The landscape had changed when they exited the cave, and for a moment, none of them spoke, but stretched their legs and tried to adjust to the light and disorientation. Somehow, even though they’d escaped the brunt of it, grit stuck to their skin and coated their brows and eyelashes, and Sasha shook out her hair and her scarf, beating her hands against her dress and shaking out her shoes.
Kjell found the highest point, little more than a mound of sand, and took out his spyglass, eager for Enoch and a bath. A haze hung in the air, obscuring the view in every direction. The sun was invisible, the light filtered and red. There was no horizon, no east, west, north or south. No matter the direction, the outlook was the same. Enoch would have to wait another day.
Eventually, Sasha joined him on the rise, bearing good news. “Some of the men are exploring. Isak made a torch out of horse hair and a strip of cloth. There’s water farther back in the cave! Not a lot, but enough to wash our faces and fill our flasks.”
“Then we’ll stay here tonight. We can camp in and around the cave. It does us no good to travel if we’re going in the wrong direction. We’ll just become more lost, and no one will find us out here.”
“We’re lost?” Sasha asked. She didn’t seem especially concerned.
“For the moment,” he replied, still futilely searching. He snapped his glass closed, and scrubbed at his skin. For a man who spent the majority of his time on horseback, he despised being filthy. Sasha handed him her scarf, and with a sigh, he accepted it. He’d pulled her close in the darkness, and he didn’t have the energy or desire to push her away again.
Without her veil he could see an angry strip of red, blistered flesh on the side of her neck where the relentless sun had found exposed skin.
“You’re burned,” he said, returning her scarf. It had helped to remove the sand from his eyelashes, if little else.
She nodded, shaking the veil once and recovering her head. He drew it aside and pressed his palm to her sore skin, making her flinch. When he moved his hand the blisters were gone, leaving a line of large, golden freckles in their wake. The freckles bothered him. He ran his thumb across them, wanting to wipe them away, puzzled. When he’d healed Tiras, he’d left no scars. He’d restored him completely.
“Don’t do that,” Sasha said, her voice sharp. It surprised him. Sasha’s voice was never sharp. He dropped his hand, raising his eyes from her skin and stepping away, confused. She’d welcomed his proximity in the cave.
“It is a burn, Captain. It will heal on its own.” She pressed her fingers to her neck, hiding it.
“It is done.”
Her shoulders slumped. “You can’t keep doing that.”
“I can. And I will,” he retorted, covering his confusion with ire.
“I didn’t know your healing came with a cost,” she murmured. “I don’t want you to heal when you don’t have to.”
Realization flooded him. She didn’t want him to heal her because she thought it cost him. For every life he saved, he gave a day of his own. He didn’t know if soothing blisters constituted saving a life, but she was clearly upset by it.
“For all I know, I will live to be a very old man with more years on this land than I know what to do with. That is the one thing about my gift that has never bothered me, the possibility that I might be trading my days away.”
“You are kind,” she said softly.
“I am not kind,” Kjell scoffed.
“And you are good,” she added.
“I am not good!” he laughed.
“I have never known a man like you.”
“You were a slave in Quondoon! The men you knew were not trying to impress you.”
“Neither are you, Captain. Yet I am still impressed.”
“Then you have a lot to learn.”
She nodded slowly, and he was immediately remorseful. Her old master had told her she was simple. She was not simple. She was wise . . . and infuriating.
“Why do I make you so angry?” she asked.
“You don’t make me angry,” he argued, frustration making his hands curl.
“I do,” she insisted, looking at him steadily.
“You do not know me. You have no idea who I am. You think I’m a Healer, but I have slain more men than I have healed.”
She was silent for a moment, absorbing his confession. He began walking back toward the cave, expecting her to follow.
“You are wrong, Captain,” she called after him. “I do know you. I knew your face before I met you. I saw you more times than I can count. You have always given me hope.”
His heart tripped and his feet followed, and he stopped walking to avoid falling on his face in the shifting sand. He didn’t look back at her, but she had to know he heard her. With a lusty exhale, he resumed walking, minding his step.
There were serpents in the cave. Coiled in the dank corners, unaccustomed to being prey, and blinded by the fire starter, they were little match for lances and swords, and the men ate well for the first time since leaving Bin Dar a fortnight before. Sasha didn’t help them kill the snakes, but she didn’t balk at skinning them, and she ate the meat with the same relish as the men. It didn’t take long for someone to remind her that she’d promised them a story when the storm passed, and she nodded amiably and settled in for her tale.
