41. Forty-one
Chapter 41
We gathered in the private dining room a few hours later for what was meant to be a quick meal. I was still tired and chilled, but no longer shaking after my nap.
The innkeeper emerged from the back balancing trays of food. Another woman and a young boy followed her with more. They set a feast on the table: stewed snails, rabbit with olives (Kalcedon’s face was invisible behind his mask, but I knew he was grimacing), spicy lentils with artichoke and halaby pepper, meat-stuffed dumplings in a clear broth. Next came a pitcher of sweet wine and a dish of baked eggs with mushrooms and sheep’s cheese.
“We didn’t order any of this,” Kalcedon said. I intercepted the rabbit and placed it as far from him as I could.
“Consider it a thank you.” She set the final item, a plate of almond cake, on the only empty bit of the table remaining. “Word’s going round, what you did for our people. Your rooms are free tonight as well. The whole city’s helping pay.”
We all exchanged looks.
“Can you ask them to stop?” Kalcedon started to say.
“Thank you,” Oraik interrupted, talking over him and smiling at the woman. “Thank everyone, please.” The innkeeper smiled back and left the room as Kalcedon leaned back in his chair with a heavy sigh.
“Horns,” the half-fae muttered.
“We can’t ask people not to talk,” Oraik said quietly. “It’s too late for that, and it’ll only make news spread faster. Won’t it?”
“What does it matter, at this point,” Kalcedon said. He moodily dug the serving spoon into the lentils and dumped some onto his plate. “If they’re looking, they’ve already found us.”
“Maybe they aren’t,” I said. “Wouldn’t that be nice.”
“If wishes were stars, sailors wouldn’t get lost,” Oraik said as he cut into his rabbit. “Isn’t that how the saying goes? Anyways. None of us are fit to sail through the night. We’ll leave at dawn.”
Kalcedon and I both said “I’m fine” at the same time. Oraik smiled and shook his head.
“We can make it to Rovileis in two days, if we keep a witch-wind,” Kalcedon said. “No more detours.”
“I’ve been thinking,” I said. I knew how much Oraik had hated his life in the Temple. “Maybe we ought to go to Thianthi.”
Oraik frowned down at his food, slowly flattening a snail with his fork. I would have expected a more excited reaction from him.
“What? Pinnebosq? No.” Kalcedon said.
“Well, it’s as far away as we can get from the Doregall stone,” I reasoned. “And anyways, you’re probably better protection than the Temple.”
“Hm,” Kalcedon said. I couldn’t tell if he was pleased, even though his mask was off. “Rovileis has soldiers and defenses. Iron. And not every threat’s a witch or a faerie.”
Oraik hurriedly set down his fork. He was staring at me, eyes wide.
“It could be fun,” I told Kalcedon.
“...maybe,” Kalcedon admitted.
When we went up to the rooms, Oraik grabbed me by the wrist and held me back. Kalcedon turned to look at us.
“A moment, please,” Oraik begged him. I could feel Kalcedon’s eyes on me, even though I couldn’t see them through the mask. I nodded at him. Slowly, he turned and trudged up the stairs.
“What?”
“Tomorrow, would you—insist on Rovileis?”
“All you’ve done is say you don’t want to go!”
“I know,” Oraik admitted. He scrunched up his face. “But… the faerie’s right. It’s safer.”
“If you wanted to go, why didn’t you say so? Why’d you let me say all that about Thianthi?”
“He already thinks I’m stupid. It’s embarrassing, admitting he was right. Please?”
“I don’t understand.”
Oraik sighed and let go of my wrist. The prince clasped his hands together, stretching his fingers with a frown.
“Those people on Montay were attacked because of me,” he said. “And then on the ship. So many people died. Even Kalcedon almost did. And now, after today, the two of you are in danger again, because of me…”
“But if you hated it there so much…”
“Just promise you’ll break me back out when it’s over,” he said with a weak smile.
“I don’t know, Oraik.”
“I might be selfish sometimes, Meda. But I’m not such a prick that I want everyone else getting hurt because of me. Just—insist on Rovileis tomorrow, please. Is that so much to ask?”
I nodded slowly, feeling more confused than ever. He clapped me on the shoulder and led the way up the stairs. I thought Oraik might want to have another night of fun and drinking, but he walked straight into his room and closed the door behind him without a word. Frowning, I knocked on Kalcedon’s.
He didn’t answer. I waited a moment and knocked again.
“Kalcedon?” There was no answer. I tried the knob—unlocked—and let myself in. The room was empty, the window shutters open.
I poked my head out of the window, peering down into the dark fragrant garden below. It seemed like the sort of place Kalcedon would go. I called his name hopefully.
“Up here,” came the reply. “On the roof.”
I twisted in the window and blinked up. It was a short climb; we were already on the top floor. I hauled myself up onto the sill and stood shakily, slowly, pressing myself as close to the wall as I could. Inching out sideways, I grabbed the finger holds in the limestone brick and hauled myself up.
