25. Spark, flicker, flame, smother
SPARK, FLICKER, FLAME, SMOTHER
ENORA
My heart pounded as I hustled across the packed lower bailey with a stolen bottle of wine poorly disguised in my bag, dodging groups of revelers and distant calls out of my name.
I’d apologize for that later, when I didn’t have the missive to end all missives propelling me forward at an unflappable speed.
I, Enora Wynn, would never again spend another summer as the bastard princess who’d never been kissed. Sixteen years was far too long.
It had taken damn near forever to escape my father and the high-brow Turning celebration he was hosting with the aristocracy in the neatly coiffed upper bailey.
His renewed—and failing—efforts to see me included in proper court events were appreciated but highly unnecessary when they were the last place I ever wanted to be. I knew his wife felt the same, scowling at me like I was a smear of dirt on one of her prized needleworks.
Somehow, she didn’t see how ugly they were to begin with, but that was beside the point.
I entertained my father’s wishes for hours, wedged forcefully at his side with his arm wrapped around my shoulders, sporting a plastered-on smile that made my cheeks ache.
But the moment one of his yellow-toothed, bulgy-eyed chancellors requested his undivided attention and my father slipped away with him, I bolted.
It was easy enough to take the perimeter of the garden unnoticed, swipe a bottle of mystery wine from a table, and slink back through a passage hall amidst a wave of fortress attendants.
I’d already stashed my bag and comfortable boots behind a planter near the exit to the lower bailey—I just needed a moment to ditch my irritating silk slippers. Then, I was well and truly free.
Cue the full rush of giddy unease I’d been holding back all night.
I kept my clammy hands clutched at my sides as I sought my quarry—my prey, really—among the writhing revelry of common-folk filling the lower lands.
Though half the faces around were anything but common—illustrious merchants, tradesmen, and their families—it seemed we all preferred to spend our Turning celebrations not worrying about how pressed our finery was, or if our jewels had been shined with holy oil or not.
I couldn’t blame anyone, not with how addictive it was to be in the sights, smells, and sounds of people truly enjoying themselves all in the name of the turn of the seasons.
Well, maybe I could do with less of the smells.
If all went according to plan, I’d be well away from it all soon enough.
Normally, I wasn’t a fan of my height—full-blooded Odessan women were so much more petite than me—but it meant it only took minutes for me to spot a shock of messy, snow-white hair out in the crowds and map the quickest path to its owner.
Much to my surprise, Kieran wasn’t alone.
Spread around one of many braziers set around the curtain wall, my best friend was chatting with a half-dozen other boys who looked our age, though it was always a little hard to tell, with how they all seemed to be sprouting height by the minute now.
I knew one for certain was a merchant’s son, and another was one of Kieran’s peers in mage training, but I couldn’t fathom the others.
Not that their identities mattered, but their presence only made a flush creep up my chest.
And, of course, it was one of those unknown boys who turned their attention on me with a brow raised in curiosity. I probably was a strange sight, with my softly layered skirt, leather riding boots, and shoulder bag that had been patched back together a few dozen times.
All six other heads turned to face me in rapid succession.
“Enora?” both Kieran and the merchant’s son said over top of each other.
“Happy Turning.” I plastered on a tight smile. “Are you busy, Kier, or…?”
He shook his head and broke away from the group, setting his hand on my back as he steered me away a few steps.
We both ignored the low whistles that followed us.
“You made a break for it, I see,” he mused, and the faint hint of spiced wine on his breath was unmistakable. “As bad as it always is?”
Clearly, the boys were well into their celebrating already.
“Yeah,” I sighed, and I appreciated that was all the elaborating I needed to do with him.
“But I didn’t leave empty-handed.” I pulled my bag in between us and revealed my poorly hidden bounty.
“It’s wine, I think.” I glanced up to find his moss-green eyes full of amusement.
“Want to drink it with me at one of the lookouts?”
“Princess,” he chided. “You know I’d love to. Let’s get out of here.”
The best thing about being in the lower bailey so many hours deep into the Turning was that most revelers were too lost in their cups to pay any heed to a bastard princess and a mage-in-training hauling ass like they’d just stolen the crown jewels.
