into a fitful sleep. When I woke, there was a hot breakfast ready for Gemma and me—crisp waffles piled with fruit and icing sugar, frothy hot cocoa. The day was clear and bright, and the queen was gone.
***
Years later, as I sat with Yvaine, making sure she slept, I thought of that long-ago night, my eyes burning with exhaustion. It helped Yvaine to fall asleep near me. During each visit to the Citadel, I tried to give her at least one night of that: a peaceful evening in her rooms, just the two of us. She had no other friends, she had once confessed to me—no one she ever brought back to her rooms to simply talk, as people did. So on those nights, we sat by the fire and talked of everything and nothing, with herbal tea and a heaping plate of cookies, just as she and my mother used to enjoy. No official state functions, no harried advisers, no endless documents stacked atop her desk. Sometimes I played music for her, but more often than not, she was asleep before I could make the suggestion.
And tonight, with the palace’s lockdown bells ringing in my ears and guards hovering over us every step of the way, Yvaine was asleep in Ryder’s arms before we even reached her rooms. I watched him suspiciously as he settled her among the pillows of her bed; would he be overwhelmed by her nearness and try to take advantage of her unconscious state in some way? But he was entirely decent, even reverent, as if it were his own beloved he was tucking in, and when he came to me and said quietly, “Is there anything else I can do?” I could only shake my head and avoid looking at him, clutching my shawl tightly around my body. He’d seen too much of me tonight; I had this awful feeling that he’d been the one to tear open my dress and expose my poisoned skin.
Instead, I went to my sister, who stood anxiously with Gareth in the corridor outside the queen’s rooms. I held her to me for a moment.
“Are you all right?” I whispered. “All that chaos must have hurt you.”
“A little,” she lied with a brave smile. I could see on her pale face, in the shadows under her eyes, how awful it had truly been. “But Gareth’s going to find me some bread and cheese, and perhaps more than a little wine. I’ll be all right by morning, or well enough, anyway.”
I glanced up at Gareth. He was looking at me with a haggard expression, as if at any moment some evil might spring out of the shadows and throw me back to the brink of death. “Farrin, I thought you were…” He lost his voice, cleared his throat, tried again. “I thought I’d lose you without us getting a chance to—”
“Please don’t,” I said wearily. “I’m fine now. Everything’s fine.”
“Were you going to say, ‘without us getting the chance to declare our undying love for one another’?” Gemma asked blandly.
Gareth and I both made faces at her, though I knew we were both grateful for the distraction. I sent them on their way, and hours later, when I’d changed into a plain nightdress from Yvaine’s closet and was about to nod off at last, Yvaine stirred beside me in her bed and whispered, “Thank you, my friend. I feel safer when you’re here.”
I stroked her hair until she quieted, her breathing even and steady. The tiny silver locket she wore under her gown had slipped out onto the pillow. Carefully, I tucked it back into her bodice. I didn’t say what I wanted to: What does it mean to feel safe? Gods knew I should have felt that way, ensconced in the queen’s bedroom, but I only felt restless and tired, heavy with questions. I tried to remember the last time I’d truly felt safe, like there wasn’t some awful thing crouching on the edge of my vision, and couldn’t find the answer.
I left Yvaine in her bedroom, slipped past the guards at the door, and wandered the royal apartments. There were guards everywhere, at every door and patrolling the hallways, but they didn’t bother me or ask me where I was going. They were used to me and I to them. It was nearly five o’clock in the morning, and Yvaine’s rooms felt gray and strange, every gleam of glass dulled, every fine fabric brittle under my fingers. It was as if the place itself was holding its breath, waiting nervously for Yvaine to open her eyes and for everything to be as it had once been.
The idea frightened me. What did the rooms know that I didn’t?
I couldn’t bear to be there any longer. I scribbled a note and gave it to one of the guards so Yvaine would see it first thing. I’ve gone to my music room , it read. Ring for me when you wake .
Then I left her rooms and hurried downstairs to a lower floor of the queen’s enormous tower, where years ago a suite had been set aside for my use. There was a ballroom, small but lovely, ornamented with mirrored walls and elaborate gilded scrollwork, velvet sofas, tasseled rugs. Beside the ballroom, there was a small chamber holding only a sleeping couch and two walls jammed with books, and outside the ballroom, flowers curtained a stone veranda.
