I nod, unsure where this is going.
“I want you to know that even though my family believes it’s possible to live two lives at once, to be a soldier or a real person depending on the day, I know I can’t do that. I can only be myself, and sometimes that’s damn complicated. The fact that I’m here with you proves it. I swear I always do my best. But my best gets messy.”
I sigh, looking up at him. “No,” I say, unable to hide my sorrow, “I think you’ll have to be this other person for a while. You won’t survive any other way. You’ve chosen this.” He begins to speak, but I don’t let him. “One day, though, all this will end, a distant memory, and then I want you to be who you truly are. Because I love you. I always will.”
It’s the first time I’ve said those words aloud. And it’s the truth.
I do love him.
“I love you,” he replies, a simple fact, and he kisses me.
How I long for a repeat of the citadel—that certainty, that perfection, away from the truth. But this time it all feels heavier. I was lucky to get him back from war once. What if it’s the last? What if he returns, and he’s always less and less like the boy I adore, a frail mockery of the real spirit buried within? I’m terrified by the idea of this being all that we have. Last summer wouldn’t have been enough, but I’d have lived with it. A youthful infatuation buried with the passage of time. But these few days … they’ve given me something real. They’ve given me hope—and hope is dangerous.
Perhaps that’s why his kiss is sad.
He’s also sick with hope.
Silently, we walk inside the large doors, leaving our words behind. Our feet slip softly down marble halls, and I feel his breaths beside me. Feel each one like they’re my own. He’s taken the guest room a hall over from mine, and every night I try to imagine him lying there, so far from the tents and flies he’s been sleeping with for an entire campaign. A large bed. Silk sheets. He must be lonely.
He is lonely.
That’s the regretful expression he wears now, as we say good night as we have the past five nights, like he’s saying goodbye for good already. As if he’s never going to see me again and he’s trying to remember every sweep and colour of my face. I imagine myself sleeping beside him, keeping him warm tonight. The bright, good thing between us.
“Stay with me,” I say, impressed by my own boldness.
“Where?” he asks.
I nod at my room. “Here.”
I don’t know how to ask for this thing I want, a thing I don’t fully understand. Not to mention, it might also be wrong of me to even suggest it. Not only because my mother would be horrified at my brazenness, but because if Athan knew the truth, the family I come from, perhaps he’d never want to kiss me again. If I were braver, perhaps I’d tell him.
But I’m not, and right now, I only want him.
I try what I imagine is a tempting smile, and for a moment he looks intrigued. It quickly flickers out. “No. I should go to bed.”
“We both should,” I agree, trying to say it more meaningfully without being … too meaningful.
He doesn’t see it. His crooked smile appears briefly. “Good night, Ali.”
“Good night, Athan.”
I sigh once the door is closed.
ATHAN
My room feels incredibly large and empty now. Even worse than it has the past few nights. The pills Ali gave me have worn off again, and my head splinters in their retreat, everything looking like dragons in the dark—the clock on the hearth, the gaudy picture frames, the velvet chair in the corner. They reflect yard lights, glinting teeth and eyes, and they’re watching me. Judging me for not admitting the truth yet.
I hold up my pistol, hand shaking.
I didn’t shoot that horse.
I relive the moment. Fire it into my thoughts, to know that I can face my fear. I’m not my father. I’m not my brother.
I’m me.
Ali loves me.
I lower the pistol and think instead of her intoxicating offer. I’m not going to pretend I don’t know what she wanted. When Aurelia Isendare decides she’s chasing something, there’s no way she can hide it in her eyes. It’s all there, like the night sky. A thousand glittering possibilities. Everything I want.
Tormented, I shower obsessively, getting rid of motorbike grime, washing myself over and over—as if I can scrub myself into something better, something worthy of her love.
“What would Cyar choose?” I ask afterwards, into the mirror.
My reflection makes a face.