Kalcedon came to the edge and reached towards me. He wasn’t wearing the mask. I took his hand, and he hauled me up onto the building’s flat roof. We were alone on the city’s empty skyline.
I seated myself beside him. From up here we could see not just the little garden of the inn, but a stretch of the city. A narrow glimmer of the ocean rose over the lowest harbor rooftops. It was dusky twilight, a single bright star visible through the Ward.
He said nothing, just wrapped his arms around his knees and stared moodily out.
“Oraik wants to go to Rovileis, but he doesn’t want you to know.”
Kalcedon glanced at me and drew a deep breath.
“That’s what you came up here to talk about? Oraik ?” I shrugged, and he shook his head. “Fine. Why doesn’t he want me to know?”
“Because he’s embarrassed to change his mind,” I said. “Be nicer to him. Please?”
Kalcedon clenched his jaw.
“God’s peace, Meda. Just because you’re friends with him doesn’t mean I have to be.”
“I thought you wanted friends.”
“I’ve learned I don’t like sharing,” Kalcedon muttered. He stared moodily off. I poked his calf with my foot, and he turned to look at me, his gaze intense.
“Still, you can’t go around telling people I belong to you. And maybe you wouldn’t mind so much if you were friends with him, too.”
“Tempting though it is to have a friend who despises me,” Kalcedon drawled. He sighed and released his long legs, stretching them out in front of him and leaning back on his elbows. He stared up at the single star for a long moment, then spoke again. “I… might have overreacted. About him being Colynes. He’s not so bad, but you can damn well wager if he treats you wrong…”
“For your information, he’s going to Rovileis so we aren’t in danger.”
“Do you have to keep singing his praises right in front of me?”
“Horns, Kalcedon,” I snapped, shoulders rising. “D’you know you’re impossible? Oraik was right. Falling in love with you was a stupid choice.”
The silence that followed almost broke me. Kalcedon stared straight at me, his gray face ashen and his dark eyes wide.
“You don’t love me,” he breathed, the words softer than the seeds of a dandelion, falling apart the moment a strong wind brushed it.
“I do.”
“But you can’t love me,” he said, the words firmer now, with more conviction.
“Yes, I can. I do.”
“Meda.” His eyes roamed my face, one hand rising slowly to brush my arm.
Then he was moving quickly, as if the hesitation had been stripped from him, the fear and disbelief, leaving only raw hunger. Kalcedon turned onto his knees, rising over me. His hand slid up my jaw, fingers lancing power through me as he cradled my head, tilting my lips up to his.
The kiss. Deep, and slow, his heat poured into me. With a shudder I lay back against the hard surface of the roof, drawing Kalcedon’s weight over me. Braced on his elbows, his other hand found mine. His fingers pushed between mine as he drew my hand over my head. His tongue slid between my teeth.
I felt my whole body tighten and rise up against him. The arch of my back made Kalcedon groan into me. He drew his lips down to trace my jaw. A high, quiet noise escaped me as the heat of his mouth slipped down my neck to my collarbone.
“Kalcedon?” I asked. He didn’t answer. His lips pressed kisses, slow and light, across to the other side of my neck and up to my ear. “Do you—also?”
“Love you?” His voice was low and muffled against my skin. I felt the reverberation of it against my pulse.
“Yes?” I had to ask, breathlessly.
He laughed and buried his face against my shoulder.
“It’s alright, if you don’t,” I said with a quiet fear.
An exasperated sigh left Kalcedon’s mouth. He propped himself up over me, his face inches from my own.
“You utter fool.”
“What?”
“You don’t know if I love you?”
“You didn’t say it back.”
“My God, Meda. I’d rather stop breathing than live in a world without you, and you don’t know if I love you?”
“Can you just answer the question?” I begged. My emotions were rising up uncomfortably inside me. I knew what he was saying, but the longer he dragged it out the more I needed the simple confirmation, not poetic, just factual, of those three words.
Kalcedon’s fingers gripped the back of my head tightly. His other hand, intertwined with mine, squeezed as he pressed his weight down into me. My body flooded with his power.
“Yes,” Kalcedon whispered hoarsely. “Yes, I love you; I’ve loved you for years, which you might have had the decency to notice, if you didn’t always have your nose buried in a book.”
His mouth found mine again. I needed more of him. I wanted to burn. Emboldened by his words, I grasped my free hand into his shirt and pulled it up, scraping my knuckles along the smooth line of his back. Kalcedon hurriedly rose and dragged it over his head. My hands were on him, exploring, drinking in the feel of his magic.
His were restless, pulling at my dress as if now that he’d realized clothing was optional, he needed it gone. I did, too. I wanted no barriers between us. My hips lifted to hitch the skirt past them. Kalcedon pulled me up as I sat; took the dress from me as I worked it past my shoulders and over my mass of hair.
