34. Caught in the Act
“ W hen you lose someone you love, it’s not just them that you lose,” Viola whispered in the dark, still curled up against Nico’s chest. “It’s also losing people who love you, the reminder of being a little more alone in the world.”
Nico’s fingers stroked her back, the bare skin between the end of her hair and the sloping curve of the shirt. She liked it. She hoped he wouldn’t stop.
“There aren’t many people left in this world who genuinely love me,” she carried on. “There’s enough to pin me here, but not a lot left for anything else. I think one of the reasons I clung so tightly to Freya is because she made me feel less alone, or I could use her as a mask—a way to fool everyone into thinking I was fine. I thought anyone was better than no one.”
“And now?”
“I think it’s probably better to be yourself, by yourself, than to be pretending to be somebody else with somebody else.”
“And were you? With her? You think it was some kind of act?”
“Not all of it,” she admitted. “Just… too much. I never let her see my broken parts. I didn’t want her to even know they existed.”
She appreciated that he didn’t try to tell her that she wasn’t broken. The few times she had ever let that pain shimmer through, people had tried to convince her that that wasn’t true. How could she be broken when she was still standing ?
But that was precisely it. She could stand, but she couldn’t run. She could bend, but it took her far longer to get up. She was still alive. She wasn’t destroyed. But she was irrevocably altered in a way that had changed her shape down to her bones.
“I don’t celebrate my birthday anymore,” she confessed. “I can’t celebrate it without my brother. Goddess, I used to hate sharing my birthday with him when we were children. I used to beg my parents to give me another one. And then my first birthday came without him, and it was my birthday, not his. Not ours. And I could never celebrate it without him. I can’t imagine that ever changing.”
Nico placed his forehead against hers. “I don’t know my birthday,” he told her. “I don’t have any recollection of when it was. My foster mother used to celebrate my finding day. But I haven’t even celebrated that since I left. Who would I celebrate it with?”
A moment ticked by in silence, Nico’s fingers still soft against her back.
“I’ve never had a sibling,” he told her. “Not a real one. I cannot fathom what it would be like to lose what you once had. I am amazed you haven’t let it consume you.”
“But I did,” she whispered. “I did let it consume me. I let it bury me.”
“Well, you’ve met Cordelia. Buried doesn’t mean it won’t rise again.”
Viola snorted, only slightly, but enough to ease the ache.
“Let it bury you,” he continued. “Let it consume you. Rage. Cry. Fail. Only know that when you are ready to rise from the grave, I will be here to help dig you out.”
Viola kissed him again at that, lightly, too afraid of hurting him, of wanting more than he was capable of right now. She clung to his lips, ignoring the impulse to slide her hand from the collar of his dressing gown to the fine, smooth skin beneath.
“I’m sorry for talking about love,” she said, playing with the golden embroidery over his chest. “You’ve had a lot less of it than I, I fear.”
“I’ve never needed love before,” Nicodemus said, which must have been a lie but one she let him tell. “Until now, I’ve never needed anything but hate.”
Viola ignored the weight of that until now, not wanting to break the spell.
“Is that so?”
“The thing about hate is it has a tendency to outlast love,” he said, and then, softer, as he stroked her hair, “even if it doesn’t outshine it.”
“Is that true?” Viola didn’t want it to be. She thought about the way her parents used to look at one another, the way they’d bicker, their words turning from daggers to balms, or the way her grandpa used to talk misty-eyed about his wife, who’d died when Viola was too young to recall her. Or her still-living grandparents, the ones she hadn’t seen in years, who’d been married fifty years and still nuzzled noses across the dinner table and picked up little things for each other when they went shopping.
“From my observations,” Nico continued. “Love fades, frequently and often. Couples can be together for a year and hate each other forever. Love doesn’t fill your belly or put a roof over your head or earn you money. But hate—that will keep you going when you have nothing else. You don’t even need the other person to hate you back. Love falters, love wanes, love hurts. Hate can sustain you.”
But it’s a poison, she wanted to say. It may stop you dying of thirst, but surely it will kill you in the end?
“What happened?” she asked him. “This—this isn’t from losing your mother. This is from something else, later. What happened to you that made you hate the world?”
“It’s… a long story.”
“I told you my tragic background,” she reminded him. “I won’t push, if you really don’t want to, but I am not against bribing you with a kiss or two…”
Nicodemus laughed. Auriel’s light, how she loved the sound. She wanted a musician to capture it in music so she could replay it any time she liked.
“My scars…” he began. “Someone I loved is responsible for them. He left me in that building to die, and if I hadn’t learned to hate him, I don’t think I would have survived it. Love would have had me die in that house. Hate made me crawl out of it.”
Viola swallowed, hating the bitterness of his words, the passion with which he spoke them… as well as the person who had hurt him in the first place.
