I’d shut them, but opening them to look at the same innocent scene—or down, at Taran’s hands on my body—felt more obscene than closing them.
“I’m not scared,” I said, words slightly belied by the wobble in my voice.
“Of course you aren’t. My brave girl isn’t afraid of anything. Not me, not this, not what you want,” he crooned into my ear as his fingers moved more quickly. I clutched the fabric of the dress with one hand and his arm with the other, breath coming faster in tandem with the movement of his fingertips.
“Do you want one more thing to think about?” he asked when my toes began to curl against the leather of my sandals, and I nodded, gulping for air in assent. He turned his wrist and pressed one finger inside me, the shock of penetration making me gasp, as much at the idea of it as the novel stretch. Nobody had ever touched me like this; I hadn’t even touched myself like this. It felt like an erotic achievement. A mountain we’d climbed together, and now we were standing at the peak.
His breath was ragged in my ear as my body twisted against his hand like a drawn bow, but when the tension finally released, it wasn’t with the snap I’d somehow expected. It was like more of the golden sunlight flowing through me, spreading like ripples from a pebble in a pond. I gasped, and he turned his head to capture the noise in his mouth, swallowing it down and holding me up when my balance failed under the deluge of sensations washing through me.
I hung reeling and suspended in his arms until I could put words to the relief I felt. Not just the physical kind—there had been a small fear in the back of my mind that I couldn’t do this, be like this. But I could.
When my breath slowed and my vision finally focused again, I was hesitant to squirm around in his arms and look at his face. He might have been a little arch and smug, under the circumstances, and I wouldn’t have blamed him, but I wouldn’t have been able to keep my guard down. But all I saw on his face was soft approval, no different from any of the nights I’d sung him lullabies.
He must have had his reasons before. There had been good reasons to wait. I was young and still wearing Wesha’s white, and hewas just off centuries of serving as Genna’s pawn—but now I could barely close my teeth against the truth ofoh, I wanted you so much, please give me everything, I want everything with you.
So I tossed my arms around his neck and kissed him hard enough to make him stagger back instead, uncoordinated and giddy. Peppered his chin and jaw with kisses, everything I could reach.
And he looked so happy for it.
Unlike all the times he’d pulled away to smile at me from a respectful distance, Taran held on tight to me now. He gripped loose handfuls of my hair and opened his smiling lips to taste mine. Whatever we’d started, it wasn’t over, even if I didn’t know what happened next.
I wasn’t entirely unfamiliar with Taran’s body, or even the hard shape pressed against my stomach through our clothes, but I was resolved to learn it much better before this moment passed.
“I don’t care if I get sunburned,” I said breathlessly, because it was hard to speak with my heart squeezing out all the air in my chest.
Taran chuckled and, in lieu of agreement, just reached down to grip me under my thighs and hoist me into the air. I squealed, trying to lock my legs around his waist.
“That tent is very comfortable, I promise,” he swore.
He walked quickly despite my weight, his lips catching the corners of my mouth as I laughed and clung to his shoulders, and I was so adrift in joy that I almost didn’t see it before he ducked inside. The sky.
The smoke from the Mountain hadn’t stopped since we fled Smenos’s palace, and it was familiar by now. But this was different. A different color of smoke. From a different direction. I wasn’t so disoriented that I couldn’t reason out where it came from: the City.
“Taran, wait,” I gasped. “Something’s wrong.”
I unlocked my legs and tried to turn when my feet touched theground, but Taran stopped me before I could step away from him, wrapping his arms tightly around my waist.
I looked over my shoulder, confused by his reaction, and then even more by the lack of surprise on his face. Instead, there was faint guilt.
“You knew?”
Of course he’d known: he’d heard something, or smelled the smoke on the wind, immortal senses warning him long before my mortal ones.
His eyelids fell as he looked away from my accusation, but his grip on me didn’t soften.
“The Mountain fell silent this morning. I can’t hear the Allmother at all—something’s happened, and Death is free. If he murdered his own mother, I do hope she had time to reconsider who was her favorite before she died.”
“Then, in the City—”
“Death, I suppose. Perhaps the Shipwright and the Huntress too. Stealing a march before the other Stoneborn can find out what they did.”
I took in a sharp breath, betrayal coursing through my gut in a sickening wave.
“That’s why you brought me here,” I said numbly. His arms had been a shelter, but now they caged me against him. “You weren’t going to do anything to help?”
“Ididdo something to help. So did you. We both warned them. We told everyone.”
“Weeks ago! And Genna and Skyfather are hours away—”
