She studied him carefully, then looked away. “Not much to tell. My father was a fisherman, and his boat was lost at sea when I was fifteen. My mother was a blacksmith.”
Marus guessed she took after the woman in sturdiness. “Is she dead too?” he asked as gently as he could.
She nodded without meeting his eyes. “Two years ago.”
He wished he knew what to say, or what humans were supposed to say to each other under those circumstances, because he couldn’t imagine what it was like to love or miss a mother. The silence grew awkward, and he began to regret raising the subject, because it had only stirred up painful memories for her.
“I have a younger brother too,” she said. “But he lives…elsewhere.”
He understood the secrecy. Even if she’d trusted him to that extent, it was always possible Ractane might precede killing him with torture, perhaps as amusement, perhaps to find out more about the humans. Under those circumstances, he didn’t want to know anything that might endanger more of Kat’s family.
“Do you miss him?” he asked.
“Of course.” She looked surprised he had asked. “He’s grown up and married now, but I still remember…”
She laughed, and that time the sound was easy and relaxed. “Oh, this is terrible. When I was ten, I got my friend Will to cover himself with earth, slap mud on his eyelids and pretend to be a Prince. He couldn’t see anything, but when he heard my voice, he headed in our direction, and my brother was so terrified he damn near wet himself. Will and me, we thought it was hilarious, right until my brother ran home screaming and not one person was amused. I got a spanking, and Will got a long talk about how dangerous the Princes were, plus he had to do many nice things for my brother to show how sorry he was.”
Marus grinned. Her life was as strange to him as the Princes might be to her, if a great deal more fascinating. It hadn’t occurred to him that human children might play such pranks, but the people of Copper Lake had kept their little ones far away from him. They might have trusted him with their safety, but never with their children’s.
“Your turn,” Kat said.
“My turn to do what?”
“Talk.” She made herself as comfortable as possible on the bench, stretching out before she rested her cheek on a bent elbow. “Did you like living in Copper Lake?”
“Oh, it was ideal,” Marus said without thinking. “I had a beautifully furnished house on a hill, all kinds of entertainment…”
He stopped, and it wasn’t just because he’d realized how his life would appear to Kat. It was because, for the first few weeks after the destruction of Copper Lake, he’d dreamed of everything he had lost. But those dreams hadn’t occurred recently.
Her brows rose, though her expression looked far more ironic than surprised. “Tragic,” she murmured, “losing everything you valued and cared about.”
He knew at once what she was getting at and decided to face her head-on. “You think I should be grieving for the people. I’ll always regret what happened to them, and that I couldn’t save them. But they kept their distance, and I didn’t know any of them.” Not the way I know you. “I can’t pretend to be devastated over the deaths of strangers.”
She was silent for a long moment, as if thinking of those people, before she went on. “Did you know any of their names?”
“Of course I did. Well, some. My housekeeper, and the go-between who acted as a liaison between me and the town.” He realized at once that he’d referred to those people by their professions, but it was too late. “And anyone who shared my bed.” Best not to name those, because the recital might take a while.
From her expression, she wasn’t too impressed. Damn it, he didn’t want to spend his last night alive like this.
But when she spoke, rather than condemning him, she sounded as if she was telling a story. “When people die, we can’t always bury them. Sometimes they die at sea or we can’t find the bodies, so we have a remembrance ceremony instead. Everyone has different ways to respect the dead, but I like the part where we share memories—good things those people did, hopes they had, how talented or brave or kind they were.”
Marus thought it would be easier on humans if they didn’t deliberately remember their losses, but he knew better than to say so. And when did humans ever do what was most expedient for them?
“You’re the only witness of Copper Lake we have at hand,” she said, but he couldn’t tell from her voice if that was an honor or an accusation. “If we live through this, we’ll hold a remembrance ceremony for them one day, and what will you bring to that?”
It wasn’t the first time she’d made him feel uncomfortable, not that he intended to show it. Besides, there was nothing to show. He didn’t need to bring anything to their ridiculous custom. He was a Prince, damn it, even if staying in his flesh form for so long seemed to be making him more human by the day.
But although he hadn’t bothered to learn the names of anyone in Copper Lake whom he didn’t have to deal with, those people hadn’t been given fair treatment by his standards, not in their cut-short lives. Now it seemed they’d be getting the same in their deaths.
He’d seen those people the same way a farmer regarded livestock—he assumed responsibility for them and took care of them, because it was in his best interest to do so. But he hadn’t thought of any human as an irreplaceable individual, someone who would remain in his memory long after they’d died. Not until now. He couldn’t have her, he knew it, but he could never forget her either.
And he wondered if his people might have given him more than just tribute and obedience if he’d met them halfway. If they would have stood by him as Kat did.
“If we live through this, and if I regain my power, I’ll go back to Copper Lake,” he said. What’s left of it. “Maybe they buried writings about themselves, as you did.”
Maybe what remained were only their bones, but he wouldn’t say that. If all she had was hope, he’d swallow broken glass before he took it away from her.
