Kai adjusted Rae’s shroud, carefully tucking and pinning the loose ends, while Kenji waited by the doorway to take Rae to their first day of school. Kai checked Rae’s lunch sack to make sure it was properly secured, tightened the cords of their sandals, and straightened the wrinkles from their new white robe.
He wanted to fuss some more, to linger in this moment before he gave Rae to the rest of the world, but he didn’t want his nervousness and fears to further rattle Rae’s own. So, Kai gave them a confident smile and told them, “You’re ready.”
Rae mimicked that same pursed look of Nico’s, when she wondered at what Kai wasn’t saying. Rae looked at Rasia who leaned against the wall of the shroud room.
“You promise?” they asked her.
“On my names,” Rasia promised. “I’ll protect jijih. Now, go eat sand or whatever you snot-noses do at school.”
“Do not eat sand,” he corrected. She chuckled behind him. Even Kenji hid a smile. He kissed Rae on their shrouded forehead. “Listen to your teacher. Be nice, and you’ll make lots of friends.”
As if he had outlined a mission assignment, they nodded gravely, so absent of the excitement or giddiness most kids should have for their first day of school. With a sense of helpless defeat, he watched as Rae reached for Kenji’s hand and they shuffled down the road.
He wished he could be the one to drop Rae off at school, but he didn’t want a snide remark or a confrontation to ruin their day, so he stayed behind in the doorway while Rae took on the world without him. Nico was already gone all drums of the day. Soon Kenji would start a new job. Rasia would join the kulls. And he would be here, on the doorstep, waiting.
“Be nice, and you’ll make lots of friends,” Rasia mocked. “Unless you’re weird, then they’ll just run away from you.”
“Or put goat shit down your shroud.”
She raised an eyebrow. Kai shook his head. Hopefully, Rae would have a much better time at school than he did, or at least the fourteen days he had managed to attend.
Now that Kenji had left, Kai unwrapped his shroud down to his shoulders while Rasia pressed her face against his arm. He could feel the smirk coil around his bicep. She said, “Nico-ji is off to work. Ysai-ji has the day off. And I have it on good account that Kenji-shi is staying away for the rest of the day. The whole house is empty except for you and me. Whatever should we do with ourselves all by our lonesome?”
He teased, holding himself a breath above her lips. “Shouldn’t you be training for the kull tryouts?”
“I can pass the tryouts with my eyes closed.”
“I don’t know.” He grinned wickedly. “Perhaps we should test your flexibility.”
“I think,” she kissed him. “. . . you’ll find,” they tripped over the raised foundation leading from the shroud room, “. . . my flexibility,” he clutched her ass, “. . . to be more than satisfactory.”
They made it as far as the serving room.
Kai ripped open her robe, and her breasts spilled out from the silk. She scrambled at his linen caftan, snatching it up past his thighs, his back, but couldn’t get it off him before he was inside of her. She abandoned her previous task and wrapped arms and legs around him. His stomach twinged a little, but the wound had closed, and the stitches were out, and it was such a relief that every little movement didn’t cause such agonizing pain anymore.
They’d been waiting an eternity for this moment—to be truly alone and allowed the time to finally lose themselves. To explore with leisure. To be loud without care. To fill all the cravings and finally satiate the hunger. To finally be uninterrupted.
He had forgotten how deliciously wet she felt around him. Had it really been that long ago since he’d unintentionally spilled inside of her? Such a long time since he was that inexperienced self-conscious kid from the gorge who had been pressured to have sex because he thought he’d never get another chance. Now, he was slightly more experienced, a little more confident, but that pressure hadn’t changed any. His gut told him to savor her, to enjoy her as much as possible, for tomorrow wasn’t promised. He never knew when it could all fall apart.
He hiked her legs over his shoulders. He had a few good memories in the serving room, but a lot of bad ones. He thrusted as if he could stamp the image of her forever into the floor, warm and perfect underneath him, better than shattered ilhans and broken adobe slabs. He printed her sweat into the foundation, creating memories for him to find and appreciate for later when the bad ones overwhelm him.
He pressed her across the serving room table, a feast for one, just for him. Her chest heaved at the pause, all succulent and ready to be consumed. He nipped at her nipple, licked at her scars, and indulged himself between her legs. He knew when Rasia was close, for her vocal curses always grew quiet, and a tension clenched her limbs.
With a tap, she turned over, communicating with that same ease of exchanging kull signals from one side of the windship to the other. He reached back and finally stripped himself of that caftan. Then he grabbed her by the hips and rode her into the table. Her encouragements cursed in his ear until they crumbled into ragged breaths. He steered her exactly where he wanted her to go. Home.
Together, they crashed to a glorious brilliant end. He slayed a dragon. He faced scavengers. He survived the Yestermorrow Lake. But his greatest pride would always be his ability to sail his kulani to a stillness.
They melted off the table and dropped against the cushions of the serving room.
They breathed, and breathed, and breathed.
