by Vela Roth
Cassia knew a cocoon of Hesperine magic wrapped her room. When Perita left her and shut the door, Cassia felt enclosed in another world. She could not hear her friend’s footsteps retreating down the stairs. Callen’s vigilance at the bottom of the tower was of no concern. The gathering in the main hall seemed far away.
No more wondering or waiting. She needn’t even endure the excruciating crowd any longer. Lio would come to her right now.
He wanted her. Lio still wanted her.
Cassia put her crimson gown away in her trunk and pulled on her gardening dress.
After the way Lio had kept looking at her earlier, Cassia did hope he would have occasion to take her crimson gown off of her one night soon. That was a fine fantasy. One she might save for later, though. Tonight, it must be her gardening dress.
She could not be more obvious than to don the gown she had worn the night she and Lio had first become lovers. But no forwardness on her part had ever sent him running the other way. Far from it. He had refused to touch her until she had been certain of her desires.
It pleased him for her to be open with him about what she wanted…to show him…to speak of it aloud. She need never be coy with him. He did not expect her to behave like a reticent maiden. He wanted her just as she was.
Tonight was further proof. He had answered her attempts at flirtation by agreeing to a tryst. Whether or not she could credit her novice efforts as a seductress, her plan was succeeding already.
She smoothed the front laces of her gown, suddenly nervous. She wanted to lie down on the bed and present an irresistible image for Lio whenever he arrived. But now that the moment was near at hand, a sense of awkwardness overtook her. It had been six months, and she had only ever made love for four nights in her life. What if she seemed out of practice to him?
She had no idea how much practice he had acquired since.
She pushed the thought away with all her might. It shouldn’t matter. Tonight was theirs, and she would not taint it with such thoughts.
Knight sprawled on his rug in the sitting room and looked up at her with the canine grin he had worn all evening.
“Thank you, darling. I’m glad you think I look well.” She knelt and rubbed his ears.
His mouth was going to drip on that fine carpet. Let Hesperine magic clean it, for she wouldn’t scold him. She buried her fingers in his ruff, which was always at hand when she felt troubled. Then she returned to the other room and dawdled by the bed.
How much time did she have before Lio managed to excuse himself from the gathering? Perhaps she should position herself by a window. Let him see her standing in a beam of moonlight, as he had that very first night.
“Knight seems to like me better than he did before. He doesn’t appear to mind leaving you alone with me.”
Cassia spun toward the sound of Lio’s voice. It was he who stood by the window in an aura of moonlight.
He looked just like the apparition of him she had seen on the night of the Spring Equinox, clad in his embroidered veil hours robe of deep blue silk, his hair loose, except for that new braid.
The light did not shine through him now. This was no illusion. He was here. She would touch him at last.
“Knight knows what makes his mistress unhappy, and what lifts her melancholy.”
Lio didn’t move. “Have you been unhappy, Cassia?”
“Yes.” The word simply came out. In a whisper, but it came. “I have been many things. But yes, unhappy too.”
Not what she had meant to say. There were so many better things to speak of than the time they’d been apart. They needn’t speak at all.
She regretted it already. She had confessed. Now that she had breathed a word of unhappiness, it had risen up inside her. She must never let it to do that. It was too hard to push back down.
“And what lifts your melancholy?” Lio asked.
Why must they speak of her feelings? Why had she not expected this? It was not only desires Lio always coaxed out of her. “Something I thought out of reach.”
The air in the room moved, and he was suddenly standing before her. He took her hands. So careful. As if she might disappear.
What he pressed into her hands was not a kiss or a caress, but a cloth wrapped around something. As he unfolded it, a familiar aroma wafted out of it, albeit one she had never smelled from food before.
“What is this?” she asked.
In the light from the windows, she could just see his tight-lipped smile. “A cassia pastry.”
A laugh rose out of her in defiance of all it had cost her to stand here in Orthros with Lio over a pastry. “I didn’t know I’m named after a pastry, too.”
“I fear I monopolized you in the main hall, and you never had a chance to avail yourself of the sideboard. You haven’t eaten a bite since you arrived.”
Cassia sighed. “We are forbidden to eat any food a Hesperine offers us while we are here.”
He raised his eyebrows. “That will be impractical, if not impossible, although I cannot say I am surprised at the notion.”
“Well.” Her boldness had not entirely deserted her. “I have no intention of refraining. I look forward with great anticipation to all I shall eat while they aren’t watching.”
He folded her fingers one by one around the cloth-wrapped roll. He was touching her. Wonderful little unnecessary, luxurious touches. “Start with this,” he instructed.
She left her hands in his a moment longer. “You won’t let me eat alone, will you?”
“Certainly not. I’m famished. But ladies first.”
Famished. That was as good as a promise. She slid her hands slowly out of his and with great care tucked the napkin closer around the pastry. “Ladies first is a very Tenebran notion. Let us do things the Orthros way.”
“The Orthros way insists I be considerate of your needs. You should eat. You need your strength.”
She turned and walked to the little table beside the bed, showing him the back of her neck as she set the pastry down. “Do I?”
