by Unknown
We’ve had fun exploring the castle together the past two days since his wounds became less painful, but I know he hates how miserable I’ve made Aurora. I’ve been avoiding her when I can and making a swift departure from her pleading eyes and offers of marriage when I can’t. Nothing she, or any of the emissaries she’s sent to win me over, says is going to change the way I feel. There’s no point in dragging out the fight.
“When did you decide to leave?” Jor asks.
“I figured it was best,” I say. “Spare everyone the spectacle and the aftermath.”
“We never asked to be spared, but I know by now nothing can change your mind once you’ve made it up. I guess all that’s left is goodbye.” Jor plucks my comb from the bed and tosses it into my pack. “I don’t like goodbyes.”
“Then we’ll shake and be done with it,” I say, holding out my hand with a wink.
Jor scowls at my palm. “She’s always been my best friend.” He doesn’t bother clarifying which “she” he’s talking about. We both know there’s only one “she” as far as the two of us are concerned. “I know her better than anyone in the world. I was telling the truth when I—”
“I know.” I shove my spare shirt into my pack, though I doubt I’ll need it. “I’m glad you’re sure she loves me, but I’m not, and I’m the one who matters.”
“What does she have to do to convince you?” Jor asks. “She’s already sent a company to retrieve your sister from Eno City, and promised to take care of Haanah for the rest of her life. She did that out of love for you.”
“She did that because she is a decent person and knows my father is a monster,” I say, clenching my jaw, refusing to think about never seeing Hannah again. I won’t be here when she arrives. I’ll never hug her again, never get to tell her how sorry I am for failing and leaving her alone without a single decent family member left in the world.
“I disagree,” Jor says, “but even if you’re right, what about the way she’s begged and pleaded and written half a dozen letters to try to change your mind? You don’t know how strange all that is. Aurora doesn’t beg. Or write love letters. Or cry. Before now I could count the times I’ve seen her cry on my thumbs.”
“She feels guilty.” I shrug. “She’ll get over it.”
“No, she won’t,” he says with quiet assurance, not accusing me of anything, but not letting me off the hook, either.
“Maybe she won’t,” I grumble, closing up my pack. “But that’s her problem. I told her it’s stupid to let guilt eat her up over things like this. Sometimes you break people and sometimes you get broken. It’s the way life is.”
Jor sighs. “You’re as stubborn as she is.”
“Impossible.” I grin as I swing my pack over my arm.
“It’s not funny.” Jor crosses his arms over his thin chest. He’s a gangly kid—all arms and legs and knobby elbows—but I’ve never been tempted to tease him about it. Jor is a sensitive soul, so intensely earnest it would be no fun to tease him. He wouldn’t get all red in the face and fight back the way Aurora does.
The way she did …
“No, but there are worse ways to go,” I say, refusing to think about Aurora, to miss her smile and her laugh and the easy way it was between us. “Come on, now.” I extend my hand a second time. “Shake and wish me luck.”
Jor grudgingly takes my hand. “Good luck.”
“And good luck to you,” I say, giving his fingers a squeeze. “You and your sister are going to do great things for this country. I truly believe it.”
“Will you at least tell her goodbye?” he asks. “I think she deserves that.”
“Why don’t you tell her goodbye for me?” I’m already moving toward the door, the thought of being forced to face down Aurora making me want to run for the stables.
I can’t see her again, I can’t or I might weaken and say yes. I might agree to marry her and spend the rest of my life jealous and angry, doubting that I’m the one she wanted, fearing she took me as her king for all the wrong reasons. It would sour me from the inside out, kill all my dreams of a happy family before they could be born. I’d rather become an animal than settle for the farce of a human life.
I don’t want to pretend to be happy anymore. I wanted the real thing. I wanted someone I could love, someone who would love me back with no lies or curses or compromises getting in the way. I can’t have that with Aurora. There are too many things standing between us. It’s best if I leave and neither of us looks back.