No, that won’t work. I know what he’d do. He’d go to sleep and hope for the best. Wait for the war to be over, assure himself that someday soon everything will be sorted out, problems solved, offers of marriage made and—there! A perfectly honourable kiss after some perfectly honourable pledges. He’d never dream of asking the girl he loves to squander her innocence for him, not when he couldn’t promise forever in return.
“And Arrin?” I ask the reflection, just because.
Even worse.
I know exactly what he’d do, and it’s the thing I want. That’s frightening. Tomorrow Father arrives at the base, and I need to be up in time. In fact, I should be smart and leave tonight. I shouldn’t stay here again. But one more night even in the proximity of Ali’s breath is life-giving. I can lie awake and imagine her nearby, sleeping in that other room, wearing only a nightdress. It’s enough to be close. To feel the heat from the idea of it.
It’s also not enough.
I pad back down the hall barefoot. Ali looked so disappointed, and I have to do this right. I’ll kiss her again, like on the fort, and I’ll tell her my name. There’s little I can do after tonight—I see that now. I’m too small, too easily broken up by invisible dragons. What good am I outside of a cockpit? On the earth?
But I can be good for her.
Somehow.
I knock, and after a moment the door swings open. Ali stands there in the nightdress I’ve imagined every night, revealing more skin than when we swam in the river—all of it sheer, liquid as sin. I try to think of the words I was going to say.
Nothing comes.
“Do you want to play cards?” I hear myself ask.
Her smile is amused. “Now?”
“I can’t sleep.”
“Me neither.”
“Great,” I say. “Not great. But, you know.”
“I know.”
She stands there, and I stand there, and neither of us moves.
She looks beautiful.
“Never mind,” I say instead. “You look tired.”
“I’m not tired.”
“I don’t want to keep you up.”
“It’s fine, Athan.”
“I have to be out of here early tomorrow.”
“So we’d best not keep you up?” Her smile looks even more entertained now.
There’s a noise at the end of the hall. A servant.
“Come in,” she says.
“I shouldn’t.”
“Get in here,” she hisses.
“Ali, I should—”
She hauls me through the door as the servant appears, shutting the door firmly behind us. I wasn’t resisting very nobly. She moved me like nothing.
We stand there in her room, silent again, and then she says, “I don’t want to play cards.”
I swallow. “Me neither.”
“Really,” she says, “I want to kiss you again. I want to kiss you a hundred times. I don’t know what I’m doing, but I do know that after tonight I might never see you again. And I always want to remember you like this. I want you to know you’re beautiful to me. You always will be.”
She looks at me, determination in her face, lit by the fire in the hearth.
I wish I’d prepared a speech like that.
“Ali…”
Where do I begin? How? I won’t always be beautiful to her, not once she knows my name, discovers the sixteen black marks on my plane and the soldiers I strafed and the suffo
cating emptiness at my core. I don’t even know where to start. I’m the opposite of what she needs—the worst person for her, her enemy—and I think of her on that citadel today, lost in the sun. Her hands reaching out, tracing the Southern world before us, entirely at peace and in a place I can’t follow.
“Please promise to remember that you’re better than me,” I say. “And I know it.”
Her expression wavers. She doesn’t like that. She thinks she can make it untrue through sheer resolve, but this is one place where her determination won’t work.
“It doesn’t matter,” she says.
“It does,” I protest. “I have to—”
“Take off your shirt.”
It’s a soft command, one that terrifies me more than any harsh order I’ve ever been given. I should refuse. But since I’m good at doing, at obeying, I pull it up and over my head, and she stands before me—creamy lace against her sun-brown skin, as many curves and arcs as a plane in the sky, rising, falling, hiding layers and depths and blood-hot adrenaline.
I don’t move.
I’m damn scared, not wanting to seem too much or too little.