When he spoke, she could hear he had not moved any nearer. “I’m worried about you. Have you been eating enough?”
Did he imagine she could give a thought to anything but him at this moment? How impossible. How very like him to be concerned.
She glanced over her shoulder at him. “Speaking of eating enough—”
“Go ahead,” he urged her. “Have a taste.”
She would have more than a taste, if only he would come closer. He must know it was not food she hungered for tonight. “Lio…” She turned around slowly.
His gaze was fixed on the table behind her. “I’ve been waiting to find out how well you like your namesake.”
The nonchalant words stilled her. She hid her hands in her skirts, afraid the cracks in her armor would show. As if he could not sense them.
He could sense what it was she wanted. He could probably smell it on her already. And yet all he would talk of was a pastry. He was still standing on the other side of the room.
Was he stalling?
He lounged back against the wall. “I hope you actually like the flavor, after all I’ve said to you about it. But it’s all right if you don’t, you know.”
Had he changed his mind? Why would he even come to her, make her hope like this, if he had changed his mind?
Cassia swallowed. “Lio, are you all right? Is there anything…troubling you? I noticed as soon as we arrived, you look…”
“What, you don’t like it?” He showed her no teeth as he grinned and rubbed his hand over his chin once, then twice.
“That’s not what I meant.” It was so unlike Lio to make any superfluous motions. He was not prone to nervous gestures. “Actually, I like it very much.”
“If you change your mind, I’ll shave it off for you.”
“Shave it?” she said lightly. “After you spent all this time working to grow it out?”
“Your pastry is getting cold,” he reminded her.
He was evadi
ng her. Why would he ever need to evade her? Had he forgotten that was not necessary between them?
Whatever changed, even if they could not get back what they had, she had believed this one thing would still hold true: their pact to simply speak. Without pretense. Without consequences.
He had just made it clear that was no longer the case.
A sense of loss threatened, one unlike any she had known. She had acknowledged she might lose him as a lover. But she could not fathom going back to the way she had lived before she had known him, before there had been one other person in her world she knew she could trust forever.
Cassia turned back to the pastry. She filled the silence with the useless motion of unfolding and refolding the cloth. Another second, and the silence would become a confrontation. Honey soaked through the cloth, warm on her fingers, but it would not be warm for long.
She could not stand this. Lio, her confidant, her ally—her friend. He was too precious to lose, even if he never touched her again. She had fought far too hard. She would not give up now. They had fought too hard together.
Their Oath endured. She had never broken it. He just needed to be reminded. One of them had to renew the pact.
Cassia swallowed. One of them would have to confront. One out of two must take the risk and brave embarrassment or disappointment.
She knew who it would be. Risk? Risk was her medium, and confrontation was her art. She had not come all this way to avoid risk.
Cassia faced him again and met his gaze. “Lio, you have broken our promise.”
Hesperines were so composed at any given moment, she had not known they could go still. But Lio did. The hand he had been about to run over his beard again sank to his side and halted in place like the limb of a statue.
“I thought—” He came back to life and scoured his hair with both his hands. Another moment of painful silence. Then he ran his hands through his hair again. “I took our conversation earlier to mean my interruption was not unwelcome. I see I misunderstood.”
“Interruption?” she echoed. What could he mean by that?
“Yes, that’s too mild a word, isn’t it? Perhaps interference would be more appropriate.” Lio cleared his throat, but his voice emerged roughly. “Please don’t imagine it was something I did lightly. Give me that much credit. I know better than anyone what lives are at stake. But I feared your life was at stake, and the proof came almost too late for me to protect you. What would you have had me do?”
At this moment, she wanted nothing so much as the Hesperines’ Blood Union. He must have felt everything that had overtaken her in these past few moments—the nervousness, the disappointment, the loss. She was at a disadvantage with nothing but human observation to give her insight into his words, which became more and more of a mystery to her every moment.
No, she had something else. Their Oath.
“Lio, please say what you really mean. Just talk to me.”
“I couldn’t be more honest than I am,” he protested. “You think it wasn’t a difficult decision?”
She shook her head. “It’s as if we’re having two different conversations. This isn’t how it should be between us.” She took a step forward. Let her be the first to start closing the distance. “I’ll keep our promise if you will. I know you haven’t forgotten. It’s just been a long, difficult time since we last spoke, and we’ve both had to make sacrifices, I know. To get through the day—or the night—there are times when you have to push the words back down inside yourself so hard you think you’ll choke. You can’t even admit to yourself what you’re feeling, because if you do, it will make it true, and then you will be able to do nothing but feel.”
What a terrible, inconvenient time for her own feelings to undermine her. She swallowed the lump in her throat. “I know, Lio. I of all people know. But you don’t ever have to do that with me. If we can’t be as we were—if you don’t want me the way you did—I have no claim on you, I know that. But I trust you. I had forgotten how until you, Lio. I’ll work hard to keep that, if only we can still trust each other. Our Oath still stands. You can say everything to me. No fear. No censure. No danger. So please.” The first tear slid down her face, as if obeying what she urged Lio to do. “Speak.”