“Tell her I hope she’s happy with Thyne.”
“She and Thyne are friends, Niklaas,” Jor says. “They never—”
“Fine, fine. Thyne or … whoever. It doesn’t matter. Just … tell her to be happy.” I drop my gaze to the carpet, not wanting Jor to see how much it hurts to think of Aurora with someone else. “I want her to be happy enough for the both of us.”
“Niklaas, I—Niklaas, wait!” Jor calls my name a third time, but by then I am out the door and down the hall, breaking into a run toward the stables, where Alama will be waiting to leave on our last ride.
Aurora
I sprint for the stables, arriving as the master of horses is leading Button into the yard to be saddled. I silently thank Jor for sending word to get the horse ready before he came to fetch me and run faster, pushing my tired body to nearly fairy-blessed speed.
“Thank you,” I pant, snatching the bridle from the horse master’s hands.
Ignoring his startled protests, I swing onto Button bareback and urge my horse out of the yard with a dig of my heels, grateful I’m still wearing my sparring pants.
Not that it would matter, I would ride Button bareback in a dress or naked if I had to. There isn’t a second to waste. Jor said Niklaas left out the city’s main gate headed north ten minutes ago. I have to reach him before he turns off onto another road or checks into an inn. I can’t lose him. I won’t.
“Hee-yup, go, go!” I shout, leaning low over Button’s back as he surges through the gates, his canter becoming a gallop as we leave the city.
My every muscle tenses, straining for a sign of Niklaas on the road ahead. But there is nothing, no one, only fields of freshly cut wheat and the tree-lined dirt road warming to a ribbon of rich brownish red in the light of the setting sun.
The sun is setting. If I don’t find Niklaas before it rises …
I grit my teeth and clench the reins, so angry and frantic that there is no room inside me for the despair I know I’ll feel if I fail to reach him in time.
I won’t fail, and I won’t take no for an answer, not this time. I’ll make him marry me at knifepoint if I have to.
I squint into the wind, refusing to let it bring tears to my eyes. For the first time in days, I don’t feel like crying, I feel like wrestling an insufferable fool to the ground and beating the stupidity out of him.
How dare he? How dare he leave me? How dare he throw his life away?
Deep down, I didn’t believe he’d do it. I thought he was only making me suffer until the last moment before he relented. I expected him to tell me to fetch the priest at dinner tonight and to be unhappily married to a boy who hated me by morning.
But instead, he’s done this. He’s run away. Run away and left me and, by the gods, right now I hate him as much as I love him.
I hate him. I love him. I hate him. There’s so much feeling raging inside of me I honestly don’t know if I want to kiss him or throw a punch at his stubborn jaw. But when I reach the crest of a hill and see him a field ahead, his shoulders straining the seams of his Kanvasola shirt, his hair shining in the radiant light of his last human day, my anger is banished in a rush of relief so powerful it feels my chest will burst.
“Niklaas!” My shout is rough and raw but loud enough to carry across the space between us. I know he’s heard me, but instead of turning back he digs his heels into Alama’s side, s
ending her racing down the road away from me.
Away! He’s running away! Again! Without even looking back!
With a howl of rage, I kick Button harder than I mean to and he launches down the road like a blade from a knife-thrower’s fingers, so fast the air whistles in my ears and my heart lurches and for a terrifying second I think I’ll fall, but then I tilt my torso forward and find my seat, leaning into the wind, hovering over Button’s back as he closes in on Alama.
Closer, closer, until we’re so close I could reach out and touch Alama’s tail as it flies out behind her. She is fast, but Button is faster and carrying less weight.
Soon he’ll be carrying no weight at all.
I’m so livid I don’t stop to worry if I still have the agility to pull off a stunt like the one I’m planning, I simply grip Button’s mane in both hands to steady myself and pull my feet beneath me, crouching on the horse’s back for a bare moment to take aim before launching myself at Niklaas’s shoulders.