She chooses for me and closes the distance between us, near enough I can feel her breath against my bare chest. She places her palm gently above my heart. “I wanted to feel this,” she says, her voice quiet. She has no fear. Her touch is warm, thrilling, stirring in me a longing that’s as desperate as it is deep. It aches. Being alone in this room, being allowed to feel this way when Ollie and Sailor and too many others …
I don’t let myself see dragons.
Not here.
Her hand moves lower, her eyes following. Counting ribs, tracing angles. I don’t think of bubbling flesh, scorched earth, the marrow inside out. I’m intact. I’m here for her. Here for this moment, her fingers teasing my skin. The attentiveness of her stare makes it almost unbearable.
I feel very awkward and plain.
On fire.
“Please,” I beg, backing up an inch. I try to see her as she is. A princess, Sinora’s daughter. A girl who isn’t mine and never will be. I can’t promise her forever. “This isn’t right. I’m—”
“What?” she asks. “Afraid?”
“No.”
She presses closer, conquering my inch of retreat. “You think this isn’t my choice?”
Her hands are on me again and I try to stop the wonderful fog from taking over my brain. A losing battle, and I reach for her as well, touching her skin carefully, the place where her neck becomes shoulder, wondering if I can make her feel the same way she makes me feel. “You’re everything I want, Ali. But I can’t do this to you. Please. I’m not my brother. You’re too—”
Perfect.
Her lips silence me with a kiss. It’s the fall into oblivion, altimeter shattering. All these reasons for decency seeming suddenly useless here, mad rules from a mad world far beyond this room, a world that tries to keep us following orders and marching in line. But that line might lead straight to a grave.
Be good, they say.
If you’re lucky, you’ll die quick.
We’re defying them all right now, and she steps back onto her heels, her eyes wide and beseeching. “Please,” she says mimicking my tone with another smile. “You always try to do what’s right. For once, you should do what you want.”
I don’t know what I want anymore. But I do want this—her, here, now. I’ve felt death on my shoulders and I much prefer her hands there, reminding me that there still might be a place of myself that’s worth knowing. A secret thing that no one’s ever seen.
I look at my feet again. I gather my racing breath. “Ali, there’s something I have to say first. It’s something I should have said long ago. I’m sorry I didn’t.” I look up helplessly. “Everything’s—”
She lets the nightdress slide from her skin. It’s clearly intentional, the way she pulls her shoulders out from under it, letting it fall with a half-hearted attempt to cover herself, like there was a moment she thought it might be a bad idea. But now she’s standing there, radiant in the firelight, her head tilted, daring me to come closer. If there were words in my mouth, they’re gone now, disappeared from my tongue and replaced by nothing but the awareness of her unveiled before me. Her voice saying, “You always talk too much,” with such hidden joy, like she knows her power.
Then her hand is beckoning for me.
A heartbeat in my throat.
I really am on fire now, abandoned in the burning, and when my arms move around her, her mouth finding mine again, I discover she’s an equal flame, rising to meet me, so very wonderful and so very alive.
The horizon in my very hands.
And they can’t take this from us.
VIII
EARTH
39
AURELIA
The stretched night is a familiar depth of hazy shapes and warm moments as we lie together, neither fully awake nor fully dreaming. I curl up into it, into the lovely fragments, a safer place, away from the world. I reach only for Athan. His steady desire in the darkness. He held me, trying to be as gentle as he was with the thorn. It still hurt, but in the heat of the dying fire now, there’s only softness, his hot body next to mine nearly giving me a fever as he leans down and kisses my lips, then my cheek, then my neck and I decide never to leave this deliriously wonderful moment.
“This is for us,” he says, his forehead against mine, the same thing he whispered during the coup.
“It is,” I reply, knowing I’ll never doubt that.
I’ll keep this forever.