Nicodemus sighed, as though sensing the shift in her. “That’s why I didn’t want to tell you. That part of me—that’s far uglier than my scars.”
“Your scars aren’t ugly,” she assured him. “And I do still owe you a kiss…”
She closed the gap between them again, his lips warm on hers, her hand cupping his face.
No part of you is ugly, Nico.
This, she knew, was a lie, but it was one she believed in that moment. How could any part of this soft, warm person who tugged her secrets free and held them so tenderly be considered ugly by anyone? But through the haze of his kisses, she still knew what he had done and what he was capable of, as surely as she knew he’d never do anything to hurt her.
She tucked herself back into his arms, as gently as she could. It felt safe, there. It felt safe in a way she had forgotten she could feel.
“Nico?”
“Mmm? ”
“Did you really not paint me because your focus was the sunset?”
Nico’s eyes, heavy with exhaustion, fluttered open. “I didn’t paint you because I was worried I couldn’t do the colour of your hair justice, and I was worried about what my obsession with the shade might mean.”
“Oh.” She was glad once more of the darkness hiding the inevitable brightness in her cheeks. “Are you still worried?”
He grinned against her temple. “No.”
Viola woke first, still slotted against Nico, his hand tangled in her hair. Warmth spread through every part of her, from the pit of her belly to the tips of her fingers. Their blankets could have been threaded with sunlight.
She rolled onto her elbows and admired him for a moment, sleeping peacefully against the pillows. She watched the bob of his throat, the soft rise and fall of his chest, the way his eyes darted under closed lids. Her fingers hovered over his scars, tracing the patterns. They disrupted the end of his left eyebrow, and another small cluster spun from his temple. She hated how much it must have hurt him, how she knew he disliked the look of them himself, but she couldn’t deny that she still found them strangely beautiful. They were like shattered glass.
Nico’s eyelids flickered open, and a wide, sleepy smile stretched across his face. A gentle hand rose to cup the back of her head, fingers threading once more through her hair. “Good morning,” he whispered.
“It is, rather.”
“I didn’t dream last night, then?”
“Only if I dreamed it too.”
She shifted forward and kissed him, wishing desperately that she could slide her legs over his thighs and place all her weight on top of him.
Nico murmured beneath the kiss. “You’re too gentle.”
“You are still very wounded.”
“You are still very beautiful.”
“Oh, Auriel’s light!” Viola rolled away from him, covering her face with her hands.
“Too much?”
“I didn’t say that. ”
The door clicked open, and a tray banged on the dresser. “OH MY GODDESS!” yelled Cordelia.
Nicodemus clutched the covers as though he were naked. “We are fully clothed!”
“I said no strenuous activity—”
“We didn’t do anything—” Viola assured her.
“Kissed a bit…” added Nico.
“Do you want her to murder us?”
“I’m not going to murder anyone!” Cordelia insisted, but her eyes darkened. “ Yet. ” She gestured to the tray. “Eat up. You need your strength.”
“To aid in my recovery, or to face you?”
“Both,” she said brightly, and then skipped away, Moon Bunny at her heels.
Viola went to get the breakfast tray and brought it over to the bed, setting it up over Nicodemus’ lap and helping him into a sitting position. She swiped a piece of toast off his plate, just as Lord Azrael jumped up onto the mattress and tried to lick the eggs. Viola laughed, sweeping the cat into her arms. She had him purring contentedly within a few seconds.
“I’d like to say you charmed him as well as you charmed me,” Nicodemus remarked, glancing at the purring feline, “but he is easily charmed. I, however, am not. Make of that what you will.”
Viola smiled, tickling the cat behind his left ear. “Where did you get him?”
“He was a stray in Florenwall—the well-fed kind that has seven separate dinners. He befriended me on my visits about seven years ago. He is the most valuable thing I’ve taken. I felt a little bad about it, to begin with, taking him away from the others he visited, but…”
“You were lonely,” Viola surmised.
Nico nodded. “I wanted someone—something. As much as I enjoy quiet and dislike crowds, being completely on your own for as long as I had been… I don’t think anyone is supposed to live like that.”
The cat jumped off Viola’s lap, as if sensing a shift in Nico’s mood. He leapt up onto the bed and curled up beside his master, belly half exposed. Viola wanted to smile at the image, but something about Nico’s words had struck her. She too had been alone for so long, but surrounded by people.
She suspected he was right. People weren’t supposed to live like that. Not forever.
“I need to go back to the barracks,” she said after finishing her toast. “I might be on duty later today; I don’t know.”
Nicodemus swallowed his mouthful. “When will you be back?”
“As soon as I can,” she assured him. “Luckily, I don’t think a certain shadowmancer is going to be causing me any grief for a while… ”
“I can certainly think of some other ways to keep you busy if you’re bored.”
“You’re terrible.”
