Page 57 of Zenith Court

She lowered herself to my mouth and gave me her full weight. I closed my hands around her thighs, then slid them up to her hips. She was already wet. The first stroke of my tongue drew a sharp breath from her, and the second made her hips tip toward my mouth.

I learned what she wanted from directly beneath her: the long strokes she leaned into, the shorter work at her clit that broke her breath, the stillness she took over and used for herself. She threaded one hand into my hair and held me where she wanted me. When I changed the pressure, she whispered, “There,” and I kept it exactly there.

Her thighs tightened around my face. Her other fist closed in the wool. The pace belonged to her; I followed every shift of her hips and every change in sound until she stopped trying to stay quiet and began moving against my mouth in earnest. When she came, she caught the cry behind her teeth, her body bearing down while I held her through every pulse. I kept my tongue on her until her grip in my hair loosened and her thighs began to shake.

She lifted herself just enough for me to breathe and looked down at me, flushed and unsteady. I kissed the inside of her thigh. She shivered and climbed back along my body, leaving wet heat across my stomach before she settled face-to-face beside me.

She drew my head onto her arm and hooked one knee over my hip. Her mouth opened softly beneath mine, her breath still uneven. “Still slowly?”

“Yes.”

Her hand closed around my cock and stroked once, then again, her thumb spreading the wetness at the tip. My breath caught. She watched the reaction with the same attention she had given my hands.

“Do you still want this?” I asked.

“Yes. Slowly.”

She shifted closer and guided me to her. The head of my cock pressed into her by degrees while we lay on our sides, eyes level. She was slick and warm around me. I stopped when her breath hitched.

“More,” she said, and drew her knee higher over my hip.

I eased farther in. Her fingers tightened at the back of my neck, not urging, only holding me close. When she had taken all of me, we stayed still for one long breath, forehead to forehead, her body pulsing faintly around mine.

Then she began to move, a deep unhurried rock with her knee riding my hip. I matched her carefully, withdrawing only far enough to feel her pull me back. Each return pressed us closer, her breasts against my chest, her breath warming my mouth.

My hand settled at the small of her back. The other slipped between us, and my thumb found her clit. I adjusted when her breathing changed, circling more firmly while her rhythm shortened. She watched my face the whole time. Her mouth opened on a breath, and I kissed her.

Her second orgasm built slowly. I felt it begin in the small tremors under my thumb and then close around my cock in deep, repeated pulls. She said my name against my mouth, quiet enough for the sleeping rows, and kept moving until the last shudder passed through her.

With me still inside her, she placed her palm over the burnt-copper lines on my forearm. “Now you,” she said. “Look at me.”

I kept my eyes on hers and came inside her. My hips pressed forward once, then again, each pulse drawing a rough breath from me. Her hand stayed over the ink my father had taught me to hide, and she said my name once, plainly.

Afterward neither of us moved at once. She kept her leg over my hip while my cock softened inside her, and I held her through the small aftershocks that still tightened her body. When she finally shifted back, she kissed me before easing us apart.

She watched my breathing settle and ran her palm down my arm until my fingers opened on the wool. “All right?”

“Yes. You?”

She flexed the leg draped over mine, then settled closer. “Good. Stay.”

At my wrist she stopped speaking and rested her thumb over the pulse and the line. I found a cloth among the store supplies, cleaned us both, and pulled a cut fleece over us before the cold reached the store. She tucked herself against my chest and let me keep one hand warm between her thighs.

We stayed there while the lantern burned down. Beyond the canvas, the camp breathed in uneven rows that gradually settled into the count. Kieran laughed once near the cook line and then went quiet. Beneath everything, the