All of it was for me, a private hideaway that the queen had gifted me after the disastrous public concert I’d given at age fourteen. All those people screaming for me, screaming at me, rushing the piano to get at me, throwing themselves at me in fits of ecstasy. Ten years later, I still shuddered every time I remembered it, but here I could perform without fear, without an audience.
I sat at the piano in the center of the ballroom—a lovely instrument, petite and glossy white with gold ivy vines painted on its every surface. I opened the lid, tried to ignore the sick feeling in my stomach, the dread quiet in the air now that the lockdown bells had finally stopped ringing, and started to play. I played all the joyful pieces I could think of—a delicate sonata by the Aidurran composer Dakesh Viliaris that had always reminded me of prancing show horses; a fiendishly difficult concerto by the court musician Alessande Bardata, written in celebration of her children, that always left me feeling thunderous and triumphant, my fingers sizzling with power; every rollicking reel the orchestra had performed at the ball. But I could only play a few bars of each before moving on to the next, dissatisfied.
An hour passed, and I pushed back hard from the piano, my shoulders tense and my stomach in knots, and instead tried the pretty green fiddle sitting on its pedestal at the far end of the room. But the strings felt stiff under my fingers, the bow clumsy in my hand, and even when I tried to sing, the notes felt intractable, like they didn’t want to leave my body. Terrible thoughts rose fast inside me, a confused barrage of images: Yvaine beating against her own magic, trying to tear it down; the stain of poison on my stomach; the cackling, bloody-nosed madman; my defiant, cowardly father.
The more desperately I tried to contain the images, the faster they came, and my voice broke off in the middle of “Willa’s Lullaby,” one of the sweetest folk songs ever composed, one I’d known my whole life—and yet suddenly I was so angry and muddled that I couldn’t remember another note. I stood there, staring at the mirrored wall, frozen with frustration. My reflection was everywhere; I couldn’t avoid it.
Maybe if you bedded a barmaid , came Gareth’s voice, much meaner in my head than it had actually been that awful day.
With a frustrated cry, I slammed the piano lid closed, barely restrained myself from throwing the fiddle across the room, and burst out onto the veranda. But the perfume of all those flowers was cloying, and I turned away from them so I wouldn’t start ripping them off their stems. I raced down the stairs, through the supple shell of ward magic that hugged the queen’s tower, and tore into the labyrinth of garden paths just beyond. An astonished guard standing at the entrance said, “My lady? Is everything all right?”
“Trouble sleeping,” I responded, my voice ugly and shrill, not convincing whatsoever. I must have looked like a madwoman. “Just need a walk.”
I took a few frantic turns, ducking under tree branches and shoving past more godsdamned flowers. I didn’t know where I was going; I just knew that if I stopped, I would scream. Another sloppy turn through a bush bursting with pink asters, and I slammed right into the chest of Ryder Bask.
I nearly bounced right off of him—he was solid and tall as a mountain—but he caught my arms before I could fall. I ripped away from him and stumbled back.
“Don’t touch me,” I snarled.
He stepped back, hands raised. “You’re the one who ran into me, Ashbourne.”
I glared at him. “What are you doing out here, anyway? Skulking about like some thief?”
He raised one dark eyebrow. “I’m a guest of the queen, same as you. I couldn’t sleep and went to the stables, then took my horse—my own horse—for a ride through the game park. And what exactly would I be stealing out here? A mess of twigs?”
He did smell of horse, I belatedly realized, and he wore riding clothes, slightly stained, and his dark hair, most of it gathered into a messy knot, was windswept. I didn’t know what to say. An apology for running smack into him seemed appropriate, but the thought made me even angrier. I wanted to storm away from him, but then he would return to his family’s apartments, perhaps slightly mystified but otherwise fine, and I would remain decidedly not fine.
An imbalance I could not abide.
“Is something wrong with the queen?” he began, but I cut him off with an impatient wave of my hand.
“You never apologized.”
He blinked at me, looking annoyed and hawkish in the garden’s violet shadows. Dawn was bleeding softly into the sky.
“Apologized for what?” he said.
The nerve of the man. “For deceiving us at the midsummer ball. For making us think my mother had returned. For assaulting my father right there in front of everyone.”
“And did you ever apologize for your father beating me senseless at the Bathyn tournament?” he replied quietly. “Or for trapping my family inside a cursed forest for years?”
