34: IN THE DARK
(Kihrin’s story)
I felt great.
I didn’t even care when the guards collected me the second time or when they dragged me down several flights to the slummier section of the Quarry housing actual prisoners. The room where we’d eaten sat in a building perched above a stone pit. Some enterprising artisan had carved prison cells into the defunct quarry’s walls. Lovely, artistic cells, each a tiny dollhouse carved from marble. A pulley system provided the only entrance, controlling a vertical moving platform.
Well, in theory, it was the only entrance. I told my guards the walls would be child’s play to climb. They smiled at me. Then I oohed and aahed over the long drop while the guards kept me from wandering over the edge.
After some eternity of gazing in rapt wonder at the way the setting sun cast shadows against the rocks, at the stone’s sublime beauty—how had I never noticed marble was that beautiful—they tossed me into a cell.
The small room’s ceiling provided enough clearance for most vané to stand and not an inch more. A bed dominated the room, with a commode and basin for washing in a corner. The latter two objects were built into the cell and couldn’t be moved. A drinking cup sat on the basin’s edge. Mage-light lit the room, no brighter than starlight and the soft glow of the moons. A stone underpinning provided the foundation for the bed, fixing it in place. Given the warm jungle air, the lack of bedding seemed unlikely to prove an issue.
What an amazing bed, I thought as I lay down. Definitely the most comfortable I’d ever known. Better than any bed in the Blue Palace. This was less a prison than a den—the sort of place where one paid good metal to lie down on satin-strewn pillows and drug oneself senseless. I’d known such places growing up in Velvet Town. Never as a customer, because they were all the sort of locale where the owners would rob a customer down to their underwear. Worse than that, in many cases. And Ola hadn’t approved of drugs. At least, she hadn’t approved of drugs for me. She’d been fine about drugging her customers, especially when she did so without the customer’s permission.
Rindala proved good to his word. A minute after the guards escorted me into the cell, the door opened again. Janel stumbled inside before the door behind her closed and locked.
Light flickered off the red highlights of Janel’s black hair as she stood there, looking lost and furious and more perfect than any goddess. She slowly examined the room until her gaze reached me. “You.”
I lay there, feeling like I should say something, maybe apologize, although the misdeed requiring an apology escaped me. I’d done something, although I couldn’t put my finger on exactly what. I was just glad she was there.
“I’m mad at you.”
I waited.
Janel cocked her head to the side. “Why am I mad at you?”
“I don’t really know.” I scratched my head. “Um. Hmmm—Teraeth? Wait. Hey, do you know where—” I forgot the question. I grasped for petals of memory fluttering about on the wind. And why did I have to figure out why Janel was angry while she stood there looking so intoxicating?
Then Janel dragged herself onto the bed. To be fair, there wasn’t room anywhere else. I hadn’t made any space for her, she crawled on top of me, like a cat who’d decided to lie down in a rival’s spot and paid no attention to the fact that said spot was already occupied.
And then the time for rational thinking was officially over.
I wrapped her in my arms, held her close, and spent some small measure of eternity smelling her hair. Even through the drugged stupor, excitement and panic fluttered through me, but flinched from my grip whenever I tried to pinpoint their cause. Something about us both being here, together, in no condition to enforce the normal boundaries between us.
I felt her lips at my neck, teeth grazing along a tendon, then she whispered, “I don’t need … your protection.”
I barely heard the words, distracted by her lips, by the tingling thrill of her teeth along my skin. Faintly, what she’d said filtered into comprehension.
Of course Janel didn’t need my protection. Why would she think that? Wait, did she need my protection? I tried to focus and shifted my weight under her so I could look her in the eyes. “You do when you sleep.”
“That’s not—” Janel made a face. “That’s not the point.” She blinked at me, and I could tell she was having just as difficult a time focusing as I was. “Do you remember C’indrol?”
I frowned. I had no idea who she meant. “Who?”
“C’indrol,” she repeated.
The name sounded familiar, but damned if I remembered why.
“It’s who I was before Elana.” She grinned wickedly. “They liked you.” To emphasize the point, Janel slipped her hands under my flimsy gray tunic, then trailed and dipped down under the edge of my drawstring pants.
I grabbed her by the wrists and—
Kihrin paused.
Thurvishar sipped his tea and raised an eyebrow. “You don’t have to talk about anything you don’t want to, you realize.”
“It doesn’t bother me,” Kihrin said. “Teraeth thinks I’m a prude, but that’s because his definition of inhibited is refusing to attend orgies. It’s not just my privacy I’m putting on a display here.”
Thurvishar picked up a set of papers next to him. “Would it help to know I already have Janel’s account?”
Kihrin blinked once at the wizard, slowly. “You what now?”
Thurvishar cleared his throat. “I’m not sure if it even occurred to Janel you might consider this an indiscreet topic of conversation. If you like, we can skip all this.”
Kihrin took the papers from Thurvishar and began flipping through them. He stopped at one point and grinned broadly before schooling his expression into something more serious. Finally, he gave them back and cleared his throat. “There’s one or two points I should probably clarify. Especially with what happened afterward.”
Janel once broke her fiancé’s arms after he tried to claim dominance over her. If I’d been thinking clearly, I wouldn’t have responded in a manner so easily mistaken for the same. But clear thought and I weren’t on speaking terms. Fortunately, in that stunned moment of surprise when I flipped her over onto her back, I had enough presence of mind to whisper, “Reins or saddle?”
She relaxed under me. If you’d asked me when I was sober, I’m not sure what answer I’d have given about my own preferences, but I’d have confidently expected Janel to be a prefers-to-be-in-charge type in the bedroom. Especially since in her culture, dominance and submission were two sides of a coin that never landed on its edge.
But as I pinned Janel’s arms over her head, she looked up at me and whispered, “Saddle.”
That was the last word either of us said for some time. I’m not sure how long. Time stopped having any meaning. Eventually, after, we fell asleep.
Which is when everything went completely, utterly wrong.
I don’t know what time it happened. Later. I thought it was nighttime, but enough soft light filtered through to suggest the moons had risen. I fell a lot less drugged. Almost rational, or at least cognizant enough to realize Janel and I had just done something we’d both regret.
Okay, regret was the wrong word. This complicated matters. I was still trying to figure out what to do about Teraeth. Once he found out Janel and I had escalated our relationship … well. I didn’t know how he’d react. Teraeth had been fine when we’d previously argued over a woman, but this was Janel. Teraeth wasn’t rational when it came to Janel.
Then again, neither was I.
Janel slept next to me, effectively catatonic, looking peaceful. I hoped she was fighting the good fight in the Afterlife. She was probably still directing the rebellion in Jorat. No reason to stop that just because the Eight Immortals had asked her to go save the world, right?
Then I noticed the opposite corner of the room had grown … darker. The more I focused on it, the darker it became, until I couldn’t believe how absolutely black that space had become. The void almost had a form, looked human …
Vol Karoth stepped through the wall.
I jumped in front of Janel’s body, as though I could shield her. But then I felt the pull.
Vol Karoth held out his hand.
The sense of longing, the sense of need, was more than I could stand. The sense of being … incomplete. I’d be welcomed back. I’d be accepted.
This was the only love I’d ever need.
I reached out to take Vol Karoth’s hand.