“You like me that way.”
Viola got up from the chair and leaned in close, reaching out to thumb his face… only to pull back with a buttery crumb on her finger which she licked slowly.
Nico’s grin was feline. “Wicked tease.”
“You like me that way.”
She sauntered over the room, collecting the other bits of her clothing she’d discarded the night before, and crawled into them—very, very slowly.
“If the object of this activity is to torment me with your shapely rear,” said Nico, “congratulations, you have succeeded.”
“Not just my rear,” Viola corrected, deliberately sliding her shirt off her shoulder. “But is that the part you like best?”
“Is this a trap? Because it feels like a trap.”
“No—I’m genuinely curious. Which part of me do you find the most attractive?”
“Your mind, woman—”
“Liar.”
“Well, the mind helps.” He paused. “Your ass, and your thighs. Shortly after we met I thought it looked like you could squeeze a man to death with them, and a part of me really wanted to be that man. I also love your hair. And your eyes, your skin…”
“So, all of me then?”
Nico’s voice turned soft and slow. “Yes, all of you.”
Viola smiled, pulling her hair out from the back of her doublet. “Your eyes,” she told him. “Whiskey and caramel. Spaniel eyes.”
“Whiskey and caramel sounds far more romantic than dog— ”
“Personally I prefer cosy to romantic,” she added. “I also like your hair, and your cheekbones, and the way you move your hands, and how irritated I feel when you wear an open-necked shirt…”
He grinned. “So, all of me, then?”
“Yes,” she said, “all of you.”
Nicodemus stared at her like the reply had come as a shock, a force he hadn’t braced himself for. The look was unsettling. Viola turned, grabbing the last of her things.
“Well… bye.”
The door slammed shut before she could reach it, a smoky tendril wrapped around the handle. She jumped, twisting around.
“Sorry,” said Nico, not sounding all that apologetic. “But… come back. ”
Viola smirked. “Make me. ”
The tendril wrapped itself around her waist and tugged her back towards the bed, nudging her down onto the mattress until she was almost caged over him. Her hands braced either side of his pillows.
“Did I forget something?” she asked him, playing coy.
Nico took her face in his hands, his shadows wrapping around her back, pulling her closer until her body met his. Viola tried to keep her weight off him, mindful of his wounds. A wince darted across the corner of his unblemished eye, half-hidden beneath his smirk. How could he look so wicked and soft at the same time?
“Just one thing…” he whispered.
His mouth moved to Viola’s, his lips claiming hers. Hands drifted into her hair, fingers gliding across shoulder blades, curling into her clothes. Her pulse quickened. Sensation crackled across her body like spasms of lightning. Her breath stilled as his crawled inside her. She was moments away from dropping her hands, from throwing herself onto him, rolling him over and surrendering all thought to the nebulous pressure of his touch. She wanted to feel him everywhere, to tease and touch and claim and revel. She wanted to have him and be had.
If she were the injured one, she would have begged him for it.
But she did not want to be responsible for his pain.
She pulled back, Nico’s mouth red and raw beneath hers.
“Don’t stop,” he pleaded. “I want, I want you to…”
“I know,” she said. “ Truly. But not right now.”
She placed a chaste kiss to his blurred lips, and straightened up.
“When you’re fully recovered, Nightshade, I’ll fuck you all the way into next Aurasday.”
Viola left, leaving Nico in his bed, which somehow seemed far too large without her. A ridiculous sentiment. He remembered the day he finished making it and threw himself onto the mattress for the first time. He spread his limbs wide, barely able to meet the sides, and stared up at the canopied ceiling feeling like an absolute king. He’d never had more than a narrow bunk before in his life. He was certain such a feeling could not be beaten.
He was now certain he’d quite happily spend the rest of his life on a hammock if Viola were lying on top of him. It would probably be very uncomfortable and yet somehow he did not seem to care.
You shouldn’t think like that, a voice reminded him. But at the present moment in time, Nico couldn’t quite remember why that was. Why shouldn’t he want to be with her, if she wanted to be with him?
The door clicked open again, and in came Cordelia to collect the tray and glare at him from the edges of the room. “So… kissing has happened,” she remarked, her words laced with judgement.
Nicodemus grinned. “It has indeed.”
“There’s no need to look so smug.”
“On the contrary, I believe there is every reason to look more smug. I just kissed Ser Viola Windbright. Many times. It was… rather nice.”
Cordelia did not look amused. Her expression was as grey and stony as Viola’s eyes. She opened her mouth and closed it again, as if choosing her words very carefully.
She settled on five that brought his mood crashing down like eggshells off a cliff. “You need to tell her.”
Nicodemus’ face fell, a stone dropping to his stomach. Ah, yes, there it was, the reason it was foolish to be dreaming of any kind of future with her or even enjoying the present.
“I know.”