Two Worlds of Provenance

by Angelina J. Steffort

  “Thanks,” Maray whispered. She waited for her eyes to adjust to the half-light and rolled to the side, facing the door, expecting that Jemin had returned to the armchair.

  “You’re welcome,” his velvet voice spoke gently right behind her.

  As she rolled over in surprise, she could make out Jemin’s silhouette beside the bed; graceful and quiet.

  “Anything else I can do for you?” His voice was hesitant, insecure almost, not at all the soldier she knew, but like the Jemin she was sure was underneath the stone-hard facade. It was as if the absence of light had taken down his defenses. She saw it in the slight hunch of his shoulders, the way his hand was nervously clenching and unclenching beside his thigh as if he was debating something in his mind.

  Maray was studying him in silence, wondering if she would scare fragile Jemin of the half-light away if she as much as breathed too loudly, when he slowly got down on his knees beside the bed.

  Her breath caught, and when his head was level with hers, her heart fluttered.

  She knew she wouldn’t be able to sleep while she was in the room with him.

  “Actually—” she began but lost her train of thought as she found his eyes in the half-light.

  Long shadows lay on his cheekbones, moving each time he blinked. She studied the hard angles of his face, the pale outline of illuminated strands of hair framing it. His lips were a soft curve, parting as he inhaled audibly as if preparing to speak—

  But, he didn’t say a word. Instead, he carefully rested his forearms on the edge of the bed, right beside her own arm, sending an electric current through her body, and pulled himself up a little.

  For a couple of heartbeats, Maray felt like the temperature in the room had doubled. She wondered what he was seeing as he gazed down at her. The muscles in his forearms twitched as he lifted one hand just enough to make his fingers brush her elbow.

  Maray wanted to say something, make a comment, anything to help her focus, but couldn’t gather a clear thought. Her breathing had quickened, and she was certain he must have noticed.

  “You are a dream… and a nightmare,” murmured Jemin and lowered his face toward her, not giving her time to ponder his statement, but touching his lips to her hand.

  His breath on her fingers was hot. It tickled her hand as he turned it over with his and kissed her palm. Maray held very still as he looked up at her as if asking her a question. All she saw were his eyes, pale and bright, scrutinizing her face as he pulled himself even closer. Her heart was racing, hammering in her chest, blood pounding through her head, making her dizzy. And just as she thought it couldn’t get any more intense, Jemin’s lips brushed her cheek, down to her mouth, and gently sealed themselves over it.

  Maray’s senses threatened to burst. But she couldn’t even think of pushing him back. Her body responded to him as if finding something she hadn’t even known she was missing. As she kissed him back, hesitantly at first but growing more confident by the second, his hand reached behind her neck, pulling her closer.

  His touch was tender, almost disciplined, not the unleashed passion she had been dreaming of when she had imagined her first kiss. And no matter how pleasant his fingertips were on her neckline, it felt as if he was only half there… as if he was struggling internally, making up his mind.

  “Jemin,” she squeezed out his name between two kisses, intending to get the other fifty percent of his attention. But the second she spoke, he pulled back as if she had hit him with a whip, eyes staring down at her in dismay.

  “I apologize.” He let her head slide back onto the pillow and silently jumped to his feet.

  Maray didn’t understand what he was apologizing for. She also didn’t understand the look on his face.

  “There is nothing to apologize for,” she guaranteed, her heart sinking as he took a step back from the bed. “Honestly, Jemin,” she tried. “You’ve done nothing wrong.”

  But Jemin shook his head, eyes hidden behind long lashes and strands of dancing hair.

  Jemin

  Jemin’s lips sizzled where they had touched hers. He wanted to flip his hands over his face for being so careless. What had he been thinking? She looked like the queen’s perfect portrait. It was one thing to fall in love with a portrait and another thing to kiss someone who looked like it.

