He looked at her, this princess who seemed so dangerously sharp that he might cut himself just brushing against her shadow.
“I don’t know how.”
He waited. He thought he could trace the space between them. It was delicate. Too delicate. A thing of silk and snow and filigreed gold. And nothing was real except her, and the exquisite brightness of her eyes, and the corner of her lips sweeping into a smile.
“Then don’t.”
31
A MEAL OF DESIRE
GAURI
Vikram’s fingers laced through mine, and my skin flared at the contact. Within moments, we were out of the orchards. In the courtyard, the revels gathered us into the music. Enchantment abraded the dusk until there was only magic left to draw into our lungs. Not air. The music moved us to dance, and sent us spinning around one another as if our gazes were hooks and hinges, and our very dreams hung off of them. When the music relinquished us, we fell against one another. His gaze turned into a question, and mine formed an answer. Our shadows splayed onto the ground before us, guiding us through the revels and the lengthening dark, up the staircase and straight to our room.
I’d like to think I have a number of virtues. But patience has never been one of them. The moment the door closed, I caught his lips against mine. Swift and urgent. Our hands moved hungrily across each other. His fingers dug into my waist, pulling my hips to his.
At once, time was too fast and too slow and distance felt like an illusion we were trying to shatter. I pushed him against the door, tearing off his jacket. Vikram stood there, a tilt to his head as he let himself be appraised. The corded lines of his muscles caught the light, and my eyes roved from his broad shoulders down the lean, carved plane of his torso. I kissed him again. Slowly. As if the trial of tomorrow were an eternity away. We traded heartbeats until we kissed to one cadence, and I didn’t know where we stopped and started. This was the reminder I needed, the hope that made me reject theyaksha’s offer even as the memory of demon fruit sang through my veins. I didn’t want to cut out my heart. I wanted to give it. Freely and without feeling as if it would be turned into a weapon against me. I wanted freedom to thaw me, to let it break the walls Skanda’s rule had forced me to build. I wanted the privilege of weakness.
Vikram cupped the back of my neck, deepening our kiss. And I found… wonder. A new enchantment. This magic wasn’t a flashy, many-splendored illusion. It was the kind of wonder discovered in the space between heartbeats and realized in the silk of fingers threading through hair. It was a magic coaxed and found, a tiny world no one could reach but us, and I wanted to revel in it for as long as I could. I kissed him on his cheeks, his lips, the underside of his chin. When I nipped at his chin, he groaned and I kissed that away too.
“Gauri,” he said, his voice hoarse and wanting.
It was my name on his lips that stopped me. He spoke my name like a plea or a prayer, something to end or begin a life. Maybe he sensed my hesitation, because he lifted my hand to his lips, kissing my knuckles and the inside of my wrist. Whatever heat had twisted through my veins tightened to a knot in my belly.
If we lived through tomorrow… if we won the Tournament… what did this mean? If I took away everything we were, it looked like a girl and a boy who had found something and wanted to see what it would grow into with more time. But I couldn’t take away who I was or who he was. He was the Prince of Ujijain. One day, he would be the Emperor. And if we survived, those same hands wrapped tightly around my body would one day wield a great deal of power. Maybe they’d one day want power over me.
I stepped back. Vikram dropped his hands.
“Is something wrong?”
Yes. This. Us.
“No. I just… I need a moment,” I said tightly.
I moved away from him and he caught my wrist.
“I’ll wait for you here,” he said softly. He looked at me intently. It was too dark to see the lines of gold threaded through his eyes, but I felt that I could see them anyway.
“I’ll wait as long as I have to.”
I leaned forward and kissed him. “I won’t make you wait long.”
“Have I inspired your rare and elusive mercy?”
“Something like that.”
I ran into the baths, leaving him in the shadows. Bracing my hands on the basin, I stared at my reflection and sank my teeth into my cheeks as if looking a little more ferocious could somehow decide this strange battle warring inside me. I never dared to hope for someone who challenged and respected me, knew me at my worst and still coaxed out my best. And yet I had found that in the unlikeliest of places and most inconvenient of people. Wasn’t that enough to fight for? Could I live with knowing that I’d left him standing in the shadows… waiting for me?
I couldn’t. And that was all the answer I needed.
I splashed water onto my face, and smoothed down my hair. My heart thudded in my chest. I felt impatient and wary. Why hadn’t I listened more closely to the harem wives’ conversation? I’d always voluntarily lost my hearing, preferring to hide behind my hair. Blood and gore? I wouldn’t blink. But intimacy? Baring yourself to someone else? Nothing horrified me more.
Outside, the night had begun to retreat. The stars were little more than muted jewels in the sky. I let a cautious wave of happiness run through me. And then I stepped outside.
But Vikram wasn’t standing by the door where I had run off. And the bed wasn’t disturbed. I frowned, looking toward the cushions and small seating area… but he wasn’t there either. Cold licked up my spine as I moved closer to the door. Something wet and dark glistened on the floor. There, scrawled in a shaking hand, was a message in blood:
I could make a meal of this desire.