“When Isak held the fire in his hands today, it reminded me of a story I once knew. In the beginning, there were only four gifts. Telling, Spinning, Changing and Healing. But as the years passed and the people multiplied over the land, the gifts grew and changed, and new gifts emerged. Power grew and evolved. In some of the Gifted, telling became seeing and healing became transforming. Some of the Changers began to shift into more than one animal, and spinning became more and more diverse. Some Spinners could turn air into fire, like Isak. Some turned objects into illusions. Some could even spin themselves into trees.”
“—but not animals,” someone inserted, and Sasha nodded.
“No. That would make them Changers.”
“But there was one Spinner who was so powerful he could spin thoughts into stars. They called him the Star Maker.” She was quiet for a moment, and the men all raised their faces to the stars, looking for the brightest light. The sky had begun to clear and the moon lurked behind the haze, glowing dully. Kjell raised his hand and moved his thumb across the muted swath, remembering Sasha’s golden freckles.
“When someone grew old and was close to death, the Star Maker would draw their memories into his hands and shape them into orbs of light, releasing them into the heavens, so they could live forever.”
Isak cupped his hand and created a flame, showing off for Sasha, and she smiled as he released it, tossing it as if he too were a Star Maker.
“Sometimes, he would call the star back, pulling it down from the heavens, so those still living could hold the memories of the ones they lost.”
The men chimed in then, naming the people they missed, the people they’d lost, and the oldest soldier, a man named Gibbous who had been in the King’s Guard for as long as Kjell could remember, called out the name of a woman, his eyes glued to the heavens.
Jerick hooted, surprised, and the mood was broken. Isak, determined to keep Sasha talking, asked her if she’d lost someone close to her.
“I am the one who is lost,” Sasha said. “And I don’t think anyone is looking for me.” The corners of her mouth lifted wryly, and Isak looked momentarily stricken. Kjell glowered at him. His men had become too familiar with the servant woman. It wasn’t good.
They unrolled their pallets in the mouth of the cave, leaving the horses hobbled outside. Kjell volunteered for the first watch, needing solitude.
He didn’t get it.
Sasha found him when the camp quieted, and she perched beside him, casting her eyes out at the empty expanse, mimicking his posture.
“You are angry again,” she stated softly.
He didn’t deny it, though anger was too strong a word. He was weary. Restless. Distracted. Intrigued.
“Having a woman traveling with a group of warriors is dangerous,” he said.
“Why?” The question was quietly distressed.
“Because if they care for you—and they all do—they will stop looking out for each other and they will all start looking out for you. It’s not your fault. It’s not theirs. It’s simply the way we are.”
“I see,” she whispered, and he ceased speaking, knowing that she did.
She stayed with him as the moon rose higher in the sky, sloughing off the haze and lighting the dunes around them. Before long, Sasha was curled on the sand beside him, her head on her scarf, her legs and arms drawn into her chest, and he sighed, knowing his men would think they dallied.
But he didn’t wake her. Not yet. He would let her stay a while longer.
The horses slept, his men dreamed, and he kept watch.
They entered Enoch ten days after leaving Solemn, dusty and dirty, longing for baths, wine, and beds that didn’t encourage sand spiders and stiff backs. There’d been no battles, despite Sasha’s warning, and their armor was dingy, their skin chafed, and their horses in need of grain and grooming.
The land of Enoch boasted the River Bale, the largest river in all of Jeru. It extended for one hundred miles, just below Jeru City all the way to the borders at the south of Enoch, and because of that, the province enjoyed trade with the kingdom and the Northern provinces, unlike its poorer neighbor, Quondoon.
Along one side of the River Bale, fine homes and respectable businesses lined the streets. Sheltered women and cherished children moved freely, and a cathedral erected for the first Lord Enoch overlooked the river and cast a disapproving shadow upon the opposite bank. Across from the safe and the acceptable—with only the width of the mighty river to separate the two—all manner of decadence and depravity had become well-entrenched.
The wealth was just as evident on the far bank of the Bale, if not even more so, the free flow of money and vice drawing the respectable and disreputable alike. Gaming and gambling drew the greedy and the bored. Taverns and teahouses enticed the hungry and the hiding. Elaborate public bathhouses, where washwomen would draw a man’s bath, clean his clothes, and keep him content while he waited for them, attracted the soiled and the lonely, and kept them coming back again. Luxurious inns boasted rooms that were fully stocked with food and fair company, and the drinks never stopped flowing.