  Ashamed of himself, he turned around and strolled back to the armchair. How could he have let a moment get hold of him like that? One half of him reasoned that it had been the perfection of Maray’s pale skin in the moonish light, the contrast of her ebony hair, or the memory of the blush on her cheeks when she had returned from the bathroom—that those things had reminded him of the queen he’d adored for so long. The other half was screaming loudly, no matter how hard he was trying to ignore it. And no matter how little he wanted to know what it was saying, he had to hear it out so it would shut up.

  That vigorous half of him—the half he’d been suppressing successfully for the past six years—threw images at him: Maray’s lapis-lazuli eyes as she’d eyed him in the sunset-light in her apartment, her pink lips as she had stood beside him in the kitchen, her wet hair that had made her look the opposite of royal… And emotions came with the images. He didn’t like when emotions paved their way into his consciousness. Yes, they were distracting in the life of a soldier. They brought back memories of his father’s death—the last time he had allowed himself to truly feel something.

  Now, Maray’s existence had changed everything. He no longer knew if it was his loyalty to the crown of Allinan that made him want to protect her or if he actually wanted to protect her because of who she was—not the heir to the throne but the girl with all of her courage and steadfastness, how she navigated through the misery her provenance brought her. Something about her had touched a different, almost forgotten side of him he was anxious to explore and terrified to get to know.

  He didn’t dare to look at Maray for fear she was upset with him. Anyway, he had insulted her. Whether he’d kissed her because she looked like the dream of his early teenage years or, more likely, because she was the bravest, most beautiful person he’d ever known. She was the heir to Allinan’s throne. And he was a soldier, low in ranks. So, the why didn’t matter. All that mattered was that it could never happen again—even if she had said he hadn’t done anything wrong. He had. And all he could do for now was wrestle down the flickering flame of affection for her—more than affection if he was honest with himself.

  “Jemin?” her voice tore him from his thoughts, meddling with his ability to remain calm in any situation, something he had always taken pride in. He shrugged off the feeling of being pulled down under by his sudden emotions and lifted his head, preparing to face her.

  “Are you all right?” She had sat up in bed, a dark silhouette of gentle curves. His heart missed a beat, reminding him how difficult it was to fight the feelings that her mere presence was fostering inside of him.

  “Of course,” he heard himself answer and noticed how unconvincing his voice was.

  Maray had obviously noticed, too, as she was climbing out of bed and padding toward him, a slender shadow with thick black hair. Everything about him tensed as if he were preparing for a fight. But, who would he be fighting? The girl who was slowly stealing her way into his heart or himself for letting it be stolen?

  “You don’t look all right,” she noted correctly. “Is it something I did?” She confronted him.

  What else could he have expected of her? Brave and smart as she was. Of course she sensed that something was wrong.

  “Nothing you did,” he managed, composing his features as well as he could.

  She looked down at him, a vision of his childhood dreams and real, solid proof his heart was capable of more than just functioning.

  He leaned forward and buried his face in his hands, hoping to pass it as exhaustion rather than what it really was—the attempt to escape his own weakness; the weakness that had blinded him all those years, had let him believe the queen was good
and just and pure.

  He didn’t flinch when a weight was placed on his hair—Maray’s delicate fingers, made to hold a royal scepter, not a sword—or a dagger—like his own callused hands. Her touch didn’t have any regard for his status in court or his bloodline. It didn’t seem to care about his hatred for Rhia, and it didn’t reproach him for who he was… who he had been a minute ago. Instead, it gave him a strange sense of comfort, a feeling he hadn’t experienced in years.

  Aching for it to linger, he lifted his head just enough to see her face. A smile was playing on her lips; not the taunting grin Corey would have given him but an honest, sweet smile that pierced right into his heart. He couldn’t remember the last time anyone had looked at him this way.

  Inadvertently, his arm reached around her waist and pulled her close enough to rest his cheek against her stomach. For a while, together, they froze in time until he noticed how her heart was pounding—and his.