She didn’t say anything for a long moment, didn’t move except for the barely perceptible rise and fall of her chest as she breathed. And the way she blinked a little faster than normal, as if there was dust in her eyes. It didn’t matter that she sat across the observation deck from him or that she was in near-darkness; he was more aware of her body than of his own.
“You took a number of them into your bed,” she said. “Didn’t they matter to you?”
“I didn’t play favorites.” Letting any humans know he preferred them to the rest of their people might have led them to believe they could get special favors out of him. “And it might not have gone easy for them, if others became jealous. I treated them all the same.”
“Because they were all parts of a single faceless mass to you.”
“Exactly what my brothers and I were to you, I imagine,” Marus said pleasantly.
That hit home, he saw at once; the line of her shoulders went tense as if she’d been struck by lightning. But just as she was honest with him, she faced the truth whether she liked it or not, and when she nodded, the cynical look was gone.
“We’ve learned from each other,” she said quietly.
That might be the greatest common ground human and Prince had ever found together—and there was so much more he could have shown her, could have discovered through her. She knew how to survive and work hard and deal with other humans, but he could make her laugh. He would have teased and coaxed and swept her up into enjoying life in every way, every chance he got, until she sprawled like a cat in a field of mint, breathless and happy.
It would never happen, of course. He couldn’t even have one last night with her before everything crashed down harder than thunder, and here he was imagining a lifetime. Idiot.
“And you’re right.” Her admitting he was right twice in one day…that was almost worth their doom. “If one of
your women had fallen in love with you, and the other townsfolk had discovered it, especially the Farlanders—”
The amusement was gone. “They’d have killed her?”
“No,” Kat said slowly, as if she’d needed to think about it, “but she might not have been treated too well either, if anyone thought she’d been with you for any reason other than necessity. The best she could expect would be whispers of ‘mudhole’ behind her back.”
It was a good thing no one had ever said that in his hearing. He had to breathe deeply to calm himself—and to make certain he wouldn’t say anything he’d regret later. Until then, he hadn’t realized humans could be as vicious to their own kind as…well, as he and his brothers were. For factions on different sides of a war, they seemed to have entirely too much in common.
But now it wasn’t just the shadow of Copper Lake lying between him and Kat. Even without his power, he wasn’t human, would never be human. The line stretched high as a wall.
Except if there was a wall separating them, he’d break it. If there was an ocean, he’d cross it. She wanted to stay where she was, safe behind the line, but he wished he could show her what she meant to him. Before it was all over.
“If I loved someone,” he said, “I couldn’t care less what humans or Farlanders or the Queen herself thought about it. If I loved someone, she would matter more to me than possessions or other people or anything else in the world.”
There was nothing distant in her expression now, and she looked at him as if he would be gone if she blinked. But although her lips were slightly parted, she didn’t reply, and Marus wondered if he’d been a fool to hope she would. He leaned out over the ledge, but nothing moved or stirred on the hill below them.
After a moment he glanced up instead. “Look, a ring.”
Around the moon was a band that glittered like crushed crystal. It appeared as rarely as an eclipse and was supposed to be lucky. For whom, he didn’t want to speculate.
She had that faraway look again. “The sky in our world isn’t like this.”
“What do you mean?”
“I saw a picture in a book once. There were so many stars.”
“What are stars?”
She frowned. “Points of light, like the sky was a sheet of black cloth with pinpricks in it. They’re spheres of fire like the sun, but they’re so far away they look cold, and they’re scattered across the sky like tiny diamonds. You could join them in clusters and patterns, to make pictures of crabs and fish and other kinds of food.”
Marus couldn’t see what use that was, but it probably amused humans, and how often had he done something because it seemed entertaining? “Do you think about going back there?”
Her face closed off. “Most humans do.”
“It’s been nearly a hundred years since you left.” They didn’t know if such a world still existed, let alone if there’d be a place for them in it, but the moment he’d spoken, he regretted it. Her lips tightened as if she’d held back an involuntary sound.
“You’re right,” he said. “No matter how things might have changed, you’d be better off there.”
The tension drained out of her face, and when she spoke, her voice was full of a quiet longing. “Not that we’re likely to ever see it, but I imagine it sometimes. Cities everywhere, with bridges over water and roads to join them and buildings rising up into the sky.”
Marus tried to imagine those. Great anthills intricately connected to each other, rather than living self-sufficiently because they couldn’t depend on any other settlement to still exist in the near future. Humans not having to hide their accomplishments, let alone their existences. The reality of such a place would be even stranger than what Kat, going by passed-down old stories and pictures in books, had described.
And there was another layer of stones in the wall between them: Avalon was his world, not hers.
“You know what our world was called?” Her voice was confiding, but there was a lighter note in it now. “Earth.”
Marus looked closely to see if she was joking. He couldn’t see why humans had named their world after something so integral to his own, and he said so. Kat rolled her shoulders in a shrug.
