Aliveness in the way a child who has just been born is alive—each breath burning, each heartbeat aching.Each part of my body not being held felt as cold as the deepest sea.A storm of bravery and fear stirred beneath my ribs.We were cursed and blessed.
But you mustn’t blame us.When a god decides you’ll fall in love, it cannot be stopped.
I will kiss him and then go, I told myself, but I didn’t go.
His hands slid beneath my dress, grazing my skin, squeezing my thighs.Roaming up my back to my neck.
Each movement of his hands felt like it gave my own permission.I felt his arms and shoulders.His chest.The warmth of his skin as my fingers crawled beneath his tunic, brushing the flatness of his stomach.
Let me tell you a secret.It will save you a lot of confusion, especially if you’re someone like a king or queen or commander or priest and there are people you reign over.When given the chance to feel good, even just a small amount, people take it.Even if they’ve been told their whole lives not to take it.They do.Most of the time, they simply hide it.I say this because you might expect that I would have held off longer from the inevitable.Looking back, I wish I’d found my way into his arms sooner.That the moment he’d arrived in my life, I’d stood next to him—as he had tried to do with me—accepting that we needed to be together.
As we made our way to the furs, his skin hot against mine, his mouth and breath mixing with mine, I thought only of the sensation I was expecting, the release I was certain was coming.What I didn’t anticipate was the rest of what approached: the feeling of two hearts beating pressed against each other, the closeness, the sameness.The bond.Not just between me and him, but between me and myself.
A part of me was dying so another part could live.He was within, and I was a different person than I’d ever been before, but also I was more myself.To meet myself… the hidden, wild, breath-and-blood part of myself, to be in my own body without disregarding it… I was overcome.
I didn’t know what I was, I thought.Until now, I didn’t know.
I cried and he slowed, his eyebrows pressed together in concern.“Do not stop,” I said, and he listened, because he always listened to me.Except that one time that I will tell you about later.He kissed my tears and slowed when he was nearing the end to prolong things, so we could keep ourselves entwined well into the night.
Lips and hands and breaths.
Skin.
Eyes.Eyes.Eyes.
Looks that said more than a hundred conversations could say.
We’ll be together in a sense always now, I thought.Silly and girlish, but also entirely true.
We were tangled in every way.Our limbs, our lives, our skaels… We’d been set up by the gods, and we were falling—crashing really—into a terrible nightmare, but there is something sweet in looking back and remembering how unaware we were of the danger.We were simply young and stupid and nearly in love, and he was so utterly beautiful that I found myself wishing I could paint or weave so I could catch his prettiness and keep it.
I know I had my own charm of appearance, albeit colder and more severe; I have been told in words but also in looks.But even if I didn’t, he was under the same divine spell I was, so I’m certain I was beautiful to him, too.His hands wove through my hair, and I wanted that night to carry on forever, for us to be the thing we were together, forever.
Now, I was inexperienced, and though I feel certain I made up for that with eagerness, I think I made three errors that first night Fell and I were together.The first error was that I made no sound.I’ve come to know there is a whole hidden language of breath and moans and cries.I knew nothing of that then and was silent.
The second error I made, which I have already mentioned, was that I cried.Silently, thank the gods.But the tears started coming, and they wouldn’t stop and, in my defence, no one had ever tried to make me feel good before, not in the way he was, not with such patience and responsiveness.It was medicine to me, undoing years and years of no one caring how my skin felt.
The third came when we were done, lying beside each other with my cheek on his chest, and I knew it was time for me to go back to my room, but I was savouring the warmth of him, the scent of him.
I said.“This is a secret, understand?You must tell no one.You must promise.”
“You are ashamed?”He said it so lightly.
I sat up to look at him.“No.I only… where I am from… if people were to know, I would be at risk.”
“I am sentenced byskaelto defend you,” he said.“Whether in a drinking game or from true peril… even now that you are named Norsen, I am sentenced.It is why I was relieved when you sent me away.I knew I was in the same net as you.It frightened me.Norsern are not supposed to feel fear, but I did.”
I smiled, still teary.“You know nothing of my country, of my place in the world.”
“I know I must stay near you,” he said, his voice so quiet I almost didn’t hear him.This is something about him I came to learn.The more important his words were to him, the quieter he said them.Always.“Skaeldemands it.The gods demand it.I had nine readings in the time we were apart, all demanded it.I have been pretending I have not known this since we met.But now I have tasted you, and all is already spilled into the sea?—”
“Spilled into the sea?”
“Uh… it is… all is spread out to be seen, it’s not hidden anymore… so there is no point in hiding things.Speak the dead truth to me.When you are near me, does it feel right or wrong to you?”
My heart hammered against my ribs.“Right.”
“I will speak the dead truth, too.I wanted nothing like this.I had sworn to myself, no women, no love… I mean, yes, friends and… bedding, but nothing heavy.I fought against my mind, but I have lost that fight.”