  “Then promise me nothing I do will make you flee from me like that again.” Her hand combed through the lose strands at the back of his head, making his breath catch as her fingernails brushed his neck.

  “Nothing,” he heard himself promise and let her push him gently back into the chair by the shoulders. Every muscle in him had tensed, excited and reluctant to let go of everything he had built for himself over the past years—all the walls, the barricades, the fences around his heart. This wasn’t the girl with the crown from the photograph who he could never have and therefore was safe to admire. This wasn’t a dream—or a nightmare. This was real; and Maray’s hands, now sliding onto his chest, emitted enough heat to let him believe it.

  As he gazed up at her, she climbed onto his lap, knees on each side of his hips, and took his face between her hands. His cheeks burned under her touch, figuratively at first, then all of a sudden, literally.

  Maray

  “Ouch,” Jemin haphazardly pushed her off of him as he jumped out of the chair. “What was that?”

  Maray scrambled to her feet, stunned by his sudden harshness, and found him rubbing his face as if her touch had burned him.

  “Your hands are on fire.” He let go of one side of his face for the benefit of seizing her wrist with it. “How did you do that?”

  Maray was still too perplexed to understand what was going on. “Do what?”

  Jemin kept turning her hand back and forth, examining her palm and fingers. “Didn’t you feel the—” He stopped mid-sentence as if he was just understanding she really didn’t know what was happening.

  “For some reason, your touch felt as if someone was putting a branding iron to my face.” His eyes spoke volumes—not the good kind.

  Maray pulled her hand up in his grasp, with his hand remaining around her wrist, and eyed it carefully in the half-light. “You know it would actually be easier to see if there was light,” she informed him.

  He lifted his other hand, and the light brightened, revealing her inconspicuous-looking hand… and his blood-red cheeks. For a moment, she stared at his face, not even noticing the bright-blue of his eyes as she usually would.

  “How did that happen?” She reached up with her fingers to examine his burnt skin, but Jemin cringed away.

  “I don’t mean to be rude,” he said with a frown, “but I’d rather you didn’t touch me.”

  Maray felt a small stab in her chest at the rejection, and Jemin’s face evened in a look of concern, paired with a minuscule twitch of the corners of his mouth.

  “For now,” he added. “Just for now.”

  The sensation in her chest changed into a cautious flutter.

  “It will be gone in a minute.” He let go of her wrist and reached up to his cheeks, gingerly testing the edges of his injury, and Maray waited, her lips threatening to curve into a completely inappropriate grin—inappropriate for the situation.

  “No idea how this happened, but if it really was me, I’m sorry.” She sat down in the armchair, in need of support at the realization that something could be wrong with her.

  “It wasn’t you,” Jemin consoled her. “It was your magic.”

  Maray pondered his words before she turned her hands over and took another look. The skin on her palms looked normal. There were no burn marks or red or blistered areas, just her hands, the way they had always looked.

  “Magic,” she absently repeated. “I wish that fake-Corey had actually given me some insights into how my magic works… at least that’s what she… he… whatever… claimed we would be doing in the woods: learning to control my magic.”

  She wanted to put her hands away the way she could put her dagger in her belt. If they were able to hurt people, then she shouldn’t be touching anyone.

  “You need a warlock to help you. You need training.” Jemin had sat down on the armrest, seeming unafraid of her, but as she looked up, she noticed the caution in his glance. The wounds on his cheeks had healed, and his wall had rendered back into place, making him a painfully beautiful, and cold, memory of the side he’d shown her a couple of minutes ago.

  Maray’s heart had slowed down, both the heat of the moment and the fire from her hands gone.

  “Cardrick?” she suggested, hoping to get a look of approval if she couldn’t get anything else.

  Jemin leaned back beside her, touching his cheek again. His neck rested against the curved part of the backrest, giving her a perfect view of his angled cheekbone behind a curtain of threads of caramel hair.

