“It’s a wonder I have any left,” I managed, air filling my chest in one great swell. Two laurels drifted past us, their heads bent in whispered conversation, bodies pressed even closer than ours. I surveyed the paxiams, unmoving and unbothered by Demetri’s small touch—a touch that would’ve seen us whipped, or worse, had we been anywhere but inside the templum on the eve of our offering. “Did you and Osric clear all the necessary air?”
Demetri continued to play with my hair, eyes glazed and unfocused. “Hmm?”
“Osric,” I repeated, wondering if I’d remembered his name right. “Your crusiax friend?”
His fingers stilled. “Ah, yes.” He let me go, positioning the strand to drop over my left breast. “The air between us is as crisp and clear as a winter’s frost. Rest assured that business is done, and I am entirely yours for the rest of the evening, darling girl.”
“And what of the air between us?” I flung the hair he’d been toying with over my shoulder.
“What of it?” His brow creased, eyes flickering between mine.
I almost scoffed. “Does it not clog your lungs? Is it just me who feels this cloy between us, like smoke?” I matched his discerning gaze, hunting for any hint of resentment or conflict. It would be justified. The brown of his irises deepened, growing darker. “Eight cycles, Demetri.Eight cycles, and the last time I saw you, I couldn’t even—”
“Do not speak of it.” A firm finger pressed to my parted lips, stoppering the words about to spill. I resisted the urge to nip at it, batting him away instead.
“No, Demetri. I must—”
“Ashara.” He tucked another strand of wayward hair behind my ear. Goosebumps rose like spring buds across the base of my skull, and once more, my words disintegrated to nothing. “You could have been the one to hold the whip itself, and still, I would not have forsaken you. Even now, all I can think about is how blessed it is, a rare gift from our most callous Maker, to see you one last time. That at least we might fulfil our promise to be together at the end. As we were meant to…as it should be.”
The promise.
Heart attempting to make another jump to the floor, I placed a slightly trembling hand over his that now cupped the side of my face. “It is a surprise that our minds can do anything butfixate on how it is to happen,” I admitted. “How the rising moon will be our last, how every laurel here shall be worms-meal in a matter of turns.” I allowed myself the indulgence of glancing at his full mouth before my attention slipped to the rounded orb that bobbed at the centre of his throat.
Would they slit it?
“It is no surprise to me, at all,” he replied, drawing my gaze back to his. His hand lowered, grabbing my wrist and tugging me closer. Mouth inches from my ear, his breath dusted its shell. “Distraction is an art form, and we have mastered it from the very beginning. Who am I to fight human nature?”
A distraction. A word not big enough for all that Demetri and I once were. I glanced down at the narrow cavern of space between our bodies, each inhale drawing us closer. My fingers drifted to the hem of his shirt, tracing the stitching, wondering if it was the same I’d tailored for him all those cycles ago.
“Demetri, what’s this?”
His head snapped down to where I’d stretched out his shirt, presenting him with the view of the three crimson blotches marring the bottom of it.
“By the First, is thatblood?”
Demetri’s curls bobbed as his head spun, face angling towards where the paxiams guarded the doors to the hallway and latrines. “Hush,” he chided, loosening his belt to tuck the shirt into the band of his breeches. “Or they’ll award me a penance for desecrating my offering garb.” Stains hidden, he tightened the buckle, centring it.
“Cotton, wool, linen…it’ll all be dyed red come the ‘morrow.” I huffed a laugh. “You’ve just had a head start. Where did you—”
“Tavern fight,” he answered, voice quiet. “Attempted to drown the sorrows in five tankards of ale and half a flagon of mead.” My head dipped, hands settling on my hips.But of course.“Unfortunately, it incensed rather than dulled, and I may have broken a nose or two. Only the ones already crooked, of course.”
Had I been a man, free to haunt a tavern’s threshold without reprisal, I might have done the same. I nodded, wetting my lips, ready to ask who had been fortunate enough to find themselves on the receiving end of Demetri’s eager fist.
“Are you still untouched, Ashara?”
Of all the words to fall from his mouth, I hadn’t expected those. Inhaling saliva instead of air, I choked on the glob of it, lungs rattling.
“Yes.” My eyes watered, mind reeling. “How could I not be?” After what had happened, aftereverything… A part of me wanted to tear at my bodice, to show him the marks on my back that no doubt matched his own. Had he forgotten they were there? Something dropped into the pit of my stomach. What Demetri and I once had was a ghost. Something immaterial, lost to time. Of course he may have had another woman, anothersecret.How easy it was to hide small sins from the Dendralis when something dangled between your legs. “Are you?” I asked, wanting and not wanting to know in equal measure.
His eyes shuttered. “I kept my promises in all the ways that count. Every one of them.”
I looked at him then, truly looked. At the shadow of a beard sharpening the jaw that was once boyishly round. At his straight, handsome nose. The dimples. The set of his features—honest, determined—fixed entirely on me.
Still, it wasn’t enough.
“Promises can be broken, Demetri. They’re words, not iron.”
Something eased in him, the muscles in his cheeks falling slack. “To me they are.”
