by Harmon, Amy
“Ten years is too great a span to travel in one afternoon,” he rasped. “Come join us for supper, and we will continue the journey.”
Together they rose, her hand tucked in the crook of Bayr’s arm, and followed Ivo from the sanctum. Alba did not allow herself to count the hours that had passed.
24
Twenty-nine. He’d been back for twenty-nine hours. Alba had bidden him goodnight just as she had the night before, and her guards, who had waited outside the temple all day, escorted her from the temple to the palace, where she was greeted by her aging maid. She dismissed the old woman without making use of her services, telling her she would manage on her own, and climbed the many steps to her room in the tower. Now, hours later, she waited, hoping Bayr would keep his word. He had promised not to sleep.
Finally, not able to wait a minute more, she threw off the light bedcovers and pulled on her shoes. With the blade she kept beneath her pillow, she nicked her hand, just enough to make it bleed. With the tip of her finger she drew a tiny half-moon on her palm, its tip and tail touching two sides of a triangle, its back brushing the third. She smeared a final drop across its surface, smudging the image, like clouds hiding a night sky. Then, before her rune could dry, she left her room. She glided past the guard who stood at the base of the stairs leading to the tower. He didn’t even blink in her direction. She scurried past a maid in the corridor and a porter dousing candles near the door to the gardens. Neither turned their heads. She slipped out into the darkness, breathing a faint sigh of relief. The blood often dried too quickly, and there had been times in the past when she’d been spotted before making it to her destination.
She found the door to the tunnel in the queen’s garden that burrowed beneath the wall and out onto the hillside. She and Bayr had discovered the door long ago, when she wasn’t quite so tall. She’d used it more times than she could count. She winced at the moldering smell of the tunnel, but didn’t slow, though she had to stoop the slightest bit. She should have drawn a rune for light, but she’d been in too great a hurry.
In minutes the air became sweet, the darkness not so absolute, and Alba realized the hatch at the other end had been propped open. Bayr was waiting for her, stretched out beside the opening, his long legs crossed as though he had enjoyed the wait, his enormous arms folded over his heart. He was asleep. But he was there, just like he’d said he would be.
She perched beside him, not making a sound. She wouldn’t wake him. Not yet. It was enough in that moment to sit beside him and celebrate his return. She tried to study the stars, to appreciate the escape from the heat of the day. It had been unseasonably warm, and though the harvest was ending, the days felt more like summer than autumn. But she’d seen the stars plenty of times, and Bayr was a whole new universe. She could not pull her gaze from his face, from the straight line of his nose, the swell of lips softened by sleep, the peaked line of his dark hair that he wore braided, like all warriors of Saylok. The constancy of her stare must have tickled his senses, because he opened his eyes minutes later.
“You owe me an hour,” she whispered as his lids fluttered, awareness hardening his jaw and the hue of his ice-blue eyes. He gazed up at her as though he wasn’t certain whether he was dreaming.
“No matter. I haven’t begun counting yet,” she murmured. Seventeen hours could last a long time if they never began.
His eyebrow quirked, a question without a sound. It made her laugh, the way he communicated, and her heart quickened in fondness even as it thundered in sudden desperation. He was going to leave again. She couldn’t bear it. She felt it like a threatening storm. Her father had plans for her, plans that would separate them forever, and the seconds rushed toward a final parting.
He unfolded his hands from his chest and pressed a thumb to the groove between her brows. She leaned into the pressure, her eyes closing and her breath gusting through parted lips.
“You are sad.”
“No. I’ve simply begun counting.”
“What can I do?” he whispered.
“We are going to swim and fly,” she said, pulling air and denial into her lungs. She rose to her feet with a swish of her skirts and extended her hand to Bayr. He scoffed at her attempt to pull him to his feet and bounded up with the ease of a cat.
“Will you w-walk or will you ride, Princess?” he asked, bowing, a smirk on his lips. For a moment she was seven again, perched on his shoulders as he loped across the fields and climbed the hills. She’d ridden more than she’d walked in those days.