Kai and Rasia fucked all day. Atop the kitchen counters, across the lounging room ottomans, and in the bath waters. Against the hallway walls. On the training room mats. Under the sycamore shade in the garden. Until Kai couldn’t move or think anymore. A pleasant fog shrouded his brain. A soreness hummed through his body. The garden, where they ultimately ended, smelled fragrant of jasmine and mandrakes. A hawk hunted for the mice under the tamarisks. He closed his eyes and allowed himself to be.
“Do you want kids?”
The brain fog scattered. He studied Rasia’s shaded face. She lay kicking her legs and poked at his sprouting facial hair, coming in embarrassingly fuzzy and uneven.
“Where is this coming from?”
A small part of him was terrified of the answer. They have done everything so terrifyingly fast—from flame to courtship to kulani—he didn’t know what he would do if Rasia wanted a child now—never mind he wasn’t of age for the Grankull to grant him that request.
She turned, hiding a blush, and shrugged. “You are cute with Rae, you know. It’s sort of hot when you go all tah on them. And I realized, I’ve never asked. I know back during the culling you said some things, but that was sort of under duress. I’m not sure what you really want.”
As always, they did things backward. It was certainly the type of question to ask before you decided to carry someone else’s name.
He licked at his lips and stared at the sycamore branches shading the harsh midday sun. “Before, I never considered having kids a possibility. Then I forgot to pull-out, and I was terrified by the what-ifs. What would I do? Would my child be as sickly as me? Would they be broken like me? Would people judge them because of who I am? It is widely known, that I almost killed Ava-ta in childbirth. What if the worst happened?”
Then it did.
“When you lay there dying, I’d have done anything to save you. I begged you to take the antidote, and despite all my fears and reservations, I’d have become a tah if that meant saving your life. I think back on it, and I’m as scared now as I was then. But if we were granted a second chance to do everything the right way, then despite all my fears and doubts, I’d do it, because I know my child will be okay as long as they have a little bit of you.”
She smiled softly and sat her chin on his chest. “I get that.”
“Do you want kids?”
“I’ve always been kind of curious about how it all works.”
“We know how it works, now.”
She swatted at him. “I mean, inside of me. I want to know what it feels like. To have a whole other person in there. They say that after your body changes forever. Not bad, but different. I want to know how it’ll change me when I’m ready for that. But lately I . . .” She paused. She narrowed her eyes and said in a reluctant whisper, “I feel empty. And lately, I’ve been thinking, what if we do go off into the Desert, but we have no gonom, and it happens, and we keep it.”
“We wouldn’t ever be able to come back,” he whispered. “We’d be leaving everything and everyone we’ve ever known behind without any support. Who’s to say you can give birth on your own without a birthing kull? And we don’t know how my magic will affect things. What if there are complications? Then, there is everything that comes afterward. We can’t keep a newborn quiet when a gonda is charging at us. The Desert is too dangerous.”
“The Grankull is too dangerous. Would you have our child spat on because of who you are? Maybe one day they’ll let you have your face, but there will always be people who will hate you. I get that now, and who’s to say they’ll ever grant you the right to have children? You stay here, and with your medical history, they might never approve of it. We’ll do fine on our own.”
“They might,” he said slowly. “If it’s not my seed.”
Rasia snapped to a sitting position. Their soft bubble had irrevocably burst. The anger in her voice sent the birds scattering. “I want the kids I’d have with you. I want my kids to have your bones, and your gentleness, and your cleverness. I want them to have your strength and your courage. I don’t want them of anyone else.”
“Those things aren’t born, Rasia,” he said, frustrated. “You think it’s easy to watch the world move on without me? I was born with the same bones as everyone else. I am clever because I’ve had to be. I am gentle because I’ve had to be. I am strong because I’ve had to be. I don’t want that for my children. I don’t want that for any child. I want them to be who they are, and not what the world has made them into. When the time comes, we are going to have to seriously consider putting someone else’s name on that application. It doesn’t have to be my seed. I’ll raise any child you give me.”
He anticipated more arguing or yelling and found himself floored when Rasia broke into tears.
“How much more are you going to allow this place to take from you?!” she demanded. She looked at him, wide-eyed and frantic. She shook her head. She jumped to her feet. “I’ve got to get out.”
She raced for the latticed walls around the garden. She scratched at them, searching for the sliding door.
“Get me out. Get me the fuck out of here!” she screamed and punched at the wood. It splintered with a crack around her fist. With one last frustrated yell, she wrapped her fingers in the sun slats and climbed. Then ran away naked across the roof.
Kai moved to follow, and froze, remembering the fact that he couldn’t leave. He wobbled back down to the ground and wrapped his arms around his knees. Because of his medical history, he had known he’d most likely never have biological children. The Grankull often rejected the applications of persons with known genetic issues. He had accepted his circumstances. He had never considered that Rasia might not.
