“What did you say to the jaipari in Queen Azari’s vault? When you pointed at me in the water?”
He shifted in my bed, throwing an arm around me and tugging me close against his chest. He was so warm that I all but melted into his side, sighing with relief at this easy feeling between us.
Right when I thought he had completely fallen asleep, he said, “I told her I needed a crown for my Queen.”
Chapter 41
She reminds me of you, sister. She has the same fierce independence and need to protect others. But I still don’t know if I can trust her. But why should I? She certainly can’t trust me.
—Letter from Kiyan to his family, unsent
Kiyan
Yaseema was still sleeping when I woke up the next morning. I didn’t even remember falling asleep with her, but that explained my dreams and the soft smell of lemons and spilled ink haunting me through the night.
I sat up, staring down at her, unfamiliar with the level of trust that came with sleeping with someone without keeping one eye open, and now I’d done it with her twice.
I raked a hand through my hair, remembering the first time I’d woken up with her, with our limbs tangled in each other. Holding her in my arms that feltright. Like the only sane thing in the insanity I found myself living in.
There was something about her that drew me to her, like the way she was so passionate about what she wanted, about what she learned, until she became so focused on it, she was consumed. It felt like that to kiss her—like I was the textbook she wanted to consume, read ravenously, acquiring all the information she could.
I snorted. I never thought comparing myself to a textbook would be so arousing.
But I couldn’t think of a time when I had slept with someone else without a knife under my pillow and felt complete safety.
In the palace, my skin had felt on fire just being there without my family, working in service of a man who’d killed my father and slaughtered my Court.
I could barely remember when I’d allowed myself to be vulnerable, not when my life involved walking on a knife’s edge at every moment.
I glanced down at her, lying on her side, curled against me like an unfurling flower.
She looked softer when sleeping, and I lifted a hand to trace her brow, my finger featherlight across her face.
She looked... less studious.
The small frown line between her brows that seemed permanently there was smoothed away and she seemed at ease. Not as if she were evaluating everything about her surroundings, looking for anything hidden, secret, unseen.
Her gold spectacles sat on the table where I’d placed them, and I thought of what happened between us the night before, when I’d taken them off her face, and kissed her like I’d wanted to so many times.
I’d almost done it when I’d first confronted her, when I’d taken her wild storm curls in my hand and cut them for her. I’d almost pressed her down into the bed at the caravanserai in the morning when she’d looked up at me with large, fathomless eyes, her legs threaded between mine. I’d nearly allowed myself to know if her lips tasted of lemon too.
And now I knew. And the urge to do it again had not left. I wanted to keep tasting them, I wanted to drown in her.
What had I been thinking?
It was bad enough that we had this thing between us, this constant pull to her, as if she were the life magic I derived all my power from.
But now I’d given in to temptation, and it was much, much worse.
I knew what she tasted like now. I knew the sounds she made in the back of her throat when I kissed her. The feel of her in my hands as she straddled me.
Kissing her wasn’t wise, but I wanted to do it all over again.
I pressed my hands to my eyes and groaned softly, trying not to wake her, despite everything in me wishing her eyes would flutter open so I could touch her lips again. This was bad. I couldn’t afford a distraction like this.
I couldn’t afford to care about something else.
Not when I had nothing left to give anyone.