“Those days have long since passed, Bayr,” she said quietly. He straightened, his smirk fading.
“So they have, Alba. So they have.”
They descended westward for two hours, talking softly, eyes on their surroundings, thoughts on each other, winding their way through meadows and wooded groves, until they reached the waterfalls tucked into the final slope of the temple mount. There, all the water from storm and stream converged, pooled, and then tumbled again. The highest fall split into two separate cascades, one emptying into the river below, one spilling over into an inlet, cold and deep and tucked back from the main body of the river. It was the place where Bayr had learned—and subsequently taught Alba—to swim. A grassy overhang, thirty feet above the inlet, marked the point where the trail zigzagged down to a pebbled beach below.
“It hasn’t changed,” Bayr marveled, peering over the ledge into the water, the tumbling falls misting the air and cooling their skin. Alba yanked at the ties of her gown, loosening them even as she stepped out of her shoes. While Bayr’s back was to her, she pulled her outer sheath over her head, leaving only a thin shift that wouldn’t weigh her down.
Laughing, she sprinted to the edge of the overhang, her arms and legs pumping, her hair streaming, and Bayr roared, demanding she stop.
She didn’t.
She sprang into the abyss and disappeared beyond his sight.
Moments later he followed, jumping into the space where she’d disappeared.
She came up laughing, he came up sputtering. Furious. And she ducked beneath the water again, disappearing before he could grab her by the hair and drag her from the water. Rocks rimmed the crystalline water like a crown and he swam toward them, his arms windmilling in angry strokes.
“Wh-why d-did you d-do th-that?” he bellowed, his tongue tripping over his outrage. He climbed onto the rocks, great sheets of water slewing from his shoulders, and shivered violently. She’d abandoned her gown and her shoes, but he was fully clothed, his sword across his back, boots on his feet, a dirk strapped to each leg.
“Why didn’t you remove your boots? I’ve jumped before, and you know I can swim. You taught me!”
“S-sometimes you can’t see what’s beneath the surface. I c-can’t protect y-you from d-dangers I can’t see.”
“And who protected me when you were gone? I can protect myself,” she shot back. There was no accusation in her voice, but Bayr still flinched.
“You should have w-warned me,” he muttered, turning toward her. “My h-heart is still up there with your gown.”
She pulled herself up onto a smooth, flat rock that rose at the water’s edge and flopped onto it the way she’d done as a child, turning her face up to the sky and wringing out her hair. But she wasn’t a child, and the thin, wet shift she wore was translucent. The darkness provided a little cover, but she heard his gasp, and warmth pooled in her belly the same way the water from her shift pooled on the rocks. He yanked his boots from his feet and wrung the wet from his clothes. The cove was quiet, save the lapping of the water and the muted crashing of the falls. It was a steep climb back to the top, back to her gown. Bayr turned toward the trail, clearly not wanting her to traipse to the top wet, half-naked, and missing her shoes.
“I don’t want to leave yet,” she protested.
“I will go alone.”
“I don’t want you to leave yet.”
“What if a hungry g-goat happens along and eats your g-gown?”
&n
bsp; She snickered, and Bayr relaxed. He never could stay angry with her, though she knew she had often deserved a good dose of his wrath.
“I will come right back . . . on the path, not the cliffs,” he added, his tone pointed. He scrambled up the steep trail and was back moments later, her gown and shoes in hand, hardly winded. Alba pulled the dress over her head and tightened the stays without meeting his eyes, suddenly awkward and woebegone, feeling like the child he still seemed to think she was.
When she sank down onto a dry rock, he sat down beside her, his eyes forward, his hands folded.
“I’m sorry I scared you,” she muttered. “I thought . . . I thought you would think me brave. I thought you would . . . laugh.”
“It was always my d-duty to protect you. It was my s-sole purpose in life. It is a hard habit to break.”
“I do not know my purpose,” she whispered.
