Chapter Twenty-Seven
HELD PASSED THE first part of the journey with his hand kissing Janez’s in the dark, moving room, trying to simply be.
Because this was it, now.
Father had left him to drown.
It was Balta who had saved him—silly, sweet little Balta—and Father had left him to drown. Father would have left him imprisoned in that cave until he died of hunger, Held was sure. Father would rather he were dead, than this.
He was alone in the world.
Except for this man. And when they stopped in weak sunlight, Held pressed the bottle into Janez’s hand and made him drink it, and this man became the world itself. Janez smiled at him and drank it, pulled a face that said he was not much a fan, and chattered about—possibly the weather, but Held hadn’t yet grasped enough of the tongue to know for certain.
He was the world. The beautiful, lonely world.
He was a legend, a skyman far from Held’s home, and—
Why did it hurt?
Why did the love that had burned so bright now hurt? The broken sensation in Held’s chest was as though a bone had healed wrong when he looked at Janez. Still bright, still brilliant…but bearing a cost.
He had lost everything.
Everything.
He didn’t know how to feel, or what to do. He wanted to shy away and hide, to wrap himself in the darkness and mourn, but also to cling to Janez and clutch tight the only thing he had left. He wanted to be untouched, and be smothered in it, to override the pain with pleasure.
The bare facts of it were horrifying.
Somehow, the rub of his unwebbed fingers against one another was good.
How could anything be good over what had just happened? How could anything feel right, when his own father had left him to drown? How could Janez’s hand about his own be comforting, when Held’s very existence now relied upon this man with whom he couldn’t even speak?
But she’d told him it would happen.
The Witch had warned him. And when Father had imprisoned him, Held had known that he wouldn’t be able to live in both worlds, hadn’t he?
He had chosen this one.
What did that mean, that he had chosen to lose—
Everything.
He’d thrown everything away. For this body, this man, and nothing more.
And he couldn’t quite wrap his mind about what that meant.
WHEN THE LIGHT leaked from the sky, they stopped at a nest. A white construction that jutted from the endless green, it was warm and smelled of food. There was a lot of chatter, and they were all shown into a cavernous room beyond, like the private areas of the palace. Enormous plates loaded with food were brought. A guard with a dark face beamed at Held and told him all the names for the food on them.
And food was dearly welcome. Skymen didn’t travel quickly in packs. Much like Fa—much like below, it seemed men of importance like Janez weren’t meant to go places unattended, but when grouped together, skymen were terribly slow. Held was faint with hunger by the time he could eat.
The skymen were insular, too. Although the dark guard smiled and spoke slowly to him, the others ignored him. The servants, too, kept to themselves. And none of them would speak to Janez—not that Janez seemed to much mind as he pored over letters. Held let him be, concentrating instead on the dark guard’s words, attempting to root his world in something wider and calmer than a single man in the whole universe.
The dark man was named Kapitän, and he spoke with a smoother tone than Janez. The jagged edges of his language were scored off, and Held wondered if skymen didn’t all speak the same tongue. It wasn’t dissimilar to the way merfolk from beyond the Narrow Mouth spoke when they came to trade—did skymen, too, all speak in different tongues? Did it mean Kapitän came from somewhere else? He also carried a little gold trinket which he opened, showing Held a picture of a beautiful skymaid inside, with a proud nose and similar dark skin, and a drawing of a small skyling, clearly his own. He called them Claudia and Meinsohn, or Held thought he did, and then drove an elbow into Held’s ribs, and laughed some joke Held didn’t know.
“Eine Frau für meinen Freund!” he called to the maid who brought the cups, and the other guards laughed and cheered.
“Und für mich, Kapitän! Eine Frau!” another called, slapping his thigh. The others began to turn out pockets, and bits of round metal flashed in the light. Held smiled uncertainly, unsure of what was happening.
