A FACE HOVERED ABOVE MINE, BLURRY AND OVERBRIGHT, as if I’d stared too long into sunlit water. I blinked a few times, waiting for it to resolve itself: a man, maybe twenty years old, with broad and bony Nordic features like a Viking’s, white-blond hair swept back, and gas-flame-blue eyes lined with smudged black. His nose was long and ridged, and his mouth wide and soft, the lower lip much fuller than the top. Following the lines of his lips, I licked my own in reflex. His cleft chin was stubbled with blond, and through my haze he looked somehow foggily familiar.
Blinking, I reached up at him, trying to touch his face like a groping child.
“So handsy,” he chided playfully, catching my hand. His long, blunt fingers wrapped around mine; they were very warm, with wide rings on almost every finger, the metal much colder than his skin. He flipped my hand over and brought it to his lips, brushing them over my knuckles. I felt the heat of the breath, and the shocking sear of something even warmer. From my very horizontal vantage point against his thigh, my belly bottomed out in the sweetest way. “Just like I remember. I told you next we met, I’d greet you properly, didn’t I? Though you do seem very inclined to pass out on me. Wonder how I should take that.”
“And where are you from, exactly, that a ‘proper’ greeting involves a girl lain out on her back?” Luka snapped from somewhere above us.
I focused on him, squinting, and Malina’s and Niko’s worried faces coalesced next to his. I abruptly remembered that there were other people here, and that I should start making an effort to move.
“Easy, now,” the blond said to Luka. He had the mellowest voice, comfortable and somehow careless, on the brink of laughter. The heedlessness of it was the sexiest thing I’d ever heard. “I’m not the one who put her there, am I? I can’t be blamed for catching a pretty apple already falling.”
“She is not a fruit,” Luka said, sounding so affronted it actually made me laugh out loud. The boy grinned down at me widely, his teeth very white and not quite straight.
“It’s true, I’m not,” I agreed, still giggling ridiculously. “I am, in fact, a female human. You—what is your name, anyway? Will you help me up?”
“It’s Fjolar, swoony lady. And of course.” He had a strange accent, clipped, upturned syllables, and an even stranger way of choosing words—like nothing I’d heard in Cattaro. Before I knew it, he’d wrapped his fingers around my upper arms and drawn me up easily against his broad chest, as if he were adjusting a piece of clothing rather than hauling up a person.
The inside of my head lurched back and forth as soon as I was upright. Everything sparkled for a moment—how pretty, daytime shooting stars indoors!—before I drew another breath of that tobacco, chocolate, and whiskey scent, and both my mind and stomach calmed. He was warm and very solid against my back, and I took a few more sips of air through parted lips, letting the smell rise up the back of my throat.
“Smell something you like, flower girl?” he murmured into my ear, too low for the others to hear.
I sat up away from him reluctantly, my cheeks flaming. “Why would you call me that? Only my . . .” Only Mama ever called me that.
“It is Iris, isn’t it?” he said, leaning back on his haunches and running a hand over his hair. “That’s what you told me at that party. That, and a few . . . other things.”
I closed my eyes, mortified. If he was having this effect on me now, while I was still too woozy to stand, I could only imagine the things I’d wanted to say to him while my blood ran hot.
Luka offered me both hands, glowering so fiercely I nearly burst into fresh laughter despite the shame. I took them and he pulled me carefully to my feet, anchoring me with a warm, firm grip on my shoulders.
“You all right, Missy?” he said, peering into my face. “You gave us all a solid scare. I believe you about the—I believe it. I believe you and Malina both. No need to do that again, understood? The ceiling, or the falling.”
“Yes, sir, got it, sir,” I said, still stifling laughter. What was the matter with me, this ecstatic rush of hilarity? Malina was the giggler, out of the two of us. “No more falling down, and definitely no—wait. You saw the ceiling?”
“Hell yes, I saw it,” he said grimly. “I don’t think he did, though. He came in at the very end, once you’d already let go, and he was more focused on you than anything.”
Still leaning on Luka, I turned to look at Fjolar again. He’d gotten up too, and he gave me a quirked smile as he dusted off the knees of his black trousers, as if to say, look what you did, made me all dirty. He wasn’t nearly so tall as Luka, but he still stood a good bit taller than me, with a broad-shouldered, muscled frame, and veins prominent on the backs of his large, loose hands.
Now that I could actually see all of him, the modern Viking impression was even stronger. His pale hair would’ve brushed past shoulder-length had it not been scraped back into a careless bun, the undersides shaved. I usually hated that look, but all I could think of was how those shorn, soft sides would feel like felt against my palms. He had gauged metal earrings in each ear, spiraling like ibex horns, and a chunky silver bracelet around one thick wrist—a roped, open design with arrowheads on both ends. His silvery gray V-neck dipped over a smooth chest, the sleeves rolled up to his elbows.
And his forearms . . .
I nearly swayed, gaping at the designs inked into his skin. They were flowers of all kinds, but only in black and washes of gray, almost mathematical in their grid-like precision—as if someone had drawn up architectural plans of the way I saw flowers blooming with the gleam.
The gleam that had reared up in me so strongly just now, broken through like a swollen river tearing down a dam. Had it been him, somehow? But he hadn’t even been in the café with us when it happened.
He tipped his head to the side, amused, raising his forearms for my inspection. “Like them? I did them myself. I told you that too, if you remember.”
“I don’t remember, actually,” I said, my head clearing a little now that I wasn’t near him any longer. “I only barely remember you at all. Why are you even here? How did you find me?”
“I’ve been looking for you since the party, to see if you still wanted to settle a bet you lost to me. Though I imagine you won’t remember that, either. You mentioned this place a few times when we talked; it sounded like a favorite. Thought I might find you here.”
“This isn’t a good time,” I said, after a moment.
He raised a pale eyebrow, tilting his head, and my insides heated again. “Is that so? And why not?”
“Because their mother’s dead,” Luka said when I hesitated, his jaw clenching when I turned to glare at him for the bluntness.
Fjolar’s face sobered, and he looked to me. “I’m sorry to hear it.” I nodded slowly. Better that he thought what everyone else did. “My condolences to you.” His bright eyes moved to Lina. “And to you. Malina, if I have it right. I’m sorry for your loss.”
“Not all that much,” Malina said quietly, but with such distaste I looked sharply at her. Her upturned nose was wrinkled, and her lips were pulled delicately away from her teeth, as if she smelled something only just gone putrid. “I wouldn’t say you’re that sorry about it at all.”
“That isn’t true,” he said, sounding genuinely somber for the first time. “And I’m sorry to have barged in on all of you like this, when you were clearly . . . in the middle of something.”
“We were,” Niko said pointedly. “Want to see if Iris feels like settling her bets some other time, such as later? Or not now?”
That lazy half smile slid back into place at the unspoken “or never,” eyes sparking like a flicked lighter flame. That sooty eyeliner against the impossible blue of his irises and his blond lashes was such an unsettling combination, but instead of dissuading my gaze it just made me want to stare openly at him. “Understood. If you’re up to finding me later, Iris, when you’re feeling more”—his eyes slid over Luka, Malina, and Niko, then back to me—“unchaperoned, I’d be very happy to hear from you.”
“But”—I licked my lips again—“how would I do that? I don’t have your number.”
He was already halfway out the door, but he paused to smile over his shoulder. “Oh, you do. Just check, whenever you have the time. I won’t have gone anywhere.”