It all bore the purifying sheen of money, but the women were still concubines and the spirits still made men foolish. Kjell’s men were eager to be impetuous and imprudent for several days, and when they boarded their horses and secured lodging, they dispersed along the streets of Enoch with firm orders to be prepared to ride out in two days’ time. Kjell was among them, Sasha deposited in a room of her own with a maid at her beck and call and the benign instruction to do whatever she wished.
Yet Kjell worried.
And he fretted.
Then he grew angry that he worried and frustrated that he fretted. Finally, after spending hours doing the things that usually brought him pleasure and relief, he stormed back to the inn where he’d left her. He stomped up the stairs to her room and pounded upon the door of her chamber until she opened it with weary eyes, the wafting scent of rose petals, and freshly-washed hair. He grunted his relief that all was well, repeated his edict that she go wherever she pleased, and turned and stomped to his own quarters, directly across the wide corridor.
Then he stood inside his room and listened at his door, straining his ears to see if she left. She didn’t. Where would she go? Did he think she’d followed him from Solemn only to leave him in Enoch? He threw himself across the massive bed and fell into restless sleep, wishing she was curled nearby and hating himself for it.
He would take her to Jeru City. He would find a place for her in the queen’s service, and he would be free of her.
He returned to the bathhouse the next day, determined to lose himself in his old ways, to soothe himself in water and steam and scent and skin. But the woman who attended him looked like Ariel of Firi—it was the look he thought he preferred—with dusky skin and full lips, round hips and heavy breasts. Her thick, black hair was arranged in fat ropes down her back, and he found himself wishing it was unbound, the curls untamed. When she looked up at him, her eyes carefully lined in kohl and heavy-lidded with pretended ardor, he felt nothing but self-loathing. He immediately sent her away.
He washed himself and donned fresh clothes, eager to be on his way though he had no destination. He walked aimlessly, his eyes empty and his mind full, when he thought he saw the washwoman again. He recoiled, wondering why she would trail him, and realized it wasn’t her at all.
The woman passed by, eyeing him with blatant appreciation and he realized his mistake. She didn’t resemble the washwoman from the bathhouse. Not really. She resembled Ariel of Firi. Did every woman have her face, or did he see her treachery in every woman? He looked for her wherever he went. He’d never spoken her name again, never told Tiras that he searched, but he had never stopped.
She would be difficult to find. She’d beguiled him for many years, feigning devotion and fealty, swearing her loyalty to the crown while plotting to undermine it. She was a woman who could change from one animal to another, flying from place to place, shifting as her climate and surroundings required. She would blend in until it was safe to be seen. Then she would take what she wanted and hurt whom she must.
She had never been satisfied with being the daughter of a lord or an ambassador of a province. She’d wanted more, circling Tiras and using Kjell, plotting to make him king so she could take her place beside him. But Kjell had never wanted to be king and suddenly another woman had been named queen—a little bird with powers even greater than her own. Unmasked, Ariel of Firi had disappeared.
He had no doubt she would surface again. When she did, he would not be a Healer. He would be an executioner, and there would be justice.
He walked until dusk and returned to the inn, lurking outside of Sasha’s chamber, famished and dissatisfied. He could hear her inside and wanted to see her, even for a moment, but spent the evening in his chamber, eating his supper alone, and wishing the morning would come. As the hour grew late, he found himself outside her room again—telling himself he was only seeing how she fared—and discovered that the door was unlatched. He pushed it wide, alarmed, and stepped inside. No candles were lit, no supper had been consumed, and her bed was neatly made.
Sasha stood by the window, and she’d pushed the drapes wide to let in the moonlight. It appeared she was waiting, though for what he couldn’t guess. He pushed the door closed behind him, making her jump and making him scowl.
“Your door was ajar. We aren’t in the middle of Quondoon, Sasha. We’re on the banks of Enoch, and there are plenty here who would like nothing better than to drag you off.”
Her hair was loose around her body, and her eyes were on the moon, but when he spoke she turned from the window and met his gaze. She was breathing rapidly like she was afraid, and her eyes were so wide he thought he must be too late, that something or someone had already harmed her.
“Sasha?”
With a deep inhale and little warning, she pulled her new dress over her head and stood naked in the moonlight—bare skin and rosy-tipped breasts, gently flared hips and long limbs—all of her softness exposed to the night. He could have closed the distance between them, if only to shield her from his eyes and cover her with his body, but he stepped back instead. He saw her hands flex at her sides, resisting the urge to cover what she’d revealed, and he knew she was frightened.
