13. Chapter 13 The Waterfall
The trail steepened and Liora disappeared.
One second she was three paces ahead of him, silver hair catching the green light that filtered through the canopy.
The next, she'd dropped the package from the shop on a flat rock and broken into a sprint, her tail streaming behind her as she took the incline at a speed that had nothing to do with fair play.
"I told you I cheat," she called back without turning around.
The loose rock shifted under her boots and she didn't care. She ran through it, sure-footed in a way that owed more to the bond's power share than anything she'd trained for, and the sound of the waterfall climbed from background noise to something that filled the space between the trees.
Lucien let her go. He picked up the package and walked while he took in his surroundings.
He found her at the top of the rise, standing on a flat shelf of gray stone where the trail ended and the world opened up. She had her hands on her hips and her chin raised and the look of a woman who'd won a race nobody else had entered.
"I beat you, Mister Slow," she said through exhales.
"You ran. I walked."
"Doesn't matter. I was here first. That's how winning works."
She stepped aside and he saw what she'd been looking at.
The pool sat in a natural hollow below the trail, ringed by dark stone that the water had smoothed over years of running.
It was maybe forty feet across at the widest point, deep in the center where the bottom disappeared into blue-green shadow.
The waterfall came down a rock face on the far side, fifteen feet of white water dropping into the pool with a sound that stayed just below a roar.
Ferns grew thick along the edges. The afternoon sun hit the water at an angle that turned the spray into gold where it caught the light.
There was nobody here. No towels on the rocks, no footprints in the mud at the water's edge.
"This will do, don't you think?" Liora asked with a blinding smile.
"I think it's beautiful. I was expecting something a little less grand, if I’m being honest. I’m glad to be wrong for once," Lucien said.
"It's acceptable." She took the package from him and tucked it under her arm. "I'm changing. Don't look."
"I think I have seen your body before in all its glory."
"I want you to try not to look and fail. That's different." She found a flat area behind a boulder where the ferns grew waist-high and stepped behind it. The silver top of her head was still visible above the rock. She tossed her green top over the boulder and it landed on the stone in a heap.
Lucien turned his back and pulled the gray trunks from the brown paper.
He changed on the open rock. The trunks sat where Liora had predicted they'd sit, the drawstring snug at his waist, the fabric ending above the knee.
She'd measured him from eight feet away in a cluttered shop and gotten it right, because Liora got everything right and she would remind him of that fact until the end of recorded time.
"I'm done," she said behind him. "Turn around."
He turned around and his jaw fell to the stone beneath him.
She came out from behind the boulder in the black bikini and the afternoon stopped being about the waterfall.
The gold thread caught the sun first. It ran along the fabric's edges in thin lines that sat against her red skin like jewelry, framing instead of covering.
The top held her breasts in a way that was doing structural work well above its pay grade, the black fabric pulling tight across her chest, the deep line of her cleavage darker red where the shadow fell.
Her stomach was flat and toned from weeks of Rask's drills, the muscles visible when she shifted her weight, and the bikini bottom sat low on her hips where the curve of her waist became the curve of something else entirely.
Her silver hair hung loose past her shoulders, catching the light against red skin.
Her horns sat clean in the sun, the ridged texture catching small shadows along their length.
Her legs had always been worth looking at.
In the bikini they were worth more. Her legs ran smooth from thigh to calf, and the work Liora had put into them showed when she planted her weight on one hip and cocked her head at him.
Her tail swayed behind her in the lazy rhythm that meant she was pleased with herself and wanted him to know it.
"Well?" She crossed her arms under her breasts and waited.
"I think you know what I’m going to say."
"Say it anyway."
"You look incredible. That bikini was made for you and nothing I say right now is going to be sufficient, so I'm going to stop trying. There aren’t words to describe it really."
"That was sufficient." She walked toward him, her eyes running from his chest to his waistband and back up. "You look good. I have great taste in men's swimwear."
"You have great taste in everything. You've told me so."
"Because it's true." She reached out and hooked a finger into the drawstring at his hip and tugged it once, testing. "These stay on. For now."
