Sasha was not terribly comfortable being a guest.
Mistress Lorena, under the queen’s direction, put her in a room in the same wing as the family, assigning a lady’s maid to dress her hair and assist her in her daily toilette. Dresses were commissioned, and all manner of bits and baubles, underthings and overskirts, slippers and shoes, and handkerchiefs and head scarfs were brought in for her use. Sasha accepted it all with gracious wonder but promptly donned one of the dresses Kjell bought her in Solemn and braided her own hair.
When Lark discovered Sasha could read and write, she asked her to act as her personal assistant, though Lark’s abilities made assistance feel more like providing company rather than work, and Sasha was accustomed to work. Kjell overheard her needling Mistress Lorena for a bucket of water and a stiff brush to scrub the cobblestones in the courtyard.
The first morning after their arrival, he found her wrapped in a fur, asleep on the floor outside his door. The next night he left his door unlatched for the first time in his life and lay with his ears straining for her arrival. When he heard a slight scuffling and a small bump against the corridor wall, he rose and led her into his chamber. He patted the side of the bed farthest from him, and she promptly climbed in and fell asleep. Every morning after that, he found her curled beside him, and every morning he woke her before sunrise so she could return to her own room to avoid alerting the very curious staff of their arrangement. He never denied her. In fact, they never even spoke of their odd need to continue what they’d started weeks before.
During the days he hardly saw her. And he missed her. He ached with it. In the pit of his stomach and the back of his throat, in the balls of his feet and the palms of his hands, he missed her. It horrified him, and he made himself volunteer for patrol, staying away two days longer than needed just to prove he could. Then he practically ran through the halls of the castle, through the kitchens, into the cellar, and out in the gardens looking for her.
He found the queen instead, sitting among the roses, a book in her hand and Wren in her arms. The book floated in front of her, the pages turning at her command.
“Are you abusing your power, Lady Queen?” he asked.
“I am using my power, brother. I don’t want Wren to tear at the pages.”
“Wren is sleeping.”
“Yes. And I want to hold her and read. The book is heavy,” she protested, but humor danced in her large, grey eyes. “Are you looking for Sasha?” she asked.
“Yes,” he said, sheepish.
“You look as though you are desperate to find her,” she remarked, commanding the book to lower and close. She was teasing him, but it was the absolute truth, and he was certain she knew it.
He was desperate to find her.
“You feel something for her,” Lark said. She didn’t ask, didn’t over-exaggerate. Lark was incredibly careful with her words, as they could curse men and control beasts. She approached every interaction with the fear that she would harm unintentionally, and listened far more than she spoke.
“Yes. I feel something for her,” he admitted quietly, grateful he didn’t have to admit more, and sank down on a garden bench at an angle to his brother’s wife.
“And you don’t want to?” the queen asked.
“I have tried not to.”
“But feelings don’t always obey.”
“No.” He shook his head. “They don’t. But I don’t trust . . . my feelings. Especially because I healed her. The healing has created a . . . bond. A strong one. An unnatural one.”
“I see.” She was silent for a moment, as if examining his confession for holes.
“Do you have feelings for me?” she asked suddenly.
Kjell’s eyes shot to hers, and he knew she saw the curse he swallowed.
“No,” he clipped.
The queen laughed, the sound light and silvery, like the woman herself.
“I admire you,” he amended. “I would die for you, gladly. I even . . . love you. But . . .” he struggled to explain something he didn’t understand himself.
“But you healed me too, Kjell. Remember?”
He hadn’t considered that.
“Yet the bond is very different than what you are feeling for Sasha, isn’t it?”
Even her name hurt him, piercing him sweetly, and he hung his head in submission.
“I have loved badly before,” he grunted. He could barely say the words, and they were mostly unintelligible. The queen, however, did not miss them.
“I see,” she sighed. She didn’t argue with him, didn’t question his feelings or his misgivings. She just let the statement be, accepting the truth of it. He had loved badly, and the kingdom had suffered. He had suffered. Terribly.
After a time, the queen spoke again, returning to the matter at hand.
“Sasha is devoted to you.”
“Yes.” He agreed without equivocation. He knew that she was.
“But you don’t trust her devotion either?” the queen asked.
“It is born of gratitude and servitude. I don’t want either of those things from her.”
“What do you want?”
When Kjell failed to respond, Lark answered for him. “You want her to love you. It is an entirely different thing, isn’t it?”
“I think so, yes,” he confessed, and felt both relief and pain at the admission. “I am not easy to love.”
Lark laughed again, and he winced. “That, my dear Kjell, is a good thing. The very best things in life are born of difficulty. Whatever comes too easily is easily abandoned.”
“It is the height of irony. I am forced to care in order to heal. I’ve spent my whole life not giving a damn.”
“You are such a fool, brother.” Lark smiled to soften her words, but they still stung, and his eyes shot up and his jaw cracked. Lark was his queen, but he didn’t have to like what she said.