“And did you ever apologize for burning my house down? For nearly killing me?” I turned away from him, pushing down hard against a rising sob. “I dream about it every night. I dream about the night I nearly died. And then I wake up and claw through the day and fall asleep and do it again, and again. And not once has anyone from your family apologized.”
He was quiet for a moment. “That was a turning point, wasn’t it, Ashbourne? That fire made everything worse for all of us.”
I whirled on him. “Stop calling me that, like I’m a beetle only worthy of being referred to by official classification. My name is Farrin .”
He looked horribly unhappy. He clenched his jaw, his gaze burning into me. “Farrin, then,” he said. “Farrin.”
It sounded as though the simple act of saying my name tore something out of him. I laughed bitterly. “Thank you. That must have been an onerous task, and yet you managed it. Well done.” I gestured back at the castle. “And here we all are, meant to be friends now after everything that’s happened, and you stand there as if my name on your tongue is the worst thing you’ve ever tasted. Ridiculous.”
“I’m not exactly rejoicing about the situation either, Farrin,” he said tightly, “but the queen herself said we must work together. I’m willing to try, though everything in me is screaming not to. Are you willing? Truly willing? Or will you spend the whole time yelling at me?”
“I’ll yell at you as much as I like,” I shot back, so angry I felt dizzy. “I didn’t hear Yvaine forbid it.”
Ryder fell quiet once more. “Is she all right?” He looked away quickly, scrubbed a hand over his mouth. “She felt like nothing in my arms. I had this terrible feeling she would just fade away. We’d arrive at her rooms and I’d be covered in ash.”
The sight of him looking so spooked unsettled me to my seething core. “Clearly she’s not all right, but at least for now, she’s sleeping.”
“And why aren’t you?”
“Why do you care, and why should I tell you?”
He shrugged. “I’m a naturally curious man. And since you could have left by now but haven’t, I suspect there’s a part of you that’s bursting to talk. Even to me.” He paused, looked hard at me. “You’re crying.”
“Not because I’m sad,” I spat. I was unraveling, and of all people to witness it, it had to be this man.
“I didn’t say you were sad.”
“I’m angry .”
“That much is obvious.”
“And I’m tired,” I said, the words coming out of me on a thin breath. “I’m so tired, and I don’t see that ever changing. I look into the future, and all I see is more of the same: a house I can barely keep in one piece, strange magic no one understands, the world changing right before our eyes. Some monster out there, licking his wounds and waiting for the right moment to come pouncing back. And you .” I glared at him through my tears. “You and your terrible sister and your terrible parents, stains on my life that I can’t scrub out.”
“And music,” Ryder added softly. “That too. Yes?”
I scoffed, wiping my face. “Yes. Music I can’t even play properly when I’m this upset. And don’t you think I’ll be upset when Kilraith returns someday? I think I just might be. So when that day comes, I’ll be rendered useless, just some sniveling, furious child having a tantrum in a garden, unable to sing even a simple folk tune.”
“What about when you calmed the queen only a few hours ago? When nothing else would calm her, your voice did. And when we were all in the Old Country, and your voice stupefied the specters attacking us in the forest? When your voice stunned Kilraith and kept the house from falling down around us as we ran?”
I shook my head, unable to speak. All of those things were true, but the thought of doing any of them again felt too massive to contemplate. I had gone to the Old Country once, and I never wanted to return. In that moment, all I wanted was to sleep. At least my dream of the fire was a familiar thing; if that was all I had to face, I could do it forever.
I sank down onto the ground and sat on the garden’s pebbled path. “Please don’t talk anymore,” I managed after a moment. “Please be quiet.”
“All right,” Ryder said reasonably, and then stood there with his hands behind his back, looking up at the brightening sky.
After a moment, I snapped at him, “What are you doing ?”
He lifted his eyebrows, pointed at his mouth.
I could have slapped him, but that would have required standing. “Yes, you can talk.”
He bowed sardonically. “Thank you, Lady Farrin. In answer to your question, I was standing here thinking, and I have a suggestion, if you’ll permit me to say it.”
How had this happened? How was I sitting here in the dirt, being condescended to by Ryder Bask? I glared at him, wishing that my gods-given magic was the power to reduce someone to a crisp using only my eyes.
“Say it, then,” I spat, “and without that nasty snobby tone in your voice, and then leave.”
“Hit me.”