  “I’m not sure,” he answered her question. “He is the easiest to reach, but honestly—” He fell silent as if there was something heavy on his mind, something he wasn’t ready to share.

  “You don’t trust him.” she thought out loud.

  Jemin turned toward her, fixing her with his bright-blue eyes. Now that the light was back on, they had the color she could stare at for hours, making it feel like a trip to the ocean. “It’s not that,” he said calmly. “I think we should tell him, but there is someone else whose magic is stronger than his.”

  Maray eyed him in shock. “Feris?”

  He shook his head. “Corey.” He got back to his feet and strolled to the place one would normally put a window. “She is more powerful than anyone I’ve ever seen.”

  “More powerful than Feris?” Maray didn’t understand.

  “Not as well-trained as Feris,” Jemin said into the wall, staring at it with sudden interest. “We’ve been planning to get her out of there anyway,” he added, determined as if he was already back at the warlock quarters and ready to break down a door.

  There was something in the way he spoke her name that made her feel the tiniest sense of jealousy. She pushed herself to her feet and bit back whatever words those emotions made one say. Even if there were teeny-tiny spring tides of jealousy washing through her—something she had little to no experience with—she forced herself to stay cool. It didn’t matter—not for the moment. What mattered was that Corey might be able to help her, and she might be able to help Corey. Shoving her hands into her pockets so they wouldn’t accidentally hurt Jemin again, she approached him.

  He spun around, the moment she was one step away, and bore into her eyes with his gaze.

  “Safety precautions.” Maray nodded at her hands, safely tucked away, and got a half-smile from Jemin.

  “Very smart,” he noted and, to her surprise, reached up with his own hand to her cheek, brushing it with a finger. “You are, indeed, the most unique creature I’ve ever encountered, Maray.”

  She wasn’t certain if this was a compliment or a simple statement. Anyway, her heart leapt at his touch, and a smile stole itself onto her lips. She eased her head into his palm. “You have no idea.”

  That night Maray didn’t sleep. She couldn’t tell if Jemin did. Judging by his motionless figure, frozen into the armchair, he was sleeping, but she had seen him like that before, a still shadow, silent, almost invisible.

  As she checked her watch for what felt like the one-thousandth time, he stirred. The room was dark again,
and she couldn’t tell if his eyes were open or closed. It was past five in the morning, and she still felt like she was wired to a high voltage grid. If that was what Jemin’s kiss did to her, she might never need to sleep again as long as he was around. She smiled to herself.

  Despite the shock of her burning touch, she had navigated through that first kiss more gracefully than she’d ever imagined she could. She didn’t know what it meant, though. A kiss or two. Even if it had been her first kiss, she didn’t know which number she was on his list. He was insanely good looking, now that she was finally ready to admit to herself how much he affected her, and she doubted she was the only girl to notice.

  “Are you awake?” she whispered and waited for a reaction. Nothing. Jemin remained still in the armchair.

  Carefully, Maray slid out of bed and tiptoed over to him, trying to make out his face in the darkness. He didn’t move. When she was close enough to touch him, his features appeared behind the veil of night. The hard look of the soldier he was when he was alert and awake had dissolved. His face was relaxed, strain of composure wiped away by the blessing of sleep. He looked different, vulnerable. His chest slowly rose and fell with his breathing, convincing her he wasn’t just faking.

  After a moment of just standing there and observing, she sat down on the armrest, careful not to touch his shoulder, folded her hands in her lap so they wouldn’t burn him again, and rested her head against the chair.

  The cut on his shirt exposed part of his muscled chest and the top of the planes of his stomach. Long legs stretched onto the floor, crossed at the ankles. One hand was resting on the hilt of his sword, ready even in his sleep. He was beyond beautiful. There was something more about him that made her feel whole.

  She thought of what lay ahead of her. Knowing he would be with her, she might get through it.

  “You can come closer.” Maray almost fell off the chair as he spoke, eyes closed with no other sign he wasn’t sleeping.