The Lily and the Crown

by Roslyn Sinclair

  Try to keep this calm, Ari’s inner voice begged her. Try to figure out what she’s thinking. “I just don’t understand—”

  “There is nothing to understand.” Now Mír’s voice was much too flat to be truly tranquil. Her grip, for only a moment, shook on Ari’s arm. “For God’s sake, you almost starved to death without me.”

  Ari really wished she could deny it. There was one important fact she had to point out, though. “I didn’t,” she said. “I would have lived. It would have been awful, but I would have done it. I would have kept going.”

  “I’m very glad to hear that,” Mír said tightly. “Keep going here.”

  “I will,” Ari said. “I mean, I don’t want to leave you, but…” What did she want? “I just want…” She had no idea. She didn’t understand anything about life anymore, if she ever had.

  Mír snarled and let go. Ari’s heart stopped, and not just from fear. Here she was, bargaining for her freedom—or for something she couldn’t name—and the thought of being parted from Mír seemed worse than death all over again.

  Maybe Ari really was as crazy as people sometimes said, but how many times could one person endure being left behind or cast aside? All she wanted was the right to make the decision herself—for once.

  Mír turned away. Ari heard her taking a deep breath. Oh, no. She’d never seen Mír so visibly try to control herself. What was she repressing the urge to do?

  Before Ari could come up with a thousand unpleasant possibilities, Mír rounded on her again. Ari couldn’t stop a little gasp, but she managed not to curl in on herself protectively. Mír’s icy blue eyes were all fire now. They’d looked like that on the night of Ari’s love confession, too—when Ari had reminded Mír that she wasn’t with the pirates anymore. She’d been trying to reassure her. Talk about another situation she’d misread completely.

  “I know what you want. You want to believe people are decent,” Mír said. “Isn’t that right? Isn’t that what you said to me once?”

  “Yes.” Ari licked her lips. “At least, that’s part—”

  “I’m not,” Mír said. “I am not like you. I do not want to be like you. The most I can do is to protect you from other people like me. And there are a lot of people like me.” She stalked forward again and leaned in until her nose touched Ari’s cheek. Ari could feel her breath, could nearly feel the edge of her teeth against her skin. “Listen to me. I will give you everything you want.” She took hold of Ari’s arms again. “Things you didn’t even know you wanted.”

  “You’re hurting my arms,” Ari said, trembling despite herself. Fear? Desire? She couldn’t sort it out. “What do you think you’re going to give me, exactly?”

  “The Empire!” Mír snarled and let go of her once more. Maybe because her hands were shaking again. She never stopped looking into Ari’s eyes, though. “What are you pining for? Your little room full of plants? By the time I’m through, you’ll have that thieving Senior Royal Botanist licking your shoes for forgiveness. By the time I’m through, I’ll have built an empire that your father would have been proud to serve and defend—”

  Ari, who had been frantically trying to think of ways to calm down a pirate queen, couldn’t help herself. “He was proud! He—”

  “Rightfully proud,” Mír spat. “Are you incapable of thinking on so large a scale? Or do you think I’m incapable of doing this?”

  “No,” Ari said at once. “I already told you, I know you can do anything. I—” She shook her head, rubbed her arms. “But how am I supposed to help you? I mean, what good am I about any of that? I just do stuff with plants!”

  “You might realize you’ve opened my eyes on the uses of plants,” Mír said, sounding slightly calmer now that Ari had given her something else to focus on. “Crops. Fuel. You were the one working on a hardier pea, weren’t you? Saying that you wanted it to be of use to someone?” She sighed. “You’ll be of use to me. In that, and other ways.”

  Ari stared at her. “I’ll be useful?” That certainly didn’t sound like any love poem she’d ever read.

  “You once told me you wanted to be.” This time, Mír took hold of Ari’s hands instead of her arms. Her grip wasn’t painful this time, but it was decidedly firm. “You will be. I need you with me. I need you here.”

  Ari had something that nobody else could give Mír. She’d already known that. She’d been thinking of it as a card to play, or a piece to move across the board—but really, it was something simpler and far more important.

  “Tell me what you need from me.” Her voice shook. “Tell me what’s so important that you want to—” Not “imprison,” that wasn’t right. “Keep me.”

