Porraya.
The word appears in an older script. I read it again. Not only the act but the preparation, the expectation, the way it is understood long before it arrives. My fingers rest lightly against the page. If I am going to stand in that room again, if I am going to hear thingsspoken as though they are obvious, I will not be unprepared. Not for Ari.
I keep reading. The signs, the differences, the way siakars and kyvarins develop, the way instinct comes first and must be guided or it turns into something else. Time passes and I do not measure it. When the words begin to blur I close the book and return it to its place.
Porraya. The word stays with me.
When I return to the chamber I hear it before I open the door.
Kiss. A rising, relentless cry that fills the room and, judging by the sound of it, has been filling it for some time.
I open the door.
Colsar is at the desk, a ledger open in front of him, his hand resting against the page but going nowhere. He looks up when I enter and there is something in his expression that sits between intention and defeat. He had made the effort to be here, present, to work where he could also be close, and Kiss had dismantled that from the moment he sat down.
"I came here to finish work tonight," he says. "Instead of the study." He stops, because the ledger says the rest of it plainly enough.
Kiss cries again from the adjoining room, louder this time.
He does not look toward the sound. He already knows.
"You should go to your study," I say quietly.
A small pause. He nods and stands at once, crossing into the adjoining room. The crying shifts as he picks her up, and by thetime he returns Kiss is already drinking from his wrist, her small body pressed into him, her hands curled tight against his skin.
A wave of irritation washes over me. I have told him we should not feed her blood daily anymore, especially not at night. She wakes in the morning expecting it, and when it is not there she wails. It is exhausting, and by then Colsar has already left for the day.
And yet it is nighttime, and he is giving her blood.
He is trying, Iremind myself.
He stops near the bed and looks at me as though there is something he intends to say. The words do not come.
"After you feed her you may give her to me," I say. "That way you can finish your ledgers."
"Thank you," he says, and he means it.
"Ari?" I ask.
"Still asleep somehow," he says, and there is something almost disbelieving in it.
I move past him. The bath has already been drawn, steam rising from the surface, and I slip into it carefully, the heat closing around me and easing the pull through my body. I close my eyes.
The door opens.
Colsar steps inside. Kiss is in his arms, no longer feeding, her cheeks flushed, the earlier frustration gone from her face entirely. I open my eyes.
"Well," I say softly, "hello, sweet thing."
She makes a small sound and leans toward me.
"She was hungry," Colsar says.
"I can see that."
I reach for her and he passes her over carefully, his hands lingering for a brief moment before letting go. Kiss moves against me easily, her attention shifting immediately to the water, her fingers brushing the surface with a focus that suggests she finds it far more interesting than either of us.
"She likes the bath," I murmur.
