For the first time since she met him, a hint of admiration came over his features, and the tiny smile he bestowed on her was sincere. “I believe you, Disa.”
She stood rigid in his arms as he leaned down, his face filling her vision. Disaris closed her eyes and held her breath, dreading the kiss every other girl in the circle wanted to share with Ceybold.
“Don’t be wet,” she silently prayed. “Don’t be wet.”
It wasn’t wet. In fact, the kiss was surprisingly nice, considering its source. She’d assumed the enmity between her and Ceybold would result in either a sloppy swipe of his mouth across hers or a violent smashing of lips. It was neither. Ceybold carefully teased her lower lip with a series of soft pecks, then her upper lip as well. Disaris quivered in his arms, caught between curiosity and revulsion, and ready to bolt the second he tried to deepen the kiss.
She squinched her eyes shut even harder and tried to picture the first moment she and Bron shared a real kiss and not just a clumsy clacking together of teeth.
His lips were shaped differently from Ceybold’s, felt different against her mouth, better in a way that Ceybold’s didn’t. Then, her blood had sung in her veins with the wonder of holding Bron in her arms. None of that happened as she stood in Ceybold’s arms and patiently endured his kiss.
Her eyes opened, and she freed herself from his arms with a slight shove. “That’s enough,” she said, tamping down the urge to wipe her mouth. She’d do so later, when there wasn’t a crowd gleefully watching her for a reaction.
Ceybold stared at her, his chest rising and falling with rapid breaths. “You liked it,” he said. “I know you did.”
She frowned, annoyed by his egotistical assumption. “I liked the memory it inspired.”
The gloating look emerging on his face slipped away, and his brow lowered. She didn’t have to give details about what or who she referred to. Ceybold was an ass; he wasn’t stupid. “You were thinking of him.” The snarl in his voice raised the hair on her nape. “Bitch,” he said so softly only she heard the insult.
Disaris shrugged. “Call me what you want. My thoughts are my own. I held up my side of the bargain. Now you hold up yours.” She stepped away from him and gave Nazlin a quick hug. “I’m through playing,” she said. “I want to spend time with my parents and sister before the festival is over.”
She waved goodbye to the rest of the group in the circle, pretended a still seething Ceybold wasn’t glaring daggers at her, and rejoined her family in the square. On her way to them, she scrubbed her lips on her shirt sleeve and nabbed a cup of small ale sweetened with honey from a vendor to quench her thirst and rinse away any taste of Ceybold. One kiss from him was onetoo many for her. The rest of the village girls were more than welcome to him.
Her mother’s eyebrows rose when Disaris joined her, Reylan, and Luda on a bench to watch a trio of acrobats perform on a temporary stage. “What’s wrong with you?” she asked. “You look like you’ve eaten an unripe plum.”
Disaris could only wish that were so. While she hadn’t liked being in Ceybold’s arms, she didn’t regret it, at least for now. If it meant Bron might come home for another brief visit, then she considered it a necessary trade well worth making.
There were moments over the next month when she regretted her bargain with Ceybold. She was either the most admired girl in Panrin or the most hated. Some gossiped about her within her hearing, spiteful comments regarding her appearance or dress and how could Ceybold want to kiss such a wild, average-looking girl when so many others were prettier and more elegant. Others tried to pull her aside and beg for every detail about Ceybold’s kiss. Was it soft? Hard? How did his lips taste?
Disaris hated that more than the insults. She didn’t want to revisit those moments. They weren’t horrible per se, they were simply not worth remembering. Even if they were, she had no intention of sharing her opinion about them just to titillate a flock of gossiping village magpies.
She counted the days toward Bron’s homecoming, leveling threatening glares on Ceybold every time their paths crossed. He only smirked at her, inciting her anger even more when he blew kisses at her and walked away.
“You better keep your promise, you bastard,” she’d mutter to herself. If Bron didn’t show up soon, Ceybold was dead.
Bron’s return often preoccupied her thoughts, even during the school hours when she should have been studying or paying attention to lessons instead of daydreaming. The newschoolmaster had as little tolerance for any wool gathering as the previous master, but his reprimands went beyond disciplinary into cruelty. Disaris sometimes returned home with red, throbbing ears from Master Morevan’s twisting fingers, or swollen knuckles from the strike of the slender cane he carried as he stalked the aisles between the desks.
She hadn’t liked the man from the start, when he’d stepped into the position made vacant by Master Feypas’s death. Master Morevan was obvious in playing favorites, overzealous in his discipline, and petty in his criticisms. Disaris guessed his age at ten to twelve years older than her. A young teacher and one with an unmistakable loathing for children. He entered the school room each morning wearing a sneer that could curdle milk and thwapped his cane gently against his robes in unspoken warning.
The fourth and last time he tried to twist her ears, Disaris stood up, yanked the rod from his hand, and struck him hard across the shoulder and arm with it.
Jin Morevan crashed to one knee with a startled scream. Several of the younger children fled the building while those who remained flattened themselves along the opposite wall, eyes wide as they watched Disa jin Gheza face off with the schoolmaster. When jin Morevan tried to rise, she kicked one of the stools into his legs. He fell on his backside, and this time wisely stayed there.
He stared up at Disaris, his expression changing from stunned disbelief to hatred. She pointed the cane at him. “Touch me again, and I’ll make you eat your own teeth.” She then broke the rod in half by stepping on it, threw the pieces at the schoolmaster, and stormed outside.
She didn’t give him a chance to tattle on her to her parents. Both were home repairing a patch of the roof that had developed a leak. Disaris confessed the entire incident to them in detail.She didn’t trust jin Morevan to tell his side of the story with any semblance of truth. At least she had the chance to tell her version of it first.
It was the scandal of Panrin, told and retold in sewing circles and taverns, embellished to the point that one recounting had Disaris attacking the schoolmaster with a sword and another in which he tried to beat her with a club he kept behind his desk.
Humiliated by the fact he’d been bested b a student, and a girl at that, jin Morevan refused to allow her back in his classroom, which was perfectly fine by her. Bron’s amman had already volunteered to help her with her studies.
“Mistress Hazarin is smarter and more learned than that vicious pip tarse anyway,” she declared to her parents. “And you can beat me black and blue or starve me to death if you want, Amman. Eitan. I’m still not apologizing to him.”
Gheza rolled her eyes. “No need to play the martyr, Disa.”
Reylan stared at his daughter as he chewed on the stem of his pipe. The three sat at the table in the kitchen. Luda had been sent to bed after supper. “Why didn’t you tell us about any of this before?”
She bowed her head. “I’m sorry, Eitan. I didn’t want to cause trouble. I know it’s hard to lure a schoolmaster here. They all want to teach in the bigger towns for better pay. And I did misbehave sometimes. Daydreaming. Not listening. I deserved a tongue-lashing, even a hand swat, but not the rest. He’s harsh with all of us like that, even the youngest students.” Her lower lip quivered, and she swallowed hard in a bid not to cry. “Am I in trouble?”
