6. Six
Chapter 6
“You’re supposed to knock,” I told him breathlessly.
The storm-gray man leaned against the doorframe and studied me with heavy-lidded eyes. His clothes looked no worse for wear than when he’d left the tower.
“What a disappointment,” Kalcedon said mockingly.
“What? The wedding? I told you.” Unsure what to do with my hands, I twisted them into the thin blanket covering my lap.
Kalcedon’s lips spread in a slow smile that didn’t reach his eyes.
“You, actually. I was certain I’d find you with a stolen book.”
My eyes grew round.
“Don’t be ridiculous.” I wetted my lips, gulped, and looked away from him. The half-faerie laughed silently.
“You’re a terrible liar, Meda.”
“So you had a good time, then?” I asked, desperate to change the subject.
His smile flattened. Kalcedon took a step into the room, letting the door swing shut behind him. It was a small space, and he made it smaller yet, cramming every corner with blazing, roiling heat.
My credenza desk sat against the rounded edge of the tower. There was just enough room for a narrow bed along one of the perpendicular walls; a small storage chest beside the door. That left barely any floor room to move.
Ignoring the desk’s chair, Kalcedon sat at the edge of the bed with a sigh. I felt the mattress dip beneath his weight. Pulling my feet closer to my torso, I reminded myself I couldn’t risk scooting back without potential damage to the priceless book hidden just behind me.
“Terrible,” Kalcedon admitted, his voice low. I watched him rub a hand over his flawless face. He sighed, then looked at me with an exhausted half-smile. “Nobody talked to me. Nobody came within ten feet of where I stood.”
“I don’t know why you’d want them to,” I admitted, even though my heart ached for him. The villagers were fools. “None of them understand it.”
“Understand what?”
“Magic.”
Kalcedon frowned.
“There’s more to life than that, Meda.”
“Not much. Trust me.”
“How lucky I am, then, in my isolation,” he muttered.
He didn’t know about people who smiled to your face but talked behind your back. He didn’t know about walking into a room full of those you’d known your whole life, and hearing the gossip stop, and realizing it was about you, not because you’d done wrong but because you were wrong. He didn’t know it was better, here in the tower with books and magic and each other’s company, than it was down in a terrible village like Missaniech, never knowing the right thing to say or when to laugh so that nobody would realize you didn’t belong.
I hoped he never found out. That he could keep on dreaming life might get better, even if it never did.
“You have Eudoria,” I reminded him.
“That’s not… the same thing,” he admitted. Kalcedon sighed, and then scanned his eyes slowly across the room. Reaching over, without standing, he tugged open the nearest drawer of the credenza.
“Don’t go through my things,” I told him. “And it’s better.”
“She’s the woman who raised me.” It occurred to me I’d never heard the word mother on his lips, even though Eudoria was as good as.
“Then what about me? You have me.”
“What about you, Meda? You don’t care for anyone.” He shoved the drawer closed with some difficulty—that one had a tendency to stick—and eased open the one below it.
“Not true. I care about some people. If you’re looking for a book, you won’t find it.”
“ It? ” His eyes were on me like a moth to light.
“A theoretical ‘it.’ Stop going through my things.” Sticking one foot out from my blanket, I prodded his elbow.
Magic seared up my leg, splintering like lightning through my body. Expecting it did nothing to dull the blaze along my nerves.
“What’s wrong?” Kalcedon said, his eyes searching the way my face slackened for a moment before I got hold of myself again.
“Just magic.” I quickly tucked my foot back beneath the blanket.
“What does it feel like?” He abandoned my desk, the bottom drawer still open, and turned on the bed to face me.
“What’s it feel like to you ?” I retorted, not about to admit that just being near him woke up my whole body.
“Nothing. You’re as powerless as a shrimp,” Kalcedon teased. I scowled at him, and he grinned back. “You’re like a gnat trying to win a fight against a bird. You’re like a grain of sand on the coast expecting somebody to notice it.”
“I’ll go down the wrong pipe and choke the bird. I’ll get in your eye.”
“Sure you will,” Kalcedon said. He leaned against the wall with a smug smirk. “Stop avoiding the question. Tell me how it feels.”