His brows furrowed, and he blinked blurrily to remember that firefly flutter in Rasia’s belly. He didn’t let himself think about it much. It had been a dream. He didn’t get to have that life, and he was a fool to imagine anything different. One day, he might have a face. One day, he might have his names. But this . . . His shoulders bowed at the knowledge he could never give Rasia this particular want.
The day had started off so perfect, but all things fall apart.
Kai sensed when Rasia snuck into the bedroom later that night. He peeked open an eye to watch her shadowed figure limp toward the dresser to change into her night robe—wait, limp? He reached for the slow-burning oil lamp on the nightstand. He grabbed the rounded handle, and careful not to spill any of the oil, hovered it over the bed to properly see.
“Is that blood?” he whispered, careful not to wake Rae sleeping snugly beside him.
“Shit,” she covered her face, turning, but not before he caught the sight of a gruesome cut above her brow. She quickly tied on her robe and lunged for the bed.
“Rasia, watch out.”
She did an awkward twist to avoid falling her full weight atop Rae, and then stretched out to fill all the empty spaces of the bed.
“Did you get into a fight?”
“It’s nothing.”
He slipped from the bed and crouched into the cupboard for the medical supplies. He had a feeling she might do something drastic, but he hadn’t known what it was. He came around the bed with the oil lamp and the supplies. He snatched the covers off of her.
She crossed her arms and glared at him, as if he couldn’t see the cut on her brow and the fact that she had chosen to wear her thick linen robe. Rasia’s favorite was the silk translucent one. He snatched at the robe. She snatched it back, but not before he had lifted it to reveal a large bruise on her hip. He placed the lamp on the stand, grabbed her protesting hand, and inspected her bloody split knuckles. Definitely a fight, but what was she doing punching someone instead of cutting them with her sword?
“Just a couple of tent fights, that’s all,” she grumbled and snatched her hand away.
His attention snapped to her face. “Those are to the death.”
She shrugged. “If it wasn’t me, it would have been someone else.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m not you,” she snapped. “I can’t sit here every day and pretend that things aren’t fucked up. Every night, I dream of slitting the throat of every member on that Council, but Nico wants to do things the right way. The long way. But I need to fight, so this will have to do.”
“You’re killing people to make yourself feel better?”
“Ugh. Didn’t think you’d get all fucking self-righteous on me.”
“There’s got to be a better way. I know things are hard right now. If there’s anything that I can do-”
“You can’t do shit,” she snapped at him. “I want what our life should have been.” She snatched the linen rolls out of his hand and began wrapping them around her knuckles. “It’s fine. I’ve never lost a tent fight. I’m undefeated.”
He sat down on the edge of the bed, against her propped legs, and tried to understand. “What if you get hurt, and it affects your tryouts?”
Even though he could no longer try out for the kulls, Rasia still planned to. She didn’t have much of a choice. While the first vial of gonom was given out freely the night of the Naming Ceremony, she wouldn’t receive a new gonom vial or rations until she was accepted into the kulls. The Grankull did this to encourage young adults to get a job, but it placed a lot of pressure on those with new faces. So far, she had been mooching off Ysai’s rations.
“It won’t,” Rasia said.
“I don’t approve.”
She paused and stared at he with eyebrows raised. That cut above her left eye sludged blood down her temple every time she blinked. “You’re going to stop me?”
“No. You do whatever you want. But I don’t approve.”
She drank the bottle of alcohol he had brought over instead of using it to disinfect her wounds. She slammed it back against his chest when she finished it all in one swallow. “You don’t understand. No one fucking understands.”
“Not if you don’t explain it. Help me understand, kulani.”
She threw up her hands. “Tah is dead, and yet I feel so fucking suffocated. It’s like . . . I’m stuck in a room with walls on all sides and there’s no way out. Every day, the walls are shrinking. I feel like I’m dying, or going insane, or both. I need this. Just until the kull tryouts. Until I can get my feet back on a windship and the fuck out of here for a while.”
“We can figure something else out,” he said. “I can sell something to get your windship out of impound. Do you think my dagger would be enough?”
“And I can make money just the same in the Tent fights.” She dabbed at the cut on her brow. “How did the grubworm’s first day of school go?”
He sighed and didn’t fight the change in topic. Nico had picked up Rae from school and gotten the report from their teacher. “Rae says they had fun. They liked playing with the new toys, but they refused to speak with any of the teachers or approach any of the other kids. We hope Rae will grow out of it.”
“Hn,” Rasia said with a sneer. “They said the same thing about me.”
She paused, and her eyes narrowed in that way she did before threatening someone. Realizing she was doing it, she softened a bit, but the command was no less sharp. “Don’t tell Ysai-ji.”
He reluctantly nodded. She tossed the bloody linen to the floor and collapsed back into the bed. He automatically began to clean up her mess. When he crawled back under the covers, he felt scared. He didn’t know what to do or how to help her. He hugged his arms around her waist, determined to care for her as long as he could.