“Again,” I whispered, tasting my own sex from his kiss.
“I am already good and fucked anyway,” he laughed into my mouth. “As if resisting you was something I would have ever achieved.” Reed pressed his mouth to mine again, but this time it was with intent, with dedication. There was a purpose in his parted lips, in his tongue’s resolve to taste and claim my own.
Our bodies remained as they had been, his sex still driven into mine, his hand still under my knee. My hands still grasped at the quilt beneath us. But our kisses were endless, passionate. I nearly wept at his commitment to them, at his sincerity, as if kissing me were a vocation and he was finally taking on the role of being the one who kissed me.
I brought my hands to the sides of his face, cradling him, kissing him back, certain that despite the many nights of pleasure he had given me and even after the splendor of his suckling my sex and the thrill and fright of his being inside me, there was nothing compared to this. There was no feeling, no dream, no joy like it. There was nothing but these kisses.
And because I was so enraptured by them, so drunk on his finally putting his mouth to mine, the rest of me grew boneless, like a sunken thing, a pebble in a languid plummet to a riverbed, powerless,pulled down and without agency. And in that inebriation, the rest of me welcomed the rest of him. And we began again.
Several times he withdrew himself from me, muttering that he wanted it to last, but I would whine and writhe beneath him until he relented. I do not know if we reached our release in a short or a long period of time. I do not know how he did it, how he took me from a happy, sated thing, anticipating an end but blissful while reaching it, to a rocking, unstrung, bucking creature. I only knew that in one heartbeat I was grateful to be beneath him, to be pinned and pleasured, kissed and caressed, and in the next I was burying my half-shouting, half-weeping mouth into his neck.
81
NOW: HEART
In the morning, both of us drowsy and gentle with each other, he walked me back to wagon four hundred and twenty-three. When I got there, everyone was awake despite the rest of the campground all yet asleep under their own wagons. A second wagon was pulled next to ours and Keir, Dermid, and Evangeline were climbing out of it.
Reed kissed me and left me with them, not seeming surprised by this second vehicle or his brothers.
Tessa approached me as I stood watching. “They’ve a wagon with a false bottom. They’re going to put anything of value to us in it and keep it outside the city gates. So when we leave with Adelaide, we won’t have to take all of our belongings on our escape from the city.”
“I wish you wouldn’t use the word escape,” I sighed.
“Look at the way these soldiers all look at us. We’re prisoners, not pilgrims. We are not refugees, Robbie. We are something else to them.”
I began to aid in the labor of dividing up what could be left behind in Skow and what could fit into the false bottom of the scouts’ wagon. Once my small trunk withThe Life of Una, my twotools for the act of care, and my meager belongings were secured, I deferred to everyone else when it came to deciding what was worth keeping. My thoughts were adrift, and I decided to empty the latrine bucket half full with piss.
“I’m to the ditch,” I told them and began to walk away.
“I’ll join you,” said Keir by my side, in step with me. “I’ve something to say to you, if I may.”
I kept my features composed and answered, “Your people and my own have become friendly. Please speak freely, Keir.”
The tall, handsome Vyggian turned to me, his sleek dark braid over one shoulder. “I must speak of my stepbrother. Though it is strange to call him that when I feel like we are kin by blood.”
We walked on for a bit, not speaking, wending our way around waking penitents, horses, wagons, and tents. When we reached the latrine, he took the bucket from me and carried out my chore. Then Keir said, “I know you think I will want to talk of Jade, but I do not. Though Tessa tells me you yourself are likely refraining from inquiring after my commitment to her.”
“I have tried not to meddle, as you do seem to be already very much in love with her.”
“I plan to ask for her hand in marriage,” he replied. “As I think my brother may ask you.”
A slap across my face could not have surprised me more. “He may?”
Keir set the bucket down and crossed his arms. “Has he told you how he lost his eye?”
“In a fight, he said.”
Keir held my gaze and then spoke, his voice low and sad. “My father cut it out of him.”
He let his words sit on the air between us. Then he went on.
“There was never a boy more in want of a father than Reed when he was seven. My father was a foreman on salt shallow crews. He was good at getting the best results from his men when they harvested the salt. My mother died when I was young. It was just the two of us.The lord of the island where Reed hails from sent for my father, offered him a good wage to move to that island and lead the crews that worked the shallows. Reed’s mother was a local beauty. She spurned any suitor, apparently always holding out for the return of Reed’s father from Tintar. My father saw that he couldn’t have her easily, so he wanted her. They toyed with each other. Their entire marriage was a game. To Reed, it was all of his dreams coming true.”
Keir’s eyes were distant, like he was not seeing me.
“He adored my father, refused to listen to my warnings that deep down my father was sadistic and exacting. We were happy as brothers, and that was the only thing we squabbled over. I was constantly evading my father, and Reed was constantly following him around. My father nursed this. He relished in his stepson’s worship. But then, Tintarians visited our island for one reason or another. I was too young to remember. And someone explained their gods to Reed. And he fell in love. He already knew his father had sea magic and that air and sea magic ran strong in the Spinner line. Already, he could see and hear farther than most children. He had more agility than any other boy. Could scale a cliffside without a slip. And he had his soundless step. When he learned more of Brother Air, he became fixated. He transferred his prime interest to the study of air. He got his hands on books about the gods, about some higher practice of air magic in which the practitioner becomes their highest self by not wanting anything, by not caring. And he learned of their archpriest in their capital’s air temple, a blind man who sees everything, both natural and supernatural. As winters passed, this annoyed my father more and more. He had somewhat lost his little pet. He began to mock Reed and the priest, and this sorely wounded Reed as he still adored my father. They fought a great deal.”
A sense of dread sat heavy in my breast. I found myself not wanting to listen, wanting to walk away.
