Kirra’s face was hot with wonder and desire. The plucked rose, the scattered petals. The old Danalustrous signal.
Meet me in the garden tonight.
She picked up her wineglass and sipped from it, hoping to calm her fevered pulse.
Someone was talking to her. Someone close by. She blinked twice and tried to concentrate on her near surroundings. “Perhaps I could come visit you and your sister at Danan Hall,” Toland was saying in her ear.
Kirra gave him a winsome smile, completely false. She was still breathless. “I’m sure Casserah would like that,” she said. “But I can’t promise I’ll be there.”
“Someone said you were leaving for Danalustrous in the morning.”
“I am. But I never stay anywhere for long. It is never wise to count on me.”
THE meal went on and on. More courses, more wine, a welter of after-dinner sweets. Then speeches. A few toasts. More wine. Finally, the slow, disorganized migration to one of the drawing rooms, where a pale young boy was already seated, playing at a harp, and servants were circulating with more trays of food.
Kirra was one of the last to enter the room. One swift glance around was enough to tell her Romar was already gone.
She stepped back across the threshold and practically ran down the brightly lit hallways. This was Ghosenhall. She knew every twist and turn. She could sneak in and out of the palace by any number of circuitous routes and not worry about running into curious servants or gossiping young serramarra. There were a dozen gardens at Ghosenhall, which could have been problematic, but only one was really near the palace itself and offered a formal maze of rosebushes, lilies, and fountains. She had no doubt that that was where she would find Romar.
It was cool outside, but the rain had temporarily stopped. Grumbling black masses of clouds overhead promised that the storms would return soon enough. Kirra ran lightly down the wet flagstones of the garden, her red skirts gathered in her hands, a shadow herself among the spindly shadows of bushes and ornamental trees. It was so dark she could make out almost nothing. If Romar was already here, would he be able to see her?
A figure stepped out of the darkness and snatched her against a warm body. She recognized his scent, his shape, great gods, the texture of his skin beneath her hands. She was crying; she knew she was crying, and laughing, too, as he kissed her and broke away to whisper her name and kissed her again.
“Kirra. Dear heart, I am so sorry—
Kirra.
Not this way, never this way, I swear to you I would not have let this happen—”
“I know—it’s all right—I know, I know—”
“As soon as I said her name, I knew you did not realize she was here—but I could not—how could I—and then I had no way to tell you—”
“I know. I know. Shh, it’s all right—”
He was crying, too. She could feel his cheek damp with tears when she brushed his face with her fingers. For the first time since she had met him, she had to hope she was stronger than he was. She had been drawn to him partly because of his strength, his restless energy, his quick male pride. But these were the very traits that would work against her now. She knew before he said it that he was not going to give her up.
“This changes nothing,” he said. “I know it is dreadful, it is a shock to all of us, but I still love you. I will not leave her, but I love you, I have to have you. When can you meet me? Where? I am returning to Merrenstow for a few days, but I will be leaving again in a month or so. You can come to me wherever I am.”
She kissed him, pulling his head down to hers, pushing her fingers through his hair till they encountered the ribbon tied at the back of his head. Like a mischievous child, she tugged on the bow, and his hair came loose, spilling over her shoulders, over his face. “I love you,” she said against his mouth.
He kissed her urgently, then pulled back, trying to see her face in the darkness. “You will meet me? You will come to me?”
“Send me word of where you are.”
“At Danalustrous? I should write you there?”
She kissed him again. “Yes. Danalustrous. That’s where I always return.”
That seemed to satisfy him; he didn’t realize she had not promised. He kissed her again, holding her so tightly that she almost could not breathe. But that didn’t matter. She didn’t want to breathe. She almost did not want to live.
She kept her hands laced in his hair, as if all she cared about was feeling its subdued radiance beneath her palms. But her fingertips were tracing the contours of his head, and her fingertips were dense with magic. This was a form of healing, she had decided, a way of seeking out a disease and destroying it. But now she was searching for memories, hunting down emotions. Now she was planning to excise images, cauterize the sharp, bloody wounds of desire. She looked for a specific kind of poison that had lodged in his body, had slipped past the hard shield of his skull, webbing itself throughout his mind so that he could hardly have a thought that was not tainted.
She could drain that poison away. She could leave him healed of Kirra.
He kissed her again, harder, more desperately. “I wish I could come to you—tonight,” he muttered between kisses. “Do you sleep alone? I could—come to you. I could tell her—the king sent for me. I cannot—see you ride away tomorrow—and know I did not have—another chance to be with you.”
“Not tonight,” she gasped back, her fingers tightening in his hair, because she did not want to do this; she did not want to work the magic. Just one more night with him. Was that too much to ask?
Wild Mother, watch over me,
she thought. “There is no time.”
“Then when? When?” He kissed her again. “I must see you—”
“Send word to Danalustrous,” she whispered, and flattened her palms against his head. She held her mouth to his in an intemperate kiss while magic streamed from her body into his.
It would not take effect immediately, she knew. He would recover over a period of time, as a man might recover from a fever, weak at first, stronger as the days unfolded. There would be moments when he was dizzy, not sure why, catching at a bedpost or doorframe to keep his balance. But he would grow stronger. He would forget he had ever been unwell. His life would resume its former rhythms, untroubled by memories of an old fever.