I couldn’t imagine being so powerful that nobody else registered. Surely he could feel Eudoria. But maybe we were all bugs, to somebody like Kalcedon.
“Have you ever been cold of it?”
“A few times. Never close,” Kalcedon said.
Close to using it all, he meant. Close to dying, from casting too far, too powerfully, past one’s limits. The Ward killed fae-blooded creatures by stripping them of all magic if they touched its walls, but that was a death you could inflict on yourself, too.
“It’s the exact opposite. It’s… pleasure, and life, and heat, and power, where there was none. It’s everything.”
“Sounds nice,” Kalcedon said. “I suppose I’ll never feel that, either.”
I snorted.
“Complain to somebody else, you gluttonous stork. You’ve got plenty.”
Kalcedon didn’t laugh. He lifted his hand slowly, fingers trembling slightly. If he just practiced, I thought, that wouldn’t happen. Except this wasn’t casting. This was his hand inching towards me like I was a snake about to bite.
He rested his fingers on my kneecap, then met my gaze inquisitively.
“How does this feel?”
“That’s a blanket,” I informed him hoarsely, even though he was still so near he was swallowing me.
I watched Kalcedon slowly wet his lips. Then he rose to his knees, and shifted closer to me. He leaned past my bent legs, resting his weight on one fist, and touched the other hand slowly—cautiously—to my cheek.
My eyes must have glazed over. I didn’t even notice his expression, though I heard the sharp inhale of his breath. This wasn’t the first time Kalcedon’s skin had brushed mine, in the three years I’d known him, but tonight felt different.
My bones blazed.
His hand withdrew, and I couldn’t help the small mewl of disappointment that escaped me, my thin fae blood screaming for the power it was meant to contain.
“Come back,” I begged, even though I knew it was foolish to invite him. You were never to invite the fae; never to bargain or beg.
“Meda,” he breathed. And then he was closer still, his body pressing into the space between my bent knees, his torso pushing against mine.
We’d never touched more than hands. He’d never given me more than an assessing look. Now his body was on mine; the weight of him, and of his heat. I fought hard to keep my head clear. You shouldn’t do this , I told myself. You need to tell him to stop .
He started to lean me back. My head spun so wildly I nearly let him, except I remembered, vaguely, the book, more precious than life itself—more important than the warning in my head. I stiffened my back, biting both my lips together.
“You don’t want—?” he started, and began to sit up, but I couldn’t let him go, either—couldn’t return myself to the lifeless cold of my brink-of-death existence just yet.
My heels hooked over his calves, pinning him in place. Now Kalcedon’s face was slack, loosened by a desire I’d never seen on him. He groaned low, and gritted his teeth, and bowed his head before me.
“Meda,” he whispered again. His lips found my collar, above the hem of my shirt. And then his teeth, my neck. I gasped and gritted my jaw as a pounding need took hold of me. My back arched from the pillow.
He tried to lay me down again. I pushed back against him, then grabbed him to keep his body against mine.
“What do you want?” Kalcedon asked in frustration. “Is this a yes or no?”
And I knew I should have said to stop , but I didn’t want to stop; I was already tangled up in him, and no matter how the words no, this is a mistake, repeated in my mind I couldn’t voice it.
“The other end of the bed—or the floor—” I pushed him again. He sat back and I climbed onto him, the blanket dropping as I straddled Kalcedon’s lap.
“The floor ?” He ran his lips up the thick column of my neck, pressed them to my jaw. I panted and dragged his shirt up, pressing my palms to the burn of his flesh. “Why?”
“Because, I just…” I muttered, reminding myself repeatedly of the book, and his fae blood, even as my mind teetered and my nerves hummed; as my bones cried and my blood rang.
He froze, his soft lips burning furious against my skin. One of Kalcedon’s arms wrapped around my torso, fingers splayed and tight against me. I rested on his hardness, unfamiliar and tantalizing.
“Of course,” he muttered low. Then the witch reached past me. I barely mumbled no before he gave a triumphant cry and pulled the book and journal out from beneath my pillow.
“That’s mine,” I told him in a panic. “I bought it. Stop touching it—”
“ Tsk, tsk ,” Kalcedon clicked his tongue, and wagged the books in front of my face. “What is this, Meda? Why’ve you got some boring old book in your bed?”