He waited, the way he always had, knowing she would eventually fill the silence the way she always did. But she didn’t.
“You were b-blessed on the altar of the temple, and the keepers p-painted a star in blood on your brow. You are Alba of Saylok. You are a princess,” he said slowly, prompting her.
“And that is my whole purpose in life? My whole reason to exist?”
He sighed once more, as though he’d known he should just remain silent.
“What makes you happy?” he tried again. It was a game they’d played, once upon a time. When either of them was brokenhearted, they’d listed the things that made it better.
“Sleep, song, safety, the juice of an apple, the sound of the keepers chanting in morning prayer, Ghost. Dagmar. The daughters of the temple.” She stopped, suddenly so bereft she could not continue.
“Yet . . . you are unhappy,” he said. “Not just . . . now. But . . . every day.” It wasn’t a question. He was summarizing what he saw.
She nodded, swallowing back the tears in her throat, comforted by his simple understanding.
She said, “Though I struggle to find happiness in the small and simple things, I cannot escape the misery of the big things.”
“W-what are the big things?”
“There’s one very big thing sitting next to me.” She wanted to make him laugh.
He didn’t.
“I make you miserable?”
“Yes.” She raised her brown eyes to his, exhaling on the truth, and saw her own pain echoed there. “Being with you . . . is like holding water in my hands,” she murmured, and he furrowed his brow, still waiting.
“I want you to stay here . . . with me . . . and I know you can’t. I know you won’t. I’m dying for a drink, and it’s like holding water in my hands,” she repeated, enunciating each word. “I’ll never get enough to quench my thirst.”
He didn’t argue or try to convince her that she felt otherwise. He just stared, his gaze soft on her face, and gave her his hands, palms up, as if offering to hold the water for her.
She studied them, so big and calloused, and tried not to cry. If she could drink water from his hands, she might not be so thirsty after all. The thought sent a quiver from her heart to her lower belly and reinforced her resolve.
“There is something else I want for my birthday,” she blurted, hurtling from yet another cliff, hoping he would follow.
“Oh?”
“Yes. When Ivo predicted your return, I promised myself I would ask you for this . . . one . . . thing. But . . . I want time more than I want anything else. So if I have to choose between time and . . . the second gift . . . I still choose time.”
“Tell me,” he said, gentle.
“I want seventeen . . . kisses,” she confessed, keeping her voice as steady as she could. Then she added, “From . . . you.” Trust Bayr to find seventeen of the homeliest village boys to line up with their lips pursed, ready to deliver her birthday gift.
Bayr’s chin fell to his chest, his long, dark braid falling over his massive shoulder. She counted his breaths, deep and slow—three of them—before he raised his head again.
“I am not a boy, little Alba,” he murmured.
“And I am no longer little Alba, Bayr.”
“You will a-always be little Alba,” he protested, but Alba saw the lie in his eyes the way she always had. And she saw the truth too. He knew she wasn’t little Alba. She’d felt his eyes clinging to her face and her body when he believed she wasn’t aware. She’d heard the hitch in his breath when she brushed against him. It echoed the hitch in her own.
Bayr’s eyes fell to her mouth, and his chin hit his chest once more.
“I d-don’t know what to do,” he whispered. “I w-would give you anything. Anything. But n-not that. It is not . . . you are not . . . mine.” His hands tightened around hers in apology.
“I have always been yours. And you have always been mine. Haven’t you?” she asked, trying to fight the humiliation creeping up her neck, ignoring the sting of rejection that made her long to run away. But if she ran, she would never get what she wanted. And she desperately wanted Bayr.
He sighed, the sound agonized. “Yes. Always.”
“If you don’t know what to do . . . I could teach you,” she said, hesitant, hope thrumming in her veins.
He laughed, a humorless chuff, and withdrew his hands to run them over his face.
“And wh-who taught you?” he asked.
“Ghost taught me.”
His head shot up in horror.
“I haven’t had any actual experience, but I know what to do,” she assured him. “Ghost was very specific . . . about many things. And I’ve thought about it a great deal. I’m sure I can guide you.”