It was the last thing I expected him to say. Dumbfounded, I stared at him. “What?”
“I know you want to, and I think it would make you feel better. Stand up and hit me.” He leaned down a little and smirked. A lock of dark hair fell over his blue eyes, which sparkled with mischief. “If you can.”
It was as if he’d beguiled me. My anger rose up so sudden and swift that I surged to my feet, my tiredness forgotten. I thought of that night at the midsummer ball, how he’d punched and kicked my father, how he and his party had taunted us all with their northern chants, and I made a fist and swung it at him.
He dodged it easily, both his hands still behind his back. He clucked his tongue, shook his head.
“I knew right where you were aiming,” he said. “You told me with your eyes, with the way you moved your body. Try again.”
I did, still boiling, and swung so hard I nearly fell over. Again he dodged my fist, and I was left swaying a little, blazing with embarrassment.
“Aren’t musicians meant to be artful and subtle?” Ryder said. “Whatever that was? The exact opposite. Try again.”
“No,” I said, fresh tears building behind my eyes. “This is absurd. You’re trying to make a fool of me.” And I was letting him. I’d snatched up his bait without thinking.
“Not trying to make a fool of you. Trying to illustrate a point.” Then he stepped a little closer to me, and I held my ground, preparing to try striking him again—but his face, suddenly grave, gave me pause.
“You’re right, Farrin,” he said quietly. “The world is changing. Something is coming. Kilraith, or something worse. The queen is not herself. Her palace is compromised. And in that future of whatever’s coming, she has seen all of us. Our siblings. Our friends. You and me. Whether we like it or not, we’re going to have to work together. What we did in the Old Country was only the beginning—in more ways than one, I think.” He looked at me shrewdly. “You and your sisters…I don’t know what power you carry, but I think it’s something immense, and I think being there that night, fighting Kilraith, awakened it. I think you think that too.”
Speechless, I could only stare at him. My heartbeat roared in my ears.
“And if you’ll let me, I can help you,” he went on. “I know how to fight. You, clearly, do not.”
I bristled, opened my mouth to say something, anything , that would kick his legs out from under him a bit. But before I could, he put two calloused fingers against my mouth, exceedingly gentle, and startled me back into silence.
“You worry that you’ll lose hold of your power when it matters most,” he said, nodding a little. “I understand that fear. So why not broaden your arsenal?”
“You want to teach me how to fight,” I said, a little breathless with shock. My lips brushed against his fingers. As if burned, he quickly stepped back from me and nodded sharply.
Disturbed by this entire exchange, I swallowed hard and lifted my chin, fumbling for the upper hand I’d so clearly lost. “And in return?”
“Nothing.”
I scoffed. “Well, now I know this is some kind of trick.”
“Fine. In return, I’ll sleep a little better knowing that whatever we’re all meant to do in the coming weeks and months, you’ll be better prepared for it. Your sisters can uproot trees and slay monsters. I can teach you how to use your body to defend yourself and those you love. You won’t be a master warrior by any means, if those punches you just tried are any indication, but you’ll be stronger. And therefore so will we.”
With great effort, I ignored the smug insult and said, with as much dignity as I could muster, “You make fair points. I’ll consider your offer.”
He looked at me for another moment, his face illuminated by the growing eastern light. “Good. In the meantime, we should all plan a meeting, a conference of sorts—our families and a few others we trust. Grudges aside, strategy only. The queen wants us to be her eyes, ears, and hands? Then we will. And if the idea of working together offends your honor, as it does mine? Think of the queen, of your sister at the Mist, and swallow your pride, as I will. This is about more than our families and the terrible things we’ve done to each other, and you know it.”
He turned away, made as if to leave, and then stopped and looked back at me over his shoulder. His bearded profile was brutally handsome; he was no beauty, but the morning sunlight softened him, painting his fierce brow gold.
“And I am sorry, Farrin,” he added, his voice gruff, suddenly weighed down. “I’m sorry for it all, and I wish I could undo it. I wish it more than anything.”
He stood there, fists clenched, as if struggling with whether or not to say more. Then he straightened and said sharply, “You’ll hear from me within the week. Don’t ignore me this time.”
Then he turned on his heel and strode away, leaving me stunned and overwhelmed, utterly trounced. Absently, I touched my lips, where his fingers had been. I shook myself and hurried up to my rooms.