“Well,” Cal says carefully, as if he is digesting Mirren’s words like small bites of dinner, “this does explain the seaweed.”
Mirren’s eyes widen. “I’m sorry—the what?”
“The seaweed,” Cal repeats. “There was seaweed all over the path between the manor and the cliff pond, but we’re far too high for it to have come from the Storven. Thought it was weird.”
Max nods her agreement.
Mirren looks aghast. “Why didn’t you say anything?”
Calloway shrugs, but it’s Max who answers. She meets Mirren’s eyes and for a moment, she’s the same girl I saw all those years ago in my father’s dining room—regal and strong, sculpted in shades of midnight and brimming with an unassailable sense of honor. “We all have our secrets to bear. We figured we would know yours when they were earned.”
Mirren’s eyes turn glassy, and she beams at Max. My heart swells with pride and an unabashed sense of privilege, to somehow have found my way through the Darkness to these three. I will never be deserving of their unwavering loyalty and fierce hearts, but I will spend my life trying.
We finish the wine amid peals of laughter and demands for demonstrations of Mirren’s magic, which ends with an entire pitcher poured over Cal’s head and Max declaring that she, too, has water magic. When the moon rises and Cal’s face has turned thoroughly red from an overserving of spirits, I offer to walk Mirren to her room.
Her cheeks are flushed and her lips curve in a small smile as we leave the dining room, Calloway’s slurred promise to be up at dawn to accompany us to Aggie’s echoing behind us.
“Even if the old loon has given me a permanent tick whenever I’m in hands reach of half the buildings in Nadjaa!” He cries. “Beware brick walls,bah!”
Mirren laughs and places her hand tentatively on the inside of my elbow. My heart feels like the inside of a campfire, lit with enough embers that if given enough possibility, could overtake an entire forest.
Touch is not something she gives freely and each time, it feels like a gift. Need balloons inside me to claim more of it, to devour every bit I can before it is ripped away. It wars with the notion of treating it as carefully as a crystal vase, fragile and unspeakably rare.
I settle for enveloping her hand in mine and tucking her body close as we ascend to the upper floors. When we reach her door, we stand awkwardly apart. I stuff my hands in my pockets just to do something with them, an attempt to calm the restlessness of my own skin. Skin that demands hers, has demanded it since I first laid eyes on her.
Braver than me, she is the first to break the silence. “So, Aggie’s tomorrow?”
I nod, words stuck thickly to the roof of my mouth.
She nods back, her curls bobbing. I want to reach out and snap one, press its silky coil between the pads of my fingers. “Well, goodnight then, Shaw.”
She turns to open her door and fear grips me, hot and slick, that if I let her go through that doorway, I’m letting something go forever. Something I don’t even understand.
“Anrai,” I blurt out.
Well, damn.
I’d been going for something more eloquent. “I like when you call me Anrai,” I clarify, “it makes me feel more like myself. Or a self I haven’t been in a very long time.” Or maybe one that never existed at all.
A smile curves her mouth, and it isn’t small or shy. It is luminous and encompassing and it makes me want to do anything in my power to keep it there forever. “Anrai,” she obliges, lightly teasing. I swallow roughly.
“Anrai,” she says again, more softly, and something in me unwinds as I watch the truest name I have, the most intimate thing I possess, encircled safely by her perfect mouth. I snake my hands around her waist and pull her to me, pressing my lips against hers. She opens for me with a satisfied noise in her throat, a mingled sound of relief and pleasure as if she, too, suffered for us being apart.
All day. I’ve wanted this all day. Longer. So much longer.
I thread my fingers through the soft waves of her hair, tilting her head back and sweeping my lips hungrily across hers, taking her taste, her scent, all of her, for my own. Her tongue dances with mine and it is nothing like the tentative exploration of this morning. Now, she demands and takes, powerful and sure. Her small hands dig into the tight muscle of my back, urging me closer.
I run a hand down the smooth line of her throat, feeling the soft hum of her pulse. My lips follow, voracious in their need for more of her sweet skin. She smells of rain and fresh blooms, the scent driving into me with wild force. I need to smell all of her, to consume every bit of her.
She makes a soft gasp of surprise as I bite at the juncture of her neck and shoulder and then soothe the sting with a flick of my tongue. It is a soft exhale of breath that at once undoes me and brings me back to myself. I want to take her up against this door right now, to extract every little sound she possesses. But I remember, rather unwillingly, that we are in the middle of the hallway and Max and Cal are likely to drunkenly traipse up the stairs at any moment.
I remember that Mirren is Similian and doesn’t yet know the gravity of what she offers. Or maybe, because of its rarity, she understands it better than I do.
In any case, she deserves more than to be ravaged up against an old door.
I remove my hands, gently skimming her collarbone as I go. I press my lips softly to her bared throat, then her jaw and finally her forehead. I settle back into myself piece by piece. She stares up at me inquiringly, her curls awry where my fingers brushed through them and her eyes bright. Her lips are stained pink.
I force myself to look away from them.