“What are you doing?” he moaned, simultaneously horrified and transfixed. He knew what she was doing. He was not an innocent and a woman’s body was always something to be appreciated. But the setting was all wrong. Her pale skin and vivid hair looked garish in the darkness, a sacrificial offering to an idol she’d created—an idol he knew did not exist—and he took no pleasure in the sight of her, even as he acknowledged her beauty.
“I am yours,” she said simply, but there was a tremor in her voice—just the smallest hint of distress—that made Kjell’s legs feel weak even as his head swam with the vision of her. “I am not a child. I have lain with men. Twice Mina arranged it. She told me it would keep us safe. Now I belong to you. I will lie with you if that is what you wish.”
Outside a bird shrieked, and the sounds in the street beyond and the establishment below seemed to swell all around them, in chorus with the pounding of blood in his head. Sasha started to sink to her knees, supplicating and subservient, and Kjell raised a warning hand.
“Don’t you dare kneel!” he roared, and she froze, her chin snapping up. Her eyes—deep and sad—reminded him of the well in the Jeru City square where Jeruvians shouted their wishes, only to leave, disappointed and hoarse. He would not make the same mistake. He would not yell, and he would not make foolish wishes.
He stalked toward her, pinning her in place with his gaze. Bending, he grabbed her gown from the ground and offered it insistently. When she made no move to take it, he tossed it at her. It collided with her chest and slid down her body, pooling at her feet once again. His eyes followed the descent but he forced them to stay at her feet.
“I know why you are doing this,” he said, moderating his voice.
“Because it is expected?” she offered, though it was more a question than an explanation.
“You want to bind us together. But lying with you will not bind me to you. It will only further bind you to me. Do you understand?”
Sasha was silent, as if she didn’t understand at all.
“Men like me don’t—” he paused midsentence and rephrased. “Men don’t lie with women because they . . . love them. Men find pleasure in the act. That is all. It is women who find something else.”
He picked up her dress once more, finding the opening and forcing it over her head, keeping his eyes averted as best he could. It bunched around her neck and her arms weren’t in the sleeves, but it covered most of her salient parts. His fingers brushed the place where her shoulder met her throat, and he felt her jerk. She might want to please him, but she was afraid of him too. She began to right her clothing, shoving her arms back into the sleeves and securing the ties at her breasts.
“You and your men, you went to the washwomen yesterday.” It was said without accusation, but Sasha clearly knew that the washwomen offered a variety of services. “You gave one of the women your body, Captain, and you took hers. Why will you not do the same with me?”
“How do you know this?” he gasped.
“When you left me here, I saw it, as if it had already happened.”
His stomach roiled, and he stumbled back.
“You are far more trouble than you are worth,” he whispered, mortified that she had seen him, and worse, that she’d admitted it to him.
“That is what Mina used to say,” she whispered, bowing her head. “I’m sorry if I’ve made you angry. I cannot help what I see.” Her voice broke, and he knew he’d wounded her. “I am trying . . . so hard . . . to understand you.”
“If you want to understand something . . . then ask.” He knew as soon as he said the words, he would regret them.
“And you will tell me?” Her voice was so wistful he could only nod.
“We will be on the back of that horse for another fortnight. I will tell you.” She nodded and he inclined his head as well, indicating a bargain agreed upon. He had to get out of her chamber. His hands were shaking and his lungs burned. He turned and strode toward the door.
“Kjell?”
It was the first time she’d ever said his name. She usually called him captain or master, though he’d put an end to the latter very quickly. He froze.
“Yes?”
“You said if I came back . . . you would try to love me.”
He turned his head, caught in the familiarity of the words.
“What?”
“Come to me and I will try to love you, I will try to love you, if you but come back,” she chanted softly. “I heard you . . . and I came back.”
“I lied,” he said, breathless. He made himself look at her again, so she would believe him. She was covered from head to toe, and yet he could still see her unclothed.
“Who were you lying to?” she asked.
“To you,” he whispered, lying again. He looked for his anger. Where was his bloody anger? Come to me and I will try to love you. I will try to love you, if you but come back.
She made him want to try. She made him want to lie again.
“It didn’t feel like a lie,” she said, and he could only stare at her silently, willing her to let it go. But she persisted, relentless in her undressing.
“You didn’t kiss the wash woman. Why? Do men not find pleasure in kissing?”
His body tightened and he turned away, reaching blindly for the door.
“You said if I didn’t understand something I should ask.”
“Yes. Men find pleasure in kissing,” he ground out.
“Will you kiss me?” she asked, and he cursed, slamming his hand against the heavy wood, making it tremble and his resentment soar. He turned on her with his weapons drawn.