“I cannot live without you,” he murmured against her mouth.
“I know,” she said. “I know I will die without you.”
THEY left the garden hand in hand till they got close enough to the palace to be seen. Fresh rain was just beginning to fall.
“Your skirts,” Romar said. “They’re all wet. And a little muddy.”
Kirra laughed. “I can dry them with one pass of my hand. You go in first. You are more likely to have been missed.”
He paused, one hand on the door, and looked back at her. “I will see you again soon,” he promised, and disappeared inside.
Disappeared from her life.
She stood there as long as she dared, letting the rain patter on her head, make tear-sized stains on the red of her gown. She was close enough to the salon to hear the low rumble of conversation, and she wondered if anyone was looking for her. Senneth, no doubt, who would immediately realize that Romar was missing as well. Who else would notice? Who else would wonder and worry?
She stepped inside, brushed all traces of rain from her clothing, paused at a small mirror in the hallway to check any damage to her hair. Not as badly mussed as Romar’s, though he had remembered to retie his ribbon before returning to the palace. She patted a few curls in place, pressed her fingers to her lips, which looked puffy and much-kissed. A little magic, so. A very demure and composed serramarra stared back at her.
She could do this.
She slipped back inside the salon and accepted a glass of water from a passing footman. Within minutes she had eased herself into a small group of laughing young women, all of whom were speculating about what it might be like to be married off to a Karyndein ambassador.
“That dark-haired one, he was very short, but—did you notice his hands? I thought I would faint when he touched me.”
“I hear the women in Karyndein are treated like goddesses. The wealthy class is
very
wealthy.”
“I wouldn’t like to be so far from home, though.”
She spotted Senneth across the room, talking to Seth Stowfer but watching Kirra. Kirra summoned a small smile and a little shrug. She glanced at the large, ornate clock hanging on the wall and surreptitiously held up a single finger.
One hour to go.
Senneth smiled and returned her attention to her own conversation.
So that final hour went, Kirra slipping from group to group, speaking to everyone she thought Baryn would want her to acknowledge. She was never unaware of Romar, standing near the center of the room beside Baryn and Valri, holding his own series of earnest conversations. Every time she glanced at him, he was watching her, even while he appeared to be discussing some complicated commercial agreement with the foreign ambassadors. Every time she moved to another part of the room she would find he had repositioned himself so that she was still within his line of sight.
I cannot stand this anymore,
she thought suddenly, as the hour ticked past two and still few of the guests had left the room. She could hear the ominous clash and roll of thunder outside and knew that the promised storm had stampeded in. The air wafting in from the half-open windows was cool and inviting; the scent of rain was very strong.
She had to get outside. She had to go somewhere she could breathe.
Senneth wasn’t looking at her, so Kirra could drift across the room, aimless and unnoticed, smiling insincerely at anyone who caught her eye. At the doorway she paused, and took one last look at the handsome crowd, all bright dresses and sober jackets, excited laughter and soft, scheming whispers. Hard to guess when she would be back at Ghosenhall again.
Romar was watching her, of course, his body shifted slightly from his last stance so he could track her progress. She put a hand to her cheek as if to feel for heat, then pressed her palm to her heart as if to check that it was still beating.
I love you, I will love you always.
He nodded, and she slipped out the door.
Down the hallway, down another hallway, out the great front entrance watched by a host of guards.
“Raining out there, serra,” one of them cautioned her, and she nodded.
“I know. I like the rain.”
She fled down the massive steps, straight into a downpour, soaked to the skin within a few paces. She could not see for the raindrops, for the tears, so she moved blindly over the slick grass, into the sheets of falling water. Her first thought was to make for the gate, to flee the palace drenched and on foot, but the rain was falling so hard she could not even be sure she was headed in the right direction. Uncertain, despairing, she made a quarter turn, took a few steps—turned again and started off on another route. The palace was somewhere behind her, but now she was so disoriented she did not know which direction she was facing, if she was headed for the barracks or the stables or the back lawns.
It didn’t matter. She didn’t care. She stumbled forward as far as her feet could take her, but it wasn’t far. Something tripped her and she fell to the muddy ground, collapsing in a red puff of soggy skirts. She was sobbing. She could not push herself back to her feet. Her body shook with the force of her weeping; her ribs had tightened so brutally over her heart that she could not draw breath. On her knees already, she bent double so her head was almost to the ground, and let the rain batter her with unrelenting misery.
She wanted to change herself to some small armored creature that would not feel the rain and would not hate the mud and would not remember what it meant to love or cry. She wanted to change herself to stone, or to dirt, or to rain itself. She wanted to obliterate herself, disintegrate here, leave behind nothing, not even pain.
She did not have the strength. She could not move, she could not alter. She merely lay in the remorseless storm and wept.
CHAPTER
41
A
S soon as Kirra realized she was awake, she squeezed her eyes shut tight. She felt rested and serene, but a small anxious part of her knew she should be in the silver pit of hell. If she didn’t open her eyes, if she didn’t even think, she might not remember why.