  The words made her eyes sting, made a hot lump grow in her throat when she hadn’t expected it. To be kept, to be wanted, by someone she loved, someone extraordinary…for the first time, to be wanted…

  Before Mír could reply, that slipped out of Ari, too. “Everybody always goes. I don’t get a say in it.” Her mother, her father, Mír, teachers and slaves she’d lost over the years, Ari always left behind to start over with her plants. “I just want the choice, I want it to be me, for once, who gets to pick.”

  Mír’s uncomprehending expression made the hot lump grow bigger, and Ari didn’t know how to make it go away. “How can I make you understand?” she gasped. She didn’t try to tug her hands away from Mír’s. She needed that contact, the reminder that someone was with her to tether her to the ground. “What do you need from me?”

  Mír’s throat worked. Her lips had gone white.

  “I need you to choose me,” she rasped.

  Ari lost her breath as if all the oxygen had been sucked out of the room. Mír’s words felt like an explosion inside her, heat racing through her in something too intense to be called joy, or relief, or pain, or anything at all. That was exactly what she’d needed to hear, the only answer that could come close to filling the hole inside her that she’d kept covered with leaves for ten years. “Oh.”

  If Mír realized the incalculable gift she’d given Ari, she didn’t show it. Instead, she snatched her hands away and spat, “Does that satisfy you? Is that little ego of yours pacified now? Hearing that from me.” Her eyes burned.

  Ari surfaced from her daze just in time to realize how Mír had sacrificed her pride, and how that could go very sour, very quickly. She could only think to tell the truth: “Nobody’s ever said that to me before.”

  The anger that had been creeping through Mír’s frame, drawing up her shoulders and calling blood into her pale cheeks, seemed to drain away at once. She inhaled, let it out a little shakily, and said, “I know.”

  She slid her arms around Ari’s waist again, bending to kiss her forehead, her cheeks, and finally her mouth. She repeated, “I know.”

  Ari sighed, unable to help it. The energy she’d been carrying since Mír’s arrival was still curling inside her, demanding release. No, not yet, she begged her wayward heart. I just need—I have to know—

  “Don’t ask me to do what I can’t do,” Mír muttered against Ari’s lips. “I can’t do everything. Believe it or not.”

  “What would I do here?” Ari said when Mír turned away just enough to kiss her cheek again. She couldn’t stop herself from putting her hands on Mír’s shoulders. “What would I be to you?” A warm body in bed? An amusement, kept separate from the rest of Mír’s life, as isolated as she’d always been?

  Mír kissed her throat and whispered into her ear, “You would be at my side.”

  Ari went still. Her breath stopped. Her fingertips dug so hard into Mír’s shoulders that it had to hurt, but Mír made no protest.

  “Kiss me,” she managed. “Right now, right n—”

  Mír gasped, then slanted her mouth over Ari’s and kissed her again. It wasn’t like it had ever been before—this was another explosion, an end to lies, a new beginning, and Ari wasn’t sure yet who she’d be when it was over, but it would be someone more than she’d been. That was a lot to ask of a kiss, b
ut the second one was the same, and by the third, it no longer mattered where they were.

  Good thing, too, because they ended up on the floor. Mír made a noise that was half laugh and half moan as she lay between Ari’s spread legs, kissed her again, and tore at the buttons of her dress.

  “Without this.” She bit and sucked at the skin she uncovered, from Ari’s throat down to her breasts. “Without this for a month.” She took Ari’s left nipple in her mouth with a moan, and Ari grabbed her head while her body came all the way back to life.

  She bent over and rubbed her nose in Mír’s soft black hair, gasping for air. She had enough brain cells left for one question. “Wh-why,” she said, “why wouldn’t you ever let me touch you?”

  “You can,” Mír panted, yanking Ari’s dress down around her waist and sucking hard at her throat, like she’d always loved doing. “You can, but first let me—I have to—” She set to kissing and touching Ari like she had on their last night together, going crazy with it, not stopping until Ari’s new dress was practically in shreds and Ari was a breathless, sobbing puddle beneath her.