“It’s not boring! It’s the Minor Works of —”
“Tarelay Sorrowsworn,” Kalcedon said, his words doubling with mine, but his voice pitched dramatically low. He was mocking me, lips inches from my own. “I know.”
I reached for the book.
His arms were longer than mine. He dumped me off him and lay on top of me, pushing me further down now so I lay fully back on the bed.
“It’s an illegible mess,” Kalcedon said, tossing my journal onto the floor and flipping lazily through the spell book. His weight pinned me down, hard and heavy and raging with heat.
“Just because you can’t read it,” I said breathily.
“Nobody can read it,” Kalcedon said. “Not even you, book-nose.”
“Hm,” I answered, and made another grab for the book, grinding my body up to his. He clucked his tongue again.
“I’m taking this with me when I go, you wicked, thieving tiffa.” He dropped it to the floor, with only slightly more care than my journal.
“ Kalcedon ,” I hissed, scandalized.
“You’ll live,” he said. “And now it’s not in the way anymore.”
Even the beautiful sigils of the Sorrowsworn were no match for what happened next. My legs fell further apart as Kalcedon’s lips met mine. I had not known. I had not known.
The tower could have fallen to pieces around me, and I’d have been hard-pressed to give a damn. I grabbed his dark hair in my fists and dragged him harder against me. He flayed me open with that kiss. Raw strength pounded through me, the magic coiling around my body. Enough to melt the sky and bring the world to its knees.
I was terrifyingly at risk of being carried away. Fae can enchant you , I’d been taught. They can steal your mind, steal your body . There were fae that ate people alive, fae that wore human skin for clothing, fae that delighted in torture, fae that kept humans in cages or hunted them for sport. Fae were tricksters. They were heartless. They were cruel. And if some seemed kind, you couldn’t trust it. It didn’t last.
And I was about to forget that the man on me wasn’t a man at all, but something more powerful, more dangerous; half-immortal and immune to petty human things like love. If I gave myself to him… that was that. There’d be no coming back. I couldn’t let it happen. I needed to stop kissing him. But my body didn’t want to do anything else.
I needed a distraction. One big enough to stop us both. I fought against my lust and tumbled into the magic’s heat instead.
“Let me cast something?” I breathed into him, as his lips drifted to the corner of my mouth.
His mouth stilled, his breath coming hard.
“…Now?”
“Can I try one of Odson’s transformations?” I asked.
Kalcedon rolled slowly up to his knees, sending a chill through me even though his magic still surrounded my body. Distantly I noticed his arousal, and the way his dark hair was mussed by my hands.
His power inched back as he coiled it tight to himself.
“You want to turn into something? Now ?” His voice was sharp, his eyes narrowed.
“Not a transformation, then. Something small, even. I could make a light.”
“You’re sounding a little desperate, Meda,” Kalcedon said sharply. “Might want to work on that.”
The lines of his face were stiff; his whole body tense. I’d offended him. Good. There was no sense in feeling guilty—I’d done what I needed to do.
I tried to convince myself of that as he stood from the bed, the mattress shifting as his weight lifted. Kalcedon grabbed the Minor Works of Tarelay Sorrowsworn off the floor.
“You won’t tell Eudoria I borrowed it, will you?” I asked.
“Go to sleep,” he said, and left. The magic went with him, until the room was lifeless as an emptied clam-shell. But I was safe, I told myself. I’d faced a fae temptation and held strong.
Death , my blood whispered. The cold settled back into its home. I had never known a chill like his absence before. I pulled the blanket tight around my body, but there was no cure for me. Nothing to do except wait out the pain and the sick guilt in my stomach, the whispered voice that promised I was wrong about Kalcedon, that he wasn’t a monster, that I didn’t need to push him away.
Kalcedon had kissed me, the small voice begged me to consider, as the ebb of power finally made room for other thoughts. He’d kissed me, and he’d liked it. Didn’t that mean something?
No. Of course not. It was lust. Only lust.
I wouldn’t let myself forget he was, and would always be, a heartless thing. No matter how human he’d learned to behave.