“Kjell,” she soothed. “You care too much. And when you commit, both you and Tiras are just like your father. No half measures. All in, to the death. But Zoltev committed himself to power. You commit yourself to people. It is significantly more painful.”
His shoulders slumped, and he rose from the bench. He was a fool. And he had a sneaking suspicion the queen was right. She was often right.
“Tiras will be back soon. You should speak with him, Kjell.”
“Where is he?”
“Somewhere abusing his power.” Her smile was rueful, and she commanded the book to rise and open.
“Flying?”
“Flying. I will tell him you seek his counsel,” she murmured, allowing him to continue on in his search. He took a few steps before he spoke again, tossing the question over his shoulder.
“Is she well?” he asked.
“What?” Lark replied, clearly confused.
“Wren. Is she well?”
“Ah,” Lark sighed, and her voice smiled. “Yes. She is perfect.”
“She has grown since I last saw her. She is beautiful,” he admitted, surprising himself with his sincerity.
“Thank you, brother.”
He was almost through the garden when Lark called out to him.
“She is in the library, Kjell.” He quickened his step and heard her answering laugh. Curse his obviousness.
Kjell had never liked the library. Endless knowledge and obedient words, everything in its proper place, everything with a beginning and an ending. Tiras loved the rows of shelves. Kjell just wanted to knock them down.
Sasha was perched on a ladder, one arm clutching the top, one arm stretched high, wielding a duster made of goose feathers, her tongue caught between her lips in concentration. Either she didn’t hear him coming, or she was too intent on her precarious position to spare him a glance.
He reached up, wrapped his arms around her legs, and toppled her into his arms.
Her small squeal became a smile, and she sighed his name as he stepped behind the tallest of the shelves, hiding them from the wide, double doors and from anyone who might come to check on the new maid. Sasha twined her arms around him, looking at him like he was the sun and she’d been lost in the dark. She pressed her lips to his cheek so sweetly that he moaned and let her feet find the floor. Then his fingers were in her hair and on her face, touching her nose and her chin, touching the freckles he saw when he closed his eyes.
“What are you doing?” she asked, her voice catching, her body pressing into his.
“I’m counting your freckles to make sure you haven’t lost any.” He felt her teeth on his shoulder, as if she wanted to get closer, to consume him. He bundled her hair in his hands, nipping at her chin and her throat, following the path where his fingers had been.
Then he was kissing her, telling her all the things that he couldn’t say, listening for all the things he needed to hear. His hands cradled her hips and slid up her slim back, tracing and retracing, reveling in the feel of her and in the knowledge that she welcomed him.
“Thank you,” she sighed into his mouth. He withdrew slightly, just enough to glower down at her.
“You are thanking me for kissing you?”
“Yes. Every time you do it, I’m afraid you will never do it again.”
“Why?” he asked, incredulous.
“I can’t explain it,” she whispered. “It isn’t something I see. It’s something I feel.”
“How can I make that feeling go away?”
“You must promise to never stop kissing me,” she said, her face solemn. “You must kiss me relentlessly and never cease.”
He nodded, every bit as solemn, and immediately obeyed.
“Sasha!”
She was trembling, her eyes open, but something about her gaze and the sounds in her throat convinced him she wasn’t awake.
He shook her gently, kneading her arms and stroking her hair.
“Sasha, wake.”
One moment she was somewhere else and the next, with him. He saw the light come back in her eyes, the awareness, but her trembling continued and her mouth struggled to form words, still caught in the place where the mind was a contortionist and the body was paralyzed.
“I s-saw you,” she stuttered.
“And do you see me now?” he asked quietly, making sure she was with him in the present.
“Yes.” Her eyes closed briefly, but there was no relief in her face. He released her, moving away. When she slept near him, he kept his distance. He had to.
“I saw her.”
He didn’t have to ask who she meant.
“She will not hurt you. I will not let her,” he promised.
“It is not me I am afraid for,” she murmured.
“If she wanted to harm me, she could have done so many, many times. Yet she hasn’t.”
She nodded, agreeing with him, her eyes darker than the night outside his window. But he knew she hadn’t shared all she’d seen, hadn’t told him all she feared. Sasha told stories, but she never told lies. Maybe her dreams felt like lies. Or maybe she simply didn’t dare speculate on what she didn’t completely understand. Lark would tell her that was wise, that words could be spoken into reality.
He didn’t kiss her or pull her close to comfort her, and she didn’t seek it. Alone this way, with nothing to stop them, the only thing keeping them apart was never coming together in the first place. He did not touch her and she did not touch him, not in the dark, not in that way. Not yet. And pleasure did not belong in the same bed as fear.
She didn’t return to sleep but lay quietly beside him until dawn, as if staying awake would allow her to see the threat before it came to pass. Just before daybreak, she crept from his bed, and he let her go, feigning sleep so she wouldn’t worry that she’d disturbed him.
Before she slipped out the door he thought he heard her whisper. “I will not let her hurt you.”