He groaned, a sound so full of disbelief and pain, she grasped his hands once more.
“You love me,” she said. She didn’t know many things, but she knew that.
“Yes,” he admitted.
“And I love you. I have loved you all my life.”
“Loving and k-kissing are two different things.”
“Yes . . . but we are different now. We are grown,” she insisted.
“I am grown. You are . . . you are . . .”
Alba leaned forward suddenly and pressed her puckered lips to his protesting mouth, silencing him.
Her lips burned, her blood was ice, and her hands shook, but she didn’t close her eyes. She didn’t look away as she withdrew. She waited, trying not to pant or plead, trying to act as grown as she claimed to be.
“That was one. I want sixteen more,” she demanded softly.
“That is w-what Ghost t-taught you?” he whispered, and something in his tone made her think he was trying not to laugh, but his eyes were intent on hers, his mouth unsmiling.
“Not everything she taught me,” she replied, defensive.
“No?”
“No.”
“I see.” His gaze lowered to her mouth. “Well, then. Perhaps you . . . should . . . show me . . . after all.”
She curled her long legs beneath her and rose up onto her knees. Even sitting, he was much taller than she was, and she’d had to lurch to kiss him the first time. She didn’t want to lunge at him like a snake. She inched closer on her knees until their faces were aligned. She could feel his breath on her mouth and smell the musk of his skin. He smelled faintly of incense, as though the roots of his childhood had flowered in his pores. Once the Temple Boy, always the Temple Boy. It was a scent she dreamed about, a scent she’d always associated with him, and she breathed deeply and closed her eyes, savoring his nearness. Then, closing her eyes, she puckered her lips once more and carefully placed them on his. It was lovely, feeling the smooth, soft skin of his mouth pressed against hers, and she left them there for several seconds before retreating once more. Her mouth tingled and her pulse pounded, but she thought she’d done a little better that time. She opened her eyes to find him staring at her, completely still.
“Lesson number one. Close your eyes while kissing,” she said.
“And lesson number two?” he asked, very serious.
“Ghost says you don’t have to hold still when you kiss. You can move your lips back and forth, softly, almost like you are nodding your head. I’ll show you.”
“Yes. P-please show me.”
She leaned forward and took his face in her hands to steady herself. Then, with her eyes open so she could gauge how her lesson was being received, she brushed her lips over his—back and forth, back and forth—painting his unpursed mouth with her own. Realizing that he wasn’t puckering like she did, she relaxed her mouth to instruct him, but his hands were suddenly in her hair, holding her in place. He copied her small strokes—back and forth, back and forth—but he kept his lips soft, smoothing out the tight rosebud Ghost had taught her to make. He nipped at her top lip, pulling it gently between his own, before moving to her lower lip and repeating the caress.
Her eyes fluttered closed, and she forgot what lesson number three was, until he pulled away ever so slightly to allow her breath.
“I must be a very good teacher,” she murmured.
His breath fluttered across her lips as though he exhaled on a smile, but his hands tightened in her hair when she tried to pull back to see if he laughed at her.
“You are. Very good. But I owe you at least a dozen more,” he murmured, not stumbling over a solitary word.
She wrapped her arms around his neck—she’d just remembered lesson number three—and slanted her mouth over his, feeling like a seasoned courtesan with so many kisses already under her belt. Somehow he knew to wrap his arms around her as well. Then he was kissing her with a confidence not present for their previous kisses, meeting her seeking lips with welcome abandon.
She felt the heat of his tongue slide against the entrance to her mouth and remembered lesson number four. She’d thought lesson number four would be something she wouldn’t enjoy, yet she found herself opening to him like a flower to the sun.
He tasted her with a tentative tongue, as though walking in the dark, brushing the walls of her mouth with a careful touch, allowing her to lead him in his blind explorations. He discovered without invading, coaxed without controlling, and she answered with a whimper and a whisper, his name a prayer in her head.