The maid disappeared—and then another came. Younger, with a prettier face. She was laughing, gathering up the bits of metal, and then she gathered up her skirts and sat in the crowing guard’s lap. To Held’s surprise, the guard slapped her backside and buried his face against her bosom.
“Held.” Janez’s voice rose gentle over the chaos. “Bett, ja?”
Those words, he knew. Bed. Yes. It was late, and he was tired—and he was determined to brush Janez’s hair again in the morning. It was soothing to the pain, Janez had liked it today, and the servants always tied the ribbon too tight. So Held nodded, abandoning his drink and the men to the maids, and took to the stairs.
The little rooms all came off one corridor—Kapitän had the one nearest the stairs, and Held supposed the arrangement was to protect the prince in case of attack. His own was opposite, and nothing more than a little jug of water on a stand and a narrow bed with rumpled blankets. There wasn’t even a window. It felt somewhat like a cell, but it would do for the night. He stripped to his underclothes, the chill too great for further, and began to wash his hands and face. Footsteps sounded on the creaky stairs, several pairs, and a door closed farther down the corridor. More shuffled past his room. Another clap of wood to frame.
And then his door opened.
Held jumped as the skymaid slipped inside and shut it behind her. The metal bolt scraped, and she smiled, leaning up against the wood, shoulders pulled in and bosom pushed out.
“Guten Abend,” she said.
She was pretty and soft, all curves in a cream dress and dark brown ringlets around her face. Her mouth was painted pink. It smiled, and she ghosted across the little room towards him, stopping not a pace away and swirling to turn her back. He was met by the ribbons holding her dress closed from behind, and then she turned her head to smile over her shoulder, and murmured a question.
Was he—meant to undo it? Undo her dress?
He swallowed, and hastily dried his hands upon his clothes before reaching out and teasing the knot at the nape of her neck free. Her skin was warm and smooth. It burned against his near-numb fingers as he fought with the ribbon, and finally slid it out of its hooks and loops. The dress sagged. She pulled it forward and turned around.
She—wore no underclothes.
Held had seen many a mermaid with nothing to cover their breasts—it was the tradition for those of standing to swim bare—but never a skymaid. In any case, this seemed…different. The room seemed closer. Her breast, when she placed his hand upon it, caused his heart to race. He could feel the soft flutter of her own. And then the dress fell to the floor entirely, and she stood quite naked in front of him.
“Küss mich.”
“What?” Held asked.
“Küss mich,” she repeated. Her dainty hands pushed him back to the bed. Deftly plucked at the cords on his clothes until his body lay exposed. She caressed his legs and sex until the latter swelled, his crotch heavy and his breathing heavier—and then she repeated her words, soft and sweet, and pressed her lips to his.
Oh.
Oh, the shock of it. A bolt of hunger, and quite unlike the hunger he’d felt before, inflamed him. His hands flew to her back to pull her closer; his mouth opened under her own, and a hot pleasure, a single-minded dedication to the pursuit of it, unfolded in the back of his mind. She was leagues of warm skin and bright life, climbing astride his lap. He touched the swell of her breasts in mute fascination, traced the slender dip of her spine and lower, to the swell of her buttocks. She raised herself onto her knees, tall
and proud above him, and pressed his mouth to her breast until he took the soft nub of pinked skin atop it between his teeth and sucked on it. She moaned then, a sweet sound above him, and his very blood jumped at the sound.
And then desire.
Pleasure like he’d never known, as she sank down upon his sex with a long, smooth sigh. And then she began to move along it, riding it—him—as though an animal. Her face glowed in ecstasy; her wet, warm grip around him was so intense he was reduced to nothing but this body—sweat between his shoulder blades; a great pressure in his crotch; the silky skin between his teeth and hands; the slide of his body inside hers, buried in silken heat like a wet bloom. His groans, so deep inside his chest they, too, brought the burning to a boil.
A boil.
