I had worked so hard to block myself from this pain. To turn guilt into anger, sorrow into scorn. Hanim shamed and burdened me beyond what I could bear, and when killing her didn’t stop the noise, I built barriers taller than the gates of the Citadel. “All I wanted was to exist for myself alone, but I—I don’t really exist, do I?” I whispered, and they were the truest words I had spoken.
I retracted my hand, scrubbing my wet eyes. “What did you call it? An ‘infantile mastery of my emotions’？”
Arin looked at me. Not his calculating, considering glances, or his wary stare. He just looked at me, almost helplessly.
“Anyway.” I coughed, groping in the cloak’s pocket. A stream of inane chatter flowed past the brambles of my discomfort. I had shared too much. “Unfortunately for you, if I am not brooding, I’m complaining, and I plan to do plenty of both this evening.”
I drew from my pocket the fig necklace I purchased from the Omalian street merchant. Oh. I’d forgotten about this.
Arin’s brow arched. The motion was unfairly attractive. “You’re turning red.”
“I don’t turn red,” I argued, but this might very well have been the exception. Every drop of blood was rushing to my cheeks. I had endured a tainted elixir, poisoned sap, the talons of Al Anqa’a. They paled in comparison with the sheer effort it took to extend the fig necklace in the Nizahl Heir’s direction. “I bought this for you,” I said in a shower of syllables. “You don’t have to wear it, of course, I just thought. If you wanted. The violet color reminded me of the ravens on your coat.” I didn’t say that figs reminded me of safety and comfort. Two things that—in a painfully ironic twist of fate—I had come to associate with Arin.
Arin stared at the necklace. Two more seconds and I would pretend to faint, or maybe hurl myself on a wandering soldier’s sword. Anything to keep him from reviving me to this fervor of mortification. What was I thinking? The Commander didn’t wear jewelry, and certainly not a cheap Omalian necklace with fruit on it—
A gloved hand closed around the necklace. He tied it around his neck without looking away from me, patting the spot where it settled. “As though I would turn away a gift from Suraira herself,” he mused. A shake of his head, as though the very concept thwarted rationality. “From the Alcalah’s Victor.”
The redness spread from my cheeks to my scalp. I laughed, fumbling with the cloak. “Consider me flattered. The great and mighty Commander accepting my humble offering! The true victory to celebrate.”
Arin’s fingers convulsed around the fig. “Stop.”
Did he think I could control this burgeoning panic? Stem the epiphany that I wanted more of Arin, more of his life, his time, his rare smiles? I wanted to be known by him. To lay my shame and regret in his confidence and trust he would hold them firm.
“Come now, my liege, modesty doesn’t become you.” My limbs had a separate agency from my mind, gesturing at nothing and everything. “I’m only rejoicing in the honor and high dignity of such a gesture from—”
“Enough!” Arin shouted.
I dropped the cloak. He advanced, a complex array of desperation and anger warring across his features.
“I am not immortal, lofty, mighty, or magnificent. I cannot be, because I am just a man.” Every word was bitten off, drawn from a place that simmered in neglect for too long. Ice-blue eyes, eyes that saw too much, saw through my careful pretenses, searched my own. “I am only a man.”
Later, I wouldn’t recall who reached first. Those details faded to make space for the rest.
We met in a collision that should have rocked the very foundations of the Citadel. Arin’s mouth slanted over mine, arms weaving steel bands around my waist to pull me tight against his chest. I buried my hands in his soft hair, dislodging his circlet.
A tightness inside me went slack, and a thousand coils of tension sprung to take its place. Coils of blind need, of pure demand.
Arin tasted like nothing I could name. I had made a vow against intoxication, but I would recant immediately for the chance to savor the decadence of him. I barely registered my back hitting the wardrobe. My legs wrapped around his waist, and I tore one of Rory’s gloves in my hurry to take them off. I traced Arin’s scar, the shadows under his eyes, yanked at his collar. Ravenous to touch him, to spell my name in his skin, leave him as thoroughly and irrevocably marked as he would leave me.
Arin kissed me with the same singular attention and skill he displayed in every facet of his life. He took me apart with each drag of his lips against mine. His clever hands found their way beneath my skirt, the leather press of his fingertips against my thighs hard enough to bruise.