A couple of rowdy soldiers nearly flattened me as we ran for one of the less-traveled gates, but my firm grip on Kieran’s arm kept me upright. Barely.
We laughed our entire way to one of dozens of lookouts dotted around a walkway that encircled the outer wall, looking out onto nothing but craggy mountain passes and the inky, star-speckled sky.
Apparently, they’d served a strategic purpose back in the days of regular conflict, but now, they were just convenient markers of respite.
One with a hideously gnarled oak tree served our purposes perfectly.
I ran on ahead to pick a perfect spot between two exposed roots that were bigger than my damned legs each and wasted no time pulling the wine from my bag and wrenching the cork from it. As soon as Kieran settled onto the grass beside me, I stuffed the bottle into his hands.
Kieran gave the lip a sniff, and his nose wrinkled, accentuating the bump he earned breaking it last winter. Still, he tipped back the bottle and took a cautious sip.
“Oh, Nor,” he chuckled after with a displeased cough. “This is port.”
I glanced between him and the bottle. “So? That’s wine, right?”
Kieran winced and passed it back to me. “Only the worst kind. Go on.”
One hesitant mouthful confirmed that. I coughed against the thick, disgusting sweetness of it and wiped my mouth.
“That’s awful,” I rasped before I corked the bottle and tossed it into the grass with a thud.
There went my hastily-crafted plan of getting a little wine drunk under the stars to bolster my courage, and a tremor of nerves took its place.
“You’ll still stay, right?” I fumbled out an embarrassingly desperate plea. “Even without…”
Kieran gave me a curious look, but nodded. “Of course I will.”
“Good.” I settled my head on his shoulder and forced out a sigh. “That miserable woman wouldn’t stop looking at me like I had the black lung or something, and Chancellor Roy smells worse than usual. I really don’t want to go back up there.”
At least with Kieran, I didn’t even have to say my stepmother’s name to clarify who I was talking about. He held as much disdain for the sniveling woman as I did, entirely on my behalf, and often had pretty choice words about her.
But this time, he just chuckled and shook his head.
Silence between us was usually the most comfortable thing I knew—it came with the territory of being tied at the hip since we were little kids.
But at that moment, the tension was so thick, I wasn’t sure if my teeth wouldn’t crack from how tightly I had them clenched.
My palms were sweating again too, and there was no casual way to keep wiping them on my skirt.
After a long stretch of that agonizing silence, Kieran grabbed the discarded bottle of port, uncorked it, and took a healthy swig.
“Still terrible,” he hissed before waving it at me. “Do you want any?”
“No. Goddess, no,” I chuckled and then sucked in a startled breath when he sat up, pulling me with him, and lobbed the bottle out into the cliffs with an echoing shatter. “Kieran. That was unnecessary.”
“Let the ptarmigan fight over it.” He rested back on his palms and let me settle my head on his shoulder again. “They deserve to have a happy Turning too.”
I clicked my tongue. “Poor birds.”
He snickered but said nothing else, and my window of opportunity was waning before my very eyes. If I’d skirted my father’s celebration, located Kieran, and got him away somewhere private, I’d be damned if I didn’t see my determination through.
“Kier…” I whispered, and his attention drifted down. “Don’t laugh, please. But would you be mad if I…kissed you?”
His moss-green eyes widened, and he let out a quiet huff. “Would I be mad? No, Nor, I wouldn’t be at all.”
For the sake of my ever-increasing heart rate, it would’ve been better if he had said yes.
I didn’t know what the hell I was doing.
Was there a mode of operation I was supposed to follow?
A clearly established set of steps for kissing your best friend for the first time?
After having never kissed anyone? If there was, I’d missed it somewhere in years of lessons I’d only half paid attention to.
“Was that just a hypothetical question, or…?”
A fresh wave of embarrassment rolled up my cheeks, and I forced my attention away from his mouth. “No, I—” I coughed quietly. “I just don’t know what I’m…I’ve never…”
I lost my words as Kieran pried my hand from its clutched hold on my skirt and guided it until I cupped the back of his neck, soft sections of his snowy hair threading through my fingers.