This—this was—
A bright light seared through his head, erasing all thought. He was a body. Shuddering in hers. Air. Air, rasping in his chest. The shaking of nerves. His heart—his heart, pounding like a drum. In time with his—thrusts. He was thrusting up into the girl. And she cried out in time to him, until the grip became painful, until she buried her face in his throat, until—until—
Her weight pushed him back against the blankets. She smiled at him. Touched her lips to his throat, and his hand to her damp breast. Held heaved a breath and shivered when her lips touched his chest. His stomach. Lower.
She murmured something, and her mouth began to touch him in an entirely different manner. Sealed to his sex, and suckled upon it as he had her breast. The shaking of his nerves intensified—and ebbed again, to a sweeter pleasure, until he was swelling again, and she made a pleased little noise and took it deep into her mouth, much as Janez had in the woods. Held let her, rolling her words about in his mind, and the way her lips had collided with his own.
Küss mich.
Kiss me.
This was how skymen kissed.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
THE FOLLOWING DAY, it was very apparent that the men had introduced Held to the pleasures of women.
Janez had suspected it would happen—the captain had clearly taken a shine at dinner—so he was surprised when, just before dawn broke, Held slipped into his rooms and picked up the brush as though he were a manservant.
“Good morning,” Janez said evenly and eyed him for hints of what had happened. He seemed a little flustered, a little wild about the edges, and there were rings under his eyes that suggested he hadn’t slept…but otherwise, there was nothing. He could have liked or loathed it, and Janez could not tell.
But it had happened. There was a certain air the recently released gave off, in Janez’s opinion. They exuded something others could sense, and although he couldn’t put his finger on it, Janez knew full well Held had been buried in some pretty girl, and had been so for some considerable time.
Ought that not have made him bitter?
He pondered it as Held brushed his hair and chose a pale green ribbon to tame it with. He could find no bitterness at the thought of Held with a girl—rather, envy. And of the girl. She’d seen, touched, heard, what Janez had not. She’d been permitted to have Held inside her, and he had not. She knew what Held looked like within the grip of passion, and Janez did not.
All right. Perhaps there was a little bitterness.
But Janez pushed it back and smiled and thanked him when the ribbon had been fixed to Held’s liking. To his mute surprise, Held brushed off his overcoat before opening the door as well as any manservant and trailing after him down the inn stairs.
The guards were still readying themselves; the footmen looked impatient.
“We ought to have been gone with the dawn, Your Highness, but them guards was up too late whoring,” one of them grumbled. The other struck him sharply and told him to mind his manners.
“They will suffer accordingly,” Janez said, enjoying their paling faces. “I’ve ridden enough horses after too much wine and too many women to know it’s an uneasy combination.” He stretched his face up into the sun—it was pleasant, a little cool, but dry. “I think we shall sit and watch the world go by today. Held?”
Held nodded at the sound of his name, and soon two servants had been relegated to the trap, and prince and pauper were seated behind the carriage driver. Janez had another overcoat brought for Held and a blanket for both their legs. He laughed when Held grabbed his arm as the carriage lurched forwards and began to roll, the horses impatient after so long harnessed and halted.
“It’s better here,” Janez said. “Better than being stuffed in that box all day.”
And better it was—they had passed from the plains and flat forests that ran down to the sea, and the mountains were rising up ahead. It would be another day before they found the narrow pass and followed it to the gates of the Winter Palace, but the sky was clear and the mountains sharp in the distance. The winter snows had struck low already; the peaks towered ahead, jagged teeth on the horizon, and grew with every hour. Janez yearned to be there.
He’d spent his earliest years at the Winter Palace, had learned to walk in the shadows of those mountains. At fifteen and fresh-faced, he’d been presented to the aristocratic world under their brooding masses. He’d hunted wolves on their slopes and seen the great thunder of avalanches in the dark winters. Whenever he’d gone to the sea, to the summer fortress and its busyness, he’d admired most the waves with white-tipped peaks and great troughs below.
The sight of those mountains, even at this distance, was soothing.
