Page 80

She looks at me. “Oh.” Her laugh comes out unsteady. “You want this as much as I do.”

“More.”

Tauremak stirs beneath us. The ancient wood waits for our answer.

“Yes,” Vai says aloud.

“Yes,” I answer.

The connection settles into place. I can feel her beside me with a certainty I have never known before.

I close Tauremak’s access to our private touch. The warmth between Vai and me remains.

“It’s done,” I say.

She smiles, looking at our joined hands.

“Could you kiss me now?”

I draw her into my lap. The root keeps its warmth beneath us when our hands leave it. She kisses me slowly, her fingers moving over the leaves at my temples.

“Can these move?” she asks. “I’d like to touch you here.”

The layered growth across my brow, around my eyes and over the bridge of my nose has sheltered the softer grain beneath it since I became lord. I have let leaves lift before, enough to show my face. I have never let all that covering fall in front of anyone.

Vai waits with her hand beside my temple.

I release it.

Leaves loosen from my brow, nose and upper cheeks, drifting onto her skirt. The growth over my shoulders follows. Air moves across the newly exposed grain and the dark seams running through it. My antlers remain; my face is the one she knows, with nothing growing between her fingers and my skin.

She touches the seam beside my mouth.

“Is it tender?”

“Nothing has touched it in four hundred years.”

She kisses it. I shut my eyes.

“There?” she asks.

“Yes.”

She does it again, and I hold her close enough that she can feel what it costs me to keep waiting.

The moss thickens beneath the roots, forming a broad bed. Vines lift at its edges and stop. Vai looks toward the open entrance, then back at me.

“I’d like to stay here.”

I ask the bower to close around the bed. The entrance remains clear until the screen of leaves has grown; then the branches meet, giving us privacy.

Vai gets up from my lap and sets her coat beside the bag on the dry root. She sits on the moss and takes off her boots and stockings. I help her with the dress fastenings, then put the green wool beside her coat. She pulls her shift over her head and lays it with the dress. At her touch, the remaining foliage at my hips parts and falls beside the bed.

She reaches for me.

“Come here.”

She lies back on the moss, and the vines wait beside her. Vai holds out her wrists.