My teacher, always.
“It starts just like this.”
“Okay…” A shaky breath sawed from my lungs, and I wished I’d drunk more liquid courage, its taste be damned, if only to ease the tremor in my hand as I pulled Kieran towards me and angled my face like I’d seen courtiers do when they thought no one was watching.
“And you thought you were being sly, inviting me here,” he murmured.
I wasn’t sure who closed that last inch of distance—both of us in equal measure, maybe—but I finally felt it.
The press of soft lips.
The crackle of warmth.
The slowing of time.
Skepticism obliterated in an instant.
Everything I’d ever read about in fairytale books was so ardently true.
When Kieran eased away with a shaky breath of his own, I pulled him right back, and thank the goddess there wasn’t a single thing in life he didn’t know how to do.
He cupped my face and tempted my lips apart with a gentle sweep of his tongue.
I couldn’t help but gasp at the delicate intrusion, how my fingers tightened in his hair as I let my tongue slide against his.
The throaty noise he made in response was a thousand times more intoxicating than any stolen liquor.
Cool grass met my bare shoulders, and Kieran settled himself half-over me before I’d even processed we were moving.
His knee nudged between mine, rucking up the soft layers of my skirt and sending another aching ripple up my spine.
I let out an embarrassing noise of protest when Kieran’s lips left mine, and he braced himself on his forearm, studying me like I was one of his prized ancient texts.
I didn’t understand why hesitation flickered over his features or exactly what trapped question lay behind his pulled-together brows, but I nodded. What else would I do for one of the few living beings I trusted more than myself?
Whatever it was, my answer was yes.
Absolutely. Always.
Unequivocally, yes.
Whatever he wanted, I would have it tenfold.
Wherever he wanted to steer us, I’d follow him endlessly.
Kieran’s eyes softened, and a smile tugged at his mouth.
I was afraid he was about to tease me with the bone-deep embarrassment that was his specialty—another one of those lifelong friend perks—but he dipped his head and kissed me instead. A slow coax of his lips drew a soft keen from me, and I melted again under the testing graze of his tongue.
Goddess, I never wanted to exist in another moment again. I never wanted to feel anything other than the weight of Kieran’s body anchoring mine, his fingers sliding up the side of my skirt and gripping my bare thigh, the slow press of his leg between mine.
But it didn’t last for the eternity I wanted, or even the minutes more I needed.
Kieran recoiled from me in a blur before I’d noticed the sound of approaching footsteps crunching across the gravel-dusted paths.
How he looked so nonchalant in a matter of breaths, his knees drawn and arms resting on them, left me awestruck.
Maybe it was because I was struggling to catch my breath and process it all, but all I could do was stare at him as he cast his attention out over the lookout.
An abrupt clearing of a throat put an end to that transfixion.
“Miss Enora, if you would care to accompany me…” came the stuffy drawl of one of my father’s footmen from behind us. “His Majesty was not pleased by your sudden absence and requests your presence back at the family’s festivities immediately.”
Not Princess Enora, even though it was my official title.
Not my father, because their vaunted sovereign could never be something so low as the sire of a bastard.
Usually, I looked over both things, but tonight, they quenched the needy warmth coursing through my body and replaced it with a flare of annoyance.
I glanced back over my shoulder and tried to school my voice into something painfully indifferent. “Do I really have to? Can’t you just tell him you couldn’t find me? Or I went to bed already?”
The footman stared at me, lips pursed, before he repeated, “His Majesty requests your presence back at—”
“Okay, okay,” I grumbled as I pushed off the ground. I swept a scattering of grass and debris off my skirt, a poor attempt at subtly righting it from its rumpled state.
Kieran cast a single glance at me, and a coy smile graced his infuriatingly handsome face before he passed me my bag. “Don’t forget this, Nor.”
I snatched the canvas satchel as if it was responsible for putting a screeching halt to the unfolding night of my dreams and stalked after my father’s footman.
When I glanced back, just before rounding the corner into the pathways, Kieran was sprawled on his back in the grass, his arm tossed over his eyes.