I don’t know if I sleep, flushed as I am beneath the blanket, beside him, distantly aware of the sound of his breathing, his thumb tracing the edge of my temple, the shell of my ear. I kiss the rise and fall of his chest. I want to venture further but feel at a loss. I don’t know if I should say words, try more, and I’m too tired to explain, overwhelmed by the reality of his nakedness so near to mine. He fills in the silence for me, with his mouth on my skin, his adoration, and I surrender to the melting sensation of his hand moving down my arm, beneath the blanket and across my bare hip, searching, exploring, testing my body like a throttle …
I don’t know if he’s still touching me or if it’s in my wishful dreams.
I wake slowly. At first, it’s the cold on my exposed flesh. I peer down at myself in confusion, at my bare limbs, all less romantic in the blue light of dawn, no longer caught by the fire’s glow. But then my bleary thoughts remember Athan, and he’s not beside me anymore.
I sit up with a start.
It wasn’t the cold air that woke me. It was the warm ember of his body jolting out of bed. He’s already half-dressed, throwing on clothes at record speed, and I stare in wonder at his sporadic activity, the shirt pulled over his chest and leaving me disappointed. I wanted to feel him again. I wanted to rest my head there one more time.
I also wanted to at least talk.
“You’re mad,” I say with a drowsy smile, pulling the blanket round me, a little less bold now. “Sleep for a bit longer.”
He makes a noise of disagreement, buttoning his pants.
“Stars, why are you even up this early?”
He stops what he’s doing and stares at me. “Early?”
I glance at the clock. It’s seven fifteen in the morning, which I think is an unseemly hour for mostly anything besides bed.
A thin laugh escapes his throat, then he flings open the closed drapes. The velvet curtains make way for brilliant sun, the early morning bright outside. “Why would you sleep with these closed?” he asks me frantically.
“Why would you sleep with them open?”
“Because I always wake with the—” He stops, gaze dodging to his watch, and shakes his head. “Never mind. I have to go,” he says, nearly running for the door.
“Go?” I repeat, horrified.
Now this is feeling very wrong, far too abrupt, and he turns, his face apologetic. “I’ll be back. I just—” He stops again, expression
choked as he looks at me. There’s something he wants to say, but won’t.
I wait.
He disappears down the hall, leaving me staring at the place he just left, but mercifully he returns swiftly. He’s wearing his clean uniform now, the one he’s abandoned the past few days in favour of the Havis clothes, and it’s almost astonishing to see it again. I replaced the pilot with a boy—a boy of skin and bone, a heart stammering beneath a firm chest. But he’s not just a boy. He’s this other person, hidden behind foxes and crossed swords, and the painful yearning in his eyes chases away my lingering annoyance.
He crosses the distance to the bed and leans down over me. I look up at him, entirely naked, entirely willing, and he kisses me—a perfect kiss that undoes the pain, the regret, my bare skin feeling the rough wool of his uniform. “I’ll see you soon,” he whispers, into my ear like a secret promise, and I hate it and I love it at once.
“Soon” might be tomorrow.
“Soon” might be a lifetime away.
He pushes the hair from my face, tender, and then he’s gone, racing off to meet some order I don’t know.
There’s a happy drunken butterfly in my belly. I need so much more, at once, but there’s nothing else to come, and I flop back onto my pillow in a weary knot of emotion, staring at the ceiling, counting his retreating footsteps—rapid, fading. A kiss lingers in the curve of my neck. Memories I want to keep as vibrant and alive as they are this very moment: the way he felt on top of me, the pleasant weight, his fire-lit hair falling across his forehead, sweet and tangled …
“I don’t regret this,” I tell the ceiling. “I don’t.”
Yet part of me still feels dangling in the wind. He isn’t someone I can have, not even in the best of worlds. He’s a farm boy, bound to be far away—and getting ever farther, ordered from me in a heartbeat—and I’ll be left behind for some spoiled prince who will judge what I’ve done here, even if he sees only the reflection of it written in my eyes. Though perhaps if I married Havis he wouldn’t care? Perhaps he’d even let me carry on the affair? Look at these few days he’s already given me.
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