Time slows and I hang in the air for a second that seems to last an eternity. I realize I’m going to make it, but just barely, and then I’m landing on Alama’s back with a giddy cry, snatching handfuls of Niklaas’s shirt and clinging tight to keep from sliding off, while the startled horse screams and dances to the side of the road.
Unfortunately Niklaas isn’t holding on quite as tight. When Alama rears onto her back legs with an enraged whinny, he’s thrown from his saddle, carrying me to the ground along with him.
We land in a tangle on the grass, my legs pinned beneath his and enough of his weight on my chest that when my breath rushes out with a groan, it doesn’t want to rush back in again.
“By the Land Beyond, what’s wrong with you?” Niklaas growls as he rolls off of me. “Are you mad?”
I want to demand the same of him, to demand that he tell me what kind of cowardly bastard runs away without even saying goodbye, but I can’t pull in a breath. All I can manage is an evil glare as I curl onto my side, clutching my fist to my chest, willing my wretched lungs to breathe.
“You’ve probably broken something,” he shouts, his voice as rough as his hands are gentle as he curls his fingers under my shoulders and pulls me into a seated position. I lean over my legs, while he rubs my back, helping coax the breath back into my body. “Can you breathe?” he asks. “Can you talk? Are you—”
“Yes,” I finally manage to wheeze.
“Well, where does it hurt, you fool?”
“In here.” I jab my thumb at my chest as I turn to face him, ignoring the twinge in my shoulder that sends nasty shivers shooting down to my hip. I’m hurt, but not badly, not nearly as badly as I’ll be come morning if I don’t force Niklaas to see reason.
“Your ribs?” he asks.
“My heart, you insufferable idiot,” I shout. “I love you and you’re determined to do away with yourself, and I hate you for it!” I shove his shoulders with both hands and all my strength, sending him falling back onto his ass with a startled grunt.
“You hate me?” he asks, anger creeping into his tone. “Well, I hate you, too! All you’ve ever done is lie to me and deceive me and—”
“Risk my life for you and worry about you and tell you how beautiful and wonderful and funny you are,” I say, tears creeping into my eyes though I’m hot all over and not feeling inclined to cry, especially not now, when it looks as if Niklaas might actually be paying attention. “And laugh with you and fight with you and listen to you, and love you, even when I was sure you’d never love me because I’m not pretty enough or girly enough and my chest is too small.”
Niklaas scowls. “You’re flaming beautiful, and you know it.”
“I do not!”
“Well, you should, you thickheaded thing, but it doesn’t matter,” he says, scowl deepening. “It doesn’t matter that I can’t stop thinking about the way you looked in that dress on Evensew, or the way we— None of it matters. I can’t trust you.”
“Oh come down from your holy mount!” I shout. “You lied to me, too. You lied about your curse and you—”
“No, I didn’t! I didn’t tell the truth, but I didn’t—”
“And you lied about other things, too.” This time, when I shove at his shoulders, I follow him as he falls onto his back in the grass until I’m lying on top of him with my lips inches from his and my fingers tangled in his hair, until I can feel his breath rush out and his arms come around me in spite of himself. “You don’t find the thought of kissing me repulsive.”
“Aurora …”
“And when you kissed me in the grove,” I rush on, breathless all over again. “I never … I never dreamed a kiss could be like that.”
“Like what?” he asks, one hand dropping to grip my hip, sending a jolt of electricity surging through my body.
“Like opening a door to the most beautiful place I’ve ever known.” My lips drop closer to his, heart racing from being pressed against him, from feeling his warmth through my clothes and his strength coiled beneath me. “Like coming home and a wild adventure, all at the same time. Safe and dangerous, and I … I finally felt …”
My breath rushes out on a jagged sigh.
“I didn’t feel alone,” I say, voice breaking as I confess the one thing I’ve held back, the one thing I was afraid to share in the letters I’ve written him the past four days.