Then she turned away and reached into the folded pile of her clothes behind the boulder. She came back with a roll of linen bandage in her hand, the kind that healers kept in supply closets and students borrowed for sprains.
She held it up. "For the mark." She was practical about it, already working logistics. "Sleeves worked for class. A bikini doesn't come with sleeves. I brought this to wrap it before we got in the water."
She was already reaching for her forearm, her other hand pulling at the linen to find where it started.
"Don't," Lucien said.
She stopped with the bandage an inch from her skin.
"Don't cover it."
She looked at him. The gold eyes were still, the reading-for-data look she gave him when new information arrived.
"It's my mark," he said. "You've been hiding it every day like it's something wrong. It isn't. Stop covering it."
A second passed. Her hand lowered, and the bandage roll went slack in her fingers.
"I wasn't covering it because I'm ashamed of it," she said. Her voice had changed. Quieter, and the competitive edge had stepped back. "I was covering it because it raises questions."
"Let it raise questions. I couldn’t care less. Besides, there’s nobody here to see it except us."
She dropped the bandage on top of her folded clothes.
Her left arm hung at her side, the inner forearm turned outward, and there it was in the open air for the first time since she'd started hiding it.
Raised, angular, the color of old blood.
The lines were clean and sharp. His mark, on her arm, in full daylight with the waterfall behind her and nobody to see it but him.
She looked down at it. Her thumb traced the edge of one line, the same gesture she'd done the night the bond was formed.
"I've wanted you to say that since the first morning I covered it."
"Then I should have said it sooner."
"You should have." She looked up at him and that look was gone. Her mouth curved at one corner. "It's your mark. You get to decide when it stops being a secret."
She dropped her hand and the mark stayed where it was.
"Now get in the water," she said, and the competitive edge came back like it had never left. "I'll race you to the falls. I hope you can swim. I guess I should have asked that."
“I’ll have you know I’m an extraordinary swimmer.”
“Prove it, Margrave.”
She hit the water before he'd taken two steps.
Not a dive, because a dive would have given him time to catch up.
She ran into the shallows and launched herself forward into a flat trajectory that took her under the surface for three seconds before she came up ten feet out, silver hair slicked back against her skull, water streaming down her horns.
"Too slow," she called.
Lucien walked in shaking his head. The water had a bite to it that faded after the first few seconds. It reached his waist in four steps and he pushed off the bottom and swam toward her, and the waterfall filled the hollow with sound that made the world smaller.
She was already halfway to the falls by the time he started, and she reached the white water first, as she always would, every time, at anything.
"I win… again," she said when he reached her. The water came to her shoulders and the spray from the falls dotted her skin with silver. "I'm starting to think you're not trying."
"I'm not trying."
"That's offensive. Try harder."
"If I try harder, I'll win, and you'll be angry."
"I won't be angry. I'll be motivated." She pushed wet hair off her face and the gold thread of the bikini caught the light through the spray. "There's a difference and the difference is how loud I get."
They stayed in the water. The afternoon sun tracked across the pool and the shadows of the ferns crept over the flat rocks at the edge.
Liora challenged him to hold his breath and lost, then claimed the loss didn't count because she'd been laughing underwater.
She swam to the base of the falls and let the water hit her shoulders and tipped her head back with her eyes closed, and the white water ran down her red skin and over the gold thread of the bikini and Lucien stopped pretending he wasn't staring.
She opened one eye. "I can feel you looking."
“With you, if I’m breathing… I’m looking."
"You usually try to be subtle about it."
"Maybe I was a little subtle at first. Would you have been interested if I just drooled over you when we met?"
"Maybe I find drool attractive." She pushed off the rock wall and drifted toward him, and when she reached him she put her hands on his shoulders and her body pressed against his under the water, warm where the pool was cold.
Her legs wrapped loosely around his waist. The mark on her forearm sat against the wet skin of his shoulder, the raised lines pressing into him.
"I like this version of you." Her mouth was close to his. Water ran between them. "The version that stares and doesn't apologize for it."
"I've never apologized for looking at you."