They meant, however, that the road grew rockier and harsher. The carriage wheels grumbled and crunched; the horses were dissatisfied, and their voicing of discomfort appeared to make Held more nervous. And Janez knew full well these horses were not as kindly towards nerves as Molly.
“Captain!” he called again. “I must pause us for just a moment. It is getting a touch too cold—I must step back into the carriage.”
He waved off the demand for a fire to be made and warming pan prepared—the lantern would do, the wind was mostly at fault, he insisted—and soon had them shut into the carriage once more, windows drawn up against the cold and any peeking intrusion. And gave into quiet temptation. He drew the blankets around both their shoulders and pulled Held near.
Held—clutched.
They had touched before—that dance, those little brushes and clasps of hands, the river—but Held had never gripped so hard before, and Janez wondered if it were simply the cold, or some lesson from the night before. He almost burrowed into Janez’s arms, his hands flat against Janez’s back…and then they were teasing at the hem of his shirt, the cool smoothness of palms against his skin.
He took a breath. His ribs struggled to allow it.
How—how could such a simple touch—
He swallowed and fought not to react. Oh, his body did—and perfectly inappropriately, too—but the blankets allowed no outward sign of it. Held’s face pressed against his neck, his lips touching Janez’s pulse, and he must have felt it racing, but he made no murmur. And Janez made no movement. This was only…for warmth. Nothing more.
He lied to himself, and he knew it very well.
“NO WHORES TONIGHT, Captain.”
Janez said it in a low, private tone as he stepped down from the carriage. The night had rushed in; the mountains towered dark above them now. The sky was a pure black, and there was a smell in the air that Janez remembered from being only two feet high and still in skirts.
There could be snow tonight.
“We will reach the palace tomorrow,” he continued, “and I want your men to be at their finest. Not their most delicate.”
The captain coughed awkwardly but relaxed when Janez offered a small smile.
“Certainly, Your Highness.”
This inn was larger, grander, and able to cater more easily to travelling dignitaries. Janez was afforded a suite of rooms, with great bolts upon the doors and a roaring fireplace. He retired at once, leaving the men to their meals, and read by candlelight until the maid came up with the me
al. He ate sparingly, distracted by what morning—or rather, afternoon—would bring.
The first and simplest was Mother. He dearly missed her, and he’d brought letters from Sofia and Ingrid—and, in theory, the baby, although of course a baby couldn’t write, and Ingrid’s imagination didn’t extend to grasp that babies didn’t, as a rule, like tobogganing down palace stairs on homemade sleds. It would be a warm panacea to his unease, to sit with Mother and speak of family, like she was no widowed queen and he no prince, but simply a woman entering old age and an as-yet unbound son.
But the second was, of course, the ball. It was a mere few days hence. A great gathering of lords and ladies to welcome King Sigurd and his daughters. If it were merely a ball to find a wife, any wife, with no insistence upon success, Janez might have been quite enamoured with the idea. But to examine three girls, as though chattel, with a view to siring sons? The poor grace of it stung, and he couldn’t imagine his bride-to-be was entirely thrilled at the idea either.
Still, he would make the effort. He wouldn’t be so dispirited upon meeting them—no, he would be charming, polite, good-humoured, and try to make the best of a bad situation. Who knew, perhaps it would be tolerably fine. All that was ultimately needed, in the end, was enough compatibility to rub along together nicely. He’d be at sea much of his life, and she with her duties to her people. Love was not required. Casting his mind to the hands against his back in the carriage, he thought it just as well.
Determined, he undressed to his underclothes and cracked open a window to allow the music from the inn below to creep up into his suite. He drew the curtains for privacy, and then lifted his arms and imagined a lady between them. He hadn’t waltzed in any dignified sort of manner for nearly two years, and it wouldn’t do to forget the steps or tread on the princess’s toes.
“My lady,” he entreated the phantom at his front and stepped forward.
To a drunken fiddle, the prince danced alone. And with every soft increase in skill and speed, his heart cracked just a little more.
Walking on Water Page 17