“No one there had power over the ground,” she said. “And most of the world was water. But people called it Earth.”
If he lived to be a thousand, he’d never understand humans, but he couldn’t stop himself smiling. “So you’re Earthborn too.”
She didn’t smile back. “Does that make a difference to you?”
He knew what she meant, the words below the surface. Did it matter—her people, his brothers, the fact that even if they lived through that night, they’d be drawn apart by their different worlds? And he knew with all of his being that it didn’t.
Maybe it had been too late for him the moment he’d seen her.
“No,” he said. “It doesn’t matter what you are. And if this is the last night of my life, I’m glad I could spend it with you.”
She was mostly in shadow—he’d done that to keep the light on him, so she couldn’t ignore his eyes—but he saw her throat move as she swallowed, saw the uncertainty on her face. As if she didn’t know how fascinating she was, and didn’t realize he found her beautiful.
“Marus.” Her voice was husky. “You know hardly anything about me.”
“I know your name, Katsumi Ito. I know what you can do. And I know I want you.”
A drop of wax fell from a candle to the ledge behind him. His senses were so attuned to everything, he heard even that. Then she got up, graceful and tense at once, and she crossed the floor to him.
Marus closed his hands around her wrists and held her gently before him. He had no intention of rushing anything this time. She was finally there within his grasp, and if he was going to die, he’d give her everything he could of himself first.
He unbuckled her knife-belt and set it aside. Much as he would have liked to use that blade to cut through her clothes, slicing every last stitch off her, she wouldn’t thank him for that. Instead he undid her fly buttons, watching her as he did so. Her whole body was taut, and her fingers curled in on her palms as he pushed her trousers down off her hips.
He leaned forward and kissed her just above her hipbone, touching his tongue there to taste her skin. She smelled hot and musky, deliciously aroused already, and he pressed his mouth to the softness of her panties to feel the startled shiver that went through her. A button held those closed. He flicked it open with a fingertip, then pulled her panties down until they reached her knees, where her trousers were snagged around the tops of her boots.
She made a choked sound in her throat and tried to move her legs further apart, without success.
Marus grinned to himself and got up, shifting his grip to her arms to push her down gently to the stone bench. A breeze played over them and the candles flickered, but the lights in the lanterns stood straight as a ring of spear blades holding the world at bay. He sank to his knees and pulled her boots off. Tossing them aside, he drew her trousers down, stripping her easily, baring her long legs so he could lift them over his shoulders. Her hands fell to the bench on either side of her, fingers gripping hard.
Breathing in the scent of her, soap and perspiration and the musky scent of arousal, he kissed the inside of her knee and moved his mouth slowly up, tasting how her skin grew damp. She gasped when he pressed his face between her thighs. Hotter there, liquid with arousal, and he used his tongue, let her feel his teeth. She let out a sobbing cry, her body jerking helplessly against his.
When he lifted his head, she drew in a shaky breath as though he’d given her a respite. Instead he slid a finger deep into her, feeling her flesh still spasm and tighten.
“I like the way you taste, Kat,” he said softly, and bent his head again. Slower this time, licking gently and yet making her feel all his need for her, his possession of her.
He let his tongue play over her, added another finger to fill her inexorably. She gripped his shoulders, holding on as though she would fall from the tower if she let go, and when he breathed out over her swollen sensitized flesh, she jolted again.
When he sucked on her, she screamed. Liquid heat pulsed around his fingers as he moved them in and out of her wet, clenching flesh, thrusting ruthlessly, drawing her orgasm out as long as he wanted. She went limp, half-curled over him, and long dark hair spilled around her face to sway against him.
Marus pressed a last kiss to her and drew back, pulling off his vest. He was about to take off his shirt when she raised her head.
“No,” she said, and his fingers paused. “Lie down. That’s my job.”
Her voice was low and husky, utterly erotic, and he lowered himself to stretch full-length on the floor. Nothing cushioning him except for her discarded clothes, but he wouldn’t have cared if he’d been lying on ice. Kat went to her knees beside him.
She opened his shirt and unfastened the buttons of his trousers. He held still, trying to shut out how good it felt even when her fingers barely grazed him. Then she moved away, but only to remove his boots. She put her knees on either side of his, and pulled his trousers down so he could kick them off.
He waited for her to move closer so he could have her within reach, to ride him or to take her beneath him, it didn’t matter. Instead, she bent to take him in her mouth. Hot and sweet, enveloping him, and his head went back as she tasted and sucked. He groaned, deep in his throat.
His hands sank into her hair, spilling it thick and cool over his fingers, and his need for her was unbearable now. Gripping her shoulders, he drew her away and guided her up his body. He grasped both fists full of the worn linen of her shirt and wrenched.
Buttons flew loose. She gasped, but she didn’t have time to protest before he pulled her towards him and cupped her breast, fondling, his palm moving in slow circles so his skin grazed the nipple. Then she leaned closer, and he opened his mouth to flick his tongue against hard tender flesh.
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