The only thing scarier than feeling so alone is fearing you’ll always feel that way, that no one will ever see you for all the things you are, and the things you’re afraid to be, and the person you want so desperately to become. But Niklaas did, he saw me, he knew me better than anyone, even Jor. I know he did, if only he can remember.
“Even with people I love, I’ve always felt like a piece that didn’t fit. I was fairy-blessed but not a fairy, human but with gifts that made everyone expect so much more of me. I’ve always felt alone,” I whisper, forcing myself to keep going no matter how anxious this confession makes me. “Ever since my mother died. I’m always lonely … except … except when I’m with you.”
“What about Thyne?” he asks after a moment, the flash of pain in his eyes making me realize how much I’ve underestimated his capacity for jealousy.
By the gods, if I’d known, I could have sent Thyne to convince Niklaas that there is absolutely nothing romantic between two of us.
“Thyne is like another brother to me. I love you, Niklaas, no one else, not in that way.” I trail my fingertips across his cheek, willing him to see how much I care. “I love you. If you don’t love me back anymore, tell me and I’ll let you go, but don’t run off to die because you doubt me.”
And then I kiss him, and after only a moment he kisses me back and I learn there is something better than a first kiss with Niklaas. There is a second kiss. There is his hands in my hair and his tongue slipping past my lips and his muscles flexing beneath me as he rolls us over in the grass until he hovers over me and my legs wrap around his hips and my fingers dig into his back and our kiss becomes so deep it feels like we’re the same being, the same aching body, the same full heart, the same pulse that races beneath the skin.
We kiss until the sun sets and the air grows cool, but I scarcely notice the creeping in of the autumn twilight. I have never been so warm, so dizzy, so drunk on another person. All my lines are blurry and the world has narrowed to his lips and his taste and his hint-of-a-beard rough against my skin and the delicious smell of him and the even more delicious way his hands roam over my body, touching me everywhere I’ve been dying for him to touch, making me more breathless with every moment, until I pull his shirt from his pants and run my hands up his bare back and down his chest, summoning a rumble from his throat.
“Stop.” He pulls my hands away, pinning them to the grass above my head.
“Why?” I lift my head, bringing my lips to his, drawing him back into another kiss with a sigh of satisfaction.
“I don’t care,” I breathe, shifting beneath him until he groans. “I don’t want to stop.” I slip my tongue out to flick his upper lip. “Don’t stop, Niklaas. Don’t—”
“And this is why you drive me mad!” he shouts, retreating so fast that I curl into a seated position like a roll-y bug discovered beneath a rock. “You never think!”
“I do t-too,” I stammer. “I just—”
“You could have killed us both!” he shouts, jumping up to pace back and forth in the grass. The sun set a good fifteen minutes ago, but there is still plenty of light left to see how irate he’s become. “You’re not fairy-blessed anymore, and even if you were, Alama and I are not. You can’t go jumping from horses without a second thought. You’re the queen, by the Pit, and people are counting on you!”
“I know people are counting on me, but—”
“But nothing!” he shouts, making me flinch. “You have to be more levelheaded.”
“I’m trying, but you don’t make it easy!”
“You think it was easy pulling away from you?” he asks, stooping to shoot me a look that makes me shiver with wishing he were back in my arms, doing all the things we both so clearly enjoy. “But I did it, because you don’t deflower a damn queen in a field by the side of the road.”
“Deflower?” I ask, my lips stretching into a smile. “What am I, a petunia?”
“Don’t smile,” he says, his own lips twitching. “This isn’t funny.”
“Oh yes it is.” I laugh as I stand, tucking my shirt back into my pants as I turn to search for Button. “I was the one who started this. If anyone was deflowering anyone, it was me deflowering you.”
“I was deflowered long ago, Your Highness,” Niklaas says.
“Yes, I know, I haven’t forgotten what a successful whore you were.” I spy Button and Alama grazing by the side of the road a half a field away and turn back to Niklaas. “Maybe I should run to the nearest village and find a boy or two to experiment with. I mean, if the deflowering business is such a burden, I—”