Still he didn’t come near her. But he stopped looking away and looked at her. That expression on his face…as if she were both forgiveness and condemnation.
“That’s the promise you meant?” he asked.
“Of course. It’s too important to break. Please. Keep it with me.”
“That promise is constant, Cassia. It calls for no effort, like the motion of the blood in our veins.”
Her tears overflowed, and she lifted her hands, thinking to hide her face. But she didn’t have to do that. She stood there with her hands in front of her as the first sob overtook her.
By the time the second struck, he was there, his arms around her, his hand on her head, pressing her face against his chest. She closed her fingers around the front of his robe. Not enough. She wrapped her arms around him.
The full length of her was pressed against him, molded from cheek to thigh to the softness of his robes and the strength of his body beneath. That was Lio’s hand on her head, his breath upon her hair, his arm around her waist. His scent enveloped her, rich with aromas she never could name. With it came the feeling she also had no name for, as if the very space around her filled with something more restful than sleep, more powerful than magic, which made her feel at ease and strong at the same time.
She was holding him again.
At last. After all this. She had kept her promise to him, the one he had not even heard her make, the one that had given her a reason to rise from bed every morning after she lay awake all night weeping like this because he was out of reach.
“What promise—” Another sob shuddered through her. “—did you think I meant?”
“I told you I would let you fight. I tried so hard and so long to stand back and not do anything that would get in your way.”
“You-ou have. You did.”
“Until now. I waited as long as I could to tell my people about you, for fear they would interfere with your plans. I still feared you would be angry that I had them bring you to Orthros.”
“You. It was you.”
His arms tightened around her. He was holding her so close. Let it never stop.
“Of course it was me. But I was almost too late.”
“I’m not angry. I’m so—so glad. Lio. I’m so glad to be near you again. I’m so glad to be near you,” she repeated, because she had tried so hard not to say it all night.
She sucked in little breaths between sobs. How could she make it all this way only to fall apart? It was all right. Lio had already seen her at her weakest.
His hands tightened on her, then relaxed, then tightened again, roaming over her hair and back. He seemed compelled to touch her. Holding him this close, she could not help but feel the evidence of his desire rigid against her belly. He still felt lust in her arms.
He framed her face in his hands and turned it up toward him. “We can’t be as we were.”
She felt as if her heartbeat halted in her chest.
He gazed into her eyes, his own intense with promise. “It wasn’t enough. I want so much more for us.”
Her heart leapt. She pulled his face closer to her.
“I need you.” His first kiss was on her forehead, the second on her eyelid. “I need you more than I ever have.” Her other eyelid. Her tear-streaked cheekbone. “Do you need me?”
“I don’t sleep for needing you. I lay awake at night crying like this because you’re not there. I never cry. But I cry for you.”
His hand descended to caress her neck. She shivered, and she knew he could feel how her pulse raced faster at his touch, inviting him. But when he trailed a finger over her skin, it was not her vein he traced. He hooked his finger in the garden twine around her neck and drew her pendant out of her gown. It came to rest on her chest, th
robbing between them.
“A piece of marble from our shrine.” His tone was reverent.
“It’s a shard that came off the glyph stone.”
“I can feel the magic more powerfully than ever before. You kept offering your blood there.”
“I have done all I could to keep our Sanctuary.”
“So have I, in my heart. But now I can keep you in my arms.”
With his forehead resting on hers and her face in his hands, he breathed, his lips parted as if he thirsted, waiting for liquid to drip into his mouth. She nuzzled his face, trading breath for breath. Did he think to drink her tears, when she could give him something better?
He took her lower lip between his, swift, tentative. Next her upper lip. Hungry, hesitant touches. She knew. They were both so hungry, but the feast was too sacred to devour. When he finally covered her lips with his, it was only for a moment. A perfect moment, when she felt his mouth, warm and damp, upon hers at last, and a current of heat opened up from her lips to the rest of her body.
“Cassia. I’m so hungry.” His voice shook. That was how much he wanted her.
“So am I.”
She took a step back, bringing him with her. The bed was somewhere in that direction. On the way, she pulled his face to hers again and kissed him the way she had yearned to all night.
And then the bed was under her back. His hands trapped her wrists as his mouth came down on hers. She opened her lips to make way for his tongue, and it plunged into her mouth, the way his teeth and rhabdos would plunge inside her. His fangs pressed against her lips. So swollen. He wanted her so.
His mouth scoured hers, then her jaw and throat. His stubble rasped over her skin, rough and new and exciting. She could feel the hard lengths of his teeth as he devoured her with his lips and tongue. The glyph shard throbbed as if invoked by his fangs.
He released one of her wrists, and his hand went to the front of her gown. Together they clawed at the laces, tugging them loose. Cool air and the heat of his kiss caressed her chest. His hand plunged under her breast, pushing it up until he could get her nipple into his mouth.
She jerked under him, closing her hand on the edge of her neckline where she held it out of his way. As he opened his whole mouth on her breast and sucked, she let her head fall back, just breathing, feeling, trying not to whimper.