His hands wrapped around my back, his fingers sliding possessively over soft skin, over the plush of my stomach and the angles of my shoulders. He palmed one breast, breath hitching as his thumb caressed the peaked nipple; pushed me down and raked his hands slowly over the expanse of me, naked but for the cloth covering my groin.
“Come,” I said, and hooked an ankle around his leg. I needed his body against mine, not his eyes. I didn’t care whether he wanted to look at me. I felt no need to be seen.
Kalcedon obeyed, lowering his body against mine until, glorious euphoria, our chests met, full awareness of his skin against mine, his body hard and burning with a heat that could only come from touch. His hand slipped between us and traced down me; slipped between my widened legs. Pleasure flooded my brain, every nerve awake and screaming, as the pads of his fingers traced the delicate cloth covering my sex.
His other fist gripped me by the hair.
His hands were shaking.
“What am I supposed to do?” Kalcedon asked. His voice sounded surer than the rest of him.
“Whatever you want,” I breathed, eyes half-closed as I drank in the intoxicating sear of his flesh against mine.
“But I’ve never done this,” he whispered, almost a hiss.
“Never?”
“No,” Kalcedon said. “Tell me how to make you feel good.”
“You already are,” I said, but there was more to it than this; or at least, I knew there could be. “And you take these off,” I added, dragging a hand from his skin momentarily to trace the hem of my underthings.
Kalcedon rolled just to the side so he could maneuver. Slowly, reverently, his hand slid down the curve of my hip, parting skin from fabric. As he dragged my underclothes down, his hand stayed firmly pressed to my skin, married tight to my thigh.
I reached for his hand. He followed my pull until his palm rested between the heat of my legs. His fingers skimmed the wet curls covering my entrance. Kalcedon’s breath caught audibly. Leaning down, his mouth hungrily found mine. I pulled his finger towards my clitoris, but found him less easy to guide now. His hands moved of their own accord, curious and exploring, carefully stroking every swollen fold of my slick core. He groaned as he slid one finger into me, his forehead pressed to mine as each heavy breath played over my skin.
“Here,” I instructed, and positioned his fingers where I wanted them. “Touch me here.”
“Only here?”
“Mostly here. Like this. Softly.”
A sharp moan escaped me as his fingers pressed down against me.
“I need you on me,” I told him, and pulled his body closer to mine. Kalcedon shifted, pressing his torso against my chest as his hand kept moving. My body moved of its own accord, seeking him out. I wrapped a leg desperately over his, then moved back when I realized it ruined the angle of his hand against me. But I needed him. Needed to be touching him. My arms snaked tight around Kalcedon’s neck. His lips were against my cheek, my nose, my mouth, my jaw, desperate and hungry as his hand kept moving, pressing, not so much teasing pleasure from me as flooding me with it. I cried out and he groaned against me, teeth to my neck.
“God,” I whimpered.
“No. Me ,” he breathed, his voice strained and desperate, pushed to his limits. “Kalcedon.”
“Kalcedon,” I agreed, and he kept the rhythm I’d shown him, even as I ground and bucked and whimpered in his arms. His touch ravaged me. The weight of his power undid every facet of my existence until my very bones sang his song.
I had to grab his wrist to tell him to stop, after I broke open and then broke open again. When my fingers sought out his trouser joinings, Kalcedon groaned, and helped to shove the fabric down over his hips.
The hard length of him came free, a drop of cum beading at the tip. With one firm stroke I had him falling back against me, his eyes fluttering shut and his mouth parted in ecstasy. I pulled him into place with my legs wrapped around his thighs; lined his shaft up and guided him into me.
I do not claim to know the intricacies of how time operates. I do know it stopped in that moment. The whole world took itself apart and put itself back together again, better than before.
The word bliss does not begin to describe it. Nor paradise, euphoria, rapture.
Only Kalcedon. Burning through me. On me. In me.
“Meda,” he groaned. I locked my mouth to his and tangled my hands into his hair.
He did not love me well, or elegantly, or with any form of finesse. He loved me like a man half-starved who had no idea what he was doing and was tortured by need.
I could not have begun to improve upon it.
And when he came, he removed himself so slowly from my body—and I confess the pain of it, of everywhere our skin split back apart, was exquisite and terrible and perfect.
He lay beside me, one arm behind my back, chest rising and falling rapidly. I was in a daze, drunker than drunk, my body numb from carrying so much heat. When I slowly turned my head to look at the profile of his face, sharp lines softened by shadows, Kalcedon was grinning.
“What?” I murmured, my whole body exhausted and limp.
“Nothing,” he said, the smile just as wide. “Nothing. Nothing.”
He pulled me tighter against him, rolling me on top of his chest.
I rested there, cheek pressed against the beautiful beat of his heart. And there we stayed as the world around us grew perfectly dark, and a handful more stars emerged to pierce the blur of the Ward’s veil, each dim light more lovely than the one before.