  Ari should have known she was a pirate queen. No—even that wasn’t right, she should wonder if Mír wasn’t a creature out of ancient lore, a powerful spirit that descended onto mortals and whisked them away into another world. She should never have believed, not even for a second, that Mír was an ordinary person like Ari, content with life’s daily offerings. Nothing seemed to be enough for her. In her kisses, Ari tasted a boundless hunger, and her caresses left no spot of Ari’s body unclaimed.

  It all felt so natural. As natural as petals unfurling from buds in the spring. Ari found herself returning all Mír’s kisses with her own hunger, sliding her hands into Mír’s black hair and whispering more, more against her lips until they were wrapped around each other on the floor, so tightly they might as well have been one person.

  For the first time, Ari ran her hands up and down Mír’s back to hold her close, but she still couldn’t get close enough.

  Mír apparently agreed. “The bedroom,” she gasped as she licked a drop of sweat from between Ari’s breasts. “Our bed. I’m going to—” She paused and then reared up on her elbows, looming over Ari. Her face was flushed, her eyes wild as she said, “Get ready, Ariana, because I am going to fuck you.”

  Once, Ari had found that word obscene, too dirty for what the act meant to her. Tonight, it made her moan because oh, yeah, she needed exactly that. Again and again. “Yes!”

  “Yes,” Mír agreed, staggering up and managing not to trip on her own gown, still intact. She took Ari’s outstretched hands and tugged her to her feet, wrapping her arms around her again. The remains of Ari’s dress fell and pooled around her feet. Her bare body felt so good pressed against Mír’s that for a moment, she wondered if they wouldn’t go right back down on the floor.

  By some unseen mercy, they didn’t. Mír tugged Ari back toward the bedroom. Ari still ached with unsatisfied need, wondered if she’d ever stop aching, especially when they had to stop in the doorway so Mír could push her up against the wall for more kisses.

  “Please, please,” she moaned against Mír’s mouth.

  “My God. Put your legs around me,” Mír gasped, cupping Ari’s bottom firmly. For once in her life, Ari spared no thought to her own clumsiness and threw her arms around Mír’s shoulders before hopping up and wrapping her legs around Mír’s waist. Mír was as strong as she had ever been and didn’t so much as grunt with effort. She kissed Ari again and walked them backward toward the enormous bed, her soft breasts pressed beneath Ari’s, her heart hammering against Ari’s own chest.

  And then she lay Ari on her back in the middle of the enormous bed and removed her underwear, not bothering to make it slow or seductive this time, just yanking it over Ari’s hips and tossing it away so she could drive her fingers in and out of Ari while Ari writhed underneath her and Mír said “yes, yes, yes”. It was dark, almost as dark as it had always been in Ari’s room, and so there was nothing to focus on, nothing to cling to but what Mír was doing and the way she felt against Ari’s body.

  “Tell me how it feels,” she panted. “Ariana. Tell me—”

  Ari couldn’t tell her anything of the kind. She could only manage to say, high-pitched and breathless, “Harder!”

  Mír gasped, complied, whispered, “Take it,” as Ari rose to meet her.

  “Yes—please—”

  “Do you have any idea,” Mír moaned into her ear, her fingers going faster and faster, “how many times I came while doing this to you? And never told you?” When Ari cried out, she breathed, “Oh, yes. Oh, yes, darling, yes I did.” She curled her fingers, and Ari keened. “So pay attention now—” And she went stiff against Ari, giving a soft, shuddering little cry. Her fingers kept moving, but lost the rhythm; the cry turned into a groan.

  Realizing what was happening, what Mír was doing, Ari curled her body around that hand and let go with a cry of her own. She pulsed and ached with release, a white-hot burst of pleasure that started deep in her core and filled her whole body. Like she’d walked into the heart of a star after all.

  “Yes,” Mír said again, her voice a hiss of triumph. “Yes. Made for this. Made for me.” She kissed Ari’s chest, panting gently as Ari finished. “Mine.”

  “Oh,” Ari said, shaking everywhere. She felt like she’d lost all her bones sometime in the last few seconds. “Oh.”