“Why?” he made his voice cold, but he didn’t wait for her to answer. “If I do not kiss you . . . are you going to take off your clothes and offer yourself to one of my men?”
She flinched and he cursed.
“Why would I do that?” she whispered.
“You are trying to survive. I understand that.” He did understand it, and he wouldn’t hold it against her, even if it bothered him. Survival was ugly, and she’d survived terrible circumstances. Still, such behavior would cause problems among his men.
“You are wrong. That is not who I am.” Her voice shook, and for the first time, he saw fury in her face.
“It is who we all are, Sasha. Every man and every woman. We are all just trying to survive.”
“Why do you hate me so much?” she asked, her voice level but her face flushed. Her eyes were molten, and he wondered how he had ever thought them blank. They snapped and sparked, radiating heat and life and emotion.
He closed the space between them and sank his hands into her heavy hair, lifting her chin to his so he could drive his words home. The angle parted her rosy lips, and he scowled down at them, their very color suspicious to him.
“I don’t hate you,” he choked out. “I don’t trust you. I don’t want to feel anything for you. And you are determined to make me your fool.”
She answered him with clawed hands, pulling at his hair the way he pulled at hers, her arms bracketing his face, her body crowding him. Her sudden aggression surprised him. For once, her anger rivaled his own.
“Do you feel this?” she asked, her hands tightening in his hair, making his scalp burn. “What about this?” She stood on tiptoe and sank her teeth into his lower lip, hanging on like a rabid wolf as he hissed and gripped her face between his palms to make her stop.
They were nose to nose, chest to chest, his lip caught between her teeth when he realized that her breasts were soft and her thighs firm, her temper hot and her mouth wet. Her face was delicate beneath his hands, the line of her jaw smooth and silky, her eyes as liquid as the blood that roared in his head. She released his lip from her teeth, but her hands didn’t loosen in his hair, and she didn’t retreat.
“Do you feel me now?” she asked, but her voice cracked, her anger melding into uncertainty.
It was something Lady Firi would have said—bold and imperious—but Ariel of Firi wouldn’t have released his lip, and she wouldn’t have watched him with the same mixture of expectation and vulnerability. Lady Firi would not have waited for him to kiss her with lips that trembled or eyes that begged. She would have bit him and scratched him and wrapped herself around him, taking what she wanted.
“No,” he lied, harsh. Hell-bent. But his heart betrayed him, quaking, terrified that Sasha would believe him—finally—and release him, shamed, as he intended her to be. Shame was a wonderful weapon. But she didn’t step back, didn’t pull away from him. Instead, she continued to lay herself open, an emotional obeisance that was unfathomable to him.
“How can I feel so much when you feel so little?” she cried, her breath moving against his lips, the mere inches between them a contradiction to the lies he told. He couldn’t answer her. He would give himself away. So he stared stonily, unflinching in his deceit. Her lids closed, as if his glaring refusal hurt her eyes. Her lashes, as black as her eyes, lay against her freckled cheeks and, freed from her gaze, he shuddered. She was precious to him. Precious and so . . . lovely.
She was so impossibly lovely.
Men who made their living with a sword were large and strong, or they didn’t last for long. Women who made their living serving others were lithe and lean, with very little left over for themselves. Kjell was a warrior, Sasha was a slave.
But he felt her.
She must have sensed his tremor, for her mouth returned. No anger this time, no teeth. She simply placed her lips on his, connecting them, as if by doing so she would see inside him, hear his thoughts, and know for certain that he was immune to her.
If she had lain with men, those men had only taken, not given, because she did not seem to understand the art of the act or the steps typically followed to create pleasure. She did not curl her tongue against his or even part her lips to invite him in. Hers was not so much a kiss as a need to get closer—to know—and her mouth was completely still against his. Soft. But still.
Then her lips parted slightly and she inhaled, drawing his heart from his chest, out his captive lips, and into her lungs. It was in that moment that he lost his grip on denial and plummeted into the warm abyss of acceptance.
The hands he’d never withdrawn from her face shifted, his fingers curling against her skull, holding her to him, and his lips began a frenzied game of seek and find, his tongue following the path of his soul, the soul she’d extracted with her indrawn breath. She welcomed him with thoughtless ardor, matching the press of his lips and the heat of his mouth with jubilance, arms clinging to his back, her body vibrating like a bow string.
Wrapped around each other, their mouths melded and mated, only to retreat and reclaim, colliding over and over again. He would not be able to let her go, he thought. He would never be free of her. The knowledge flitted past the black of his closed lids, a shooting star fierce and fleeting, only to be absorbed into his wonderment.