  Mír’s fingertips touched Ari’s lips. Ari groaned as she tasted herself, and she licked the remains of her arousal away. Impossibly, it flared inside her once more. She fumbled for the dress’s clasp on Mír’s left shoulder, only to be denied by Mír’s touch stopping her in place.

  “But it’s my turn!” she gasped. Whined, really. Her own tone made her wince.

  Mír gave a brief, slightly breathless huff of laughter. “I’m well aware. But haven’t I shown you there’s something to be said for patience?”

  “Yeah, whole weeks of it. You—you are going to let me, right? Soon? I mean, tonight?”

  “Insatiable,” Mír muttered, and kissed Ari in the darkness. “Believe me. You’ll get your turn, once I catch my breath.”

  Good thing she couldn’t see Ari’s frown. Mír might have come, but she hardly seemed exhausted, and they’d gone for longer before. That wasn’t really why she wanted to wait. So, what was the reason? There weren’t any secrets left between them, were there?

  But no still meant no, and it wasn’t “no” forever. All Ari could say was, “Okay.” She felt a little better when Mír put her arms around her and pulled her in close. It didn’t exactly cool the heat inside her, and from the way Mír’s breath caught, they were both feeling it.

  Patience. Wait and see. Ari reached up again until her knuckles brushed the Mír’s cheek. She stroked them against the skin there, reveling even in this tiny intimacy. “You’re so soft here.”

  “I’m not soft in many places,” Mír said dryly.

  “No kidding.” Ari’s hand slid down to touch Mír’s firm bicep. “When your guards came…I wished I was stronger. That I knew how to fight.”

  “You should learn how to defend yourself,” Mír agreed. “Not that I intend you should be in a moment’s danger, but everyone should know the basics.”

  Ari had been speaking in the abstract, but Mír had translated it into practical action—something in a future, a near one, that involved them both. She seemed to be taking it for granted that they would continue on together, but why was her body tensing up against Ari’s own, when she should be relaxed and “catching her breath”?

  “Would you turn on the light?” Ari asked.

  Mír made a noise of assent and rolled away. Ari’s naked form felt suddenly chilled. The room was cooler than she’d thought. Then she heard the click of the bedside lamp coming on, and the room filled with soft light.

  Ari hoped she wasn’t being too obvious about looking at Mír, inspecting her flushed cheeks and mussed hair. The silver forelock somehow see
med even more appealing as it dangled over her eye until she brushed it away impatiently. For all her level-headed words, she was agitated. Ari could subtly try to figure out—

  “So?” Mír said. “What do you see?”

  Darn it.

  Ari took a deep breath and tried to center herself. Be the tree rooted into the ground. If they weren’t going to have sex, then it was time to see if Mír really meant what she’d said. “You said you’d give me everything I wanted. The Empire.”

  “And so I will.” Mír sat up and took hold of Ari’s hand. She squeezed it and kept looking into Ari’s eyes. “Give me a year, and you’ll sit at my side in the Imperial throne room. Well”—she rolled her eyes—“until you get a headache. But you know what I mean.”

  “Oh,” Ari said. Mír’s grip kept her right hand warm, but her left hand was starting to feel clammy. “That’s, uh…I can see why you’d want to, but I was thinking we could start smaller.”

  “I already said we can bring in your plants—”

  “I don’t just mean plants. I mean people.” At Mír’s obvious look of surprise, Ari continued, “The nurses and doctors who took care of me. They were very kind. They became my…well, they almost became my friends.” There hadn’t been enough time to establish a real, deep bond with Rellin, Dr. Eylen, or Dr. Ishti. But if there had been, Ari thought something meaningful might have grown from it, even if it couldn’t compare to what she felt when she was with Mír. “When you come back to Nahtal—if they’re still there, and there’s a fight—”

  Mír’s eyes widened in understanding. She nodded. “I’ll give orders that they not be harmed.” She stroked Ari’s hair. “Hell, I’ll honor them. After all, they did me a great service. I am thankful.”

  “Me too.” Ari closed her eyes and savored the feeling of Mír’s hand in her hair. Depending on how she reacted to Ari’s next request, it might not happen again for a while. “And there’s just one more person.”

  Mír must have picked up on the hesitant note in Ari’s voice, because her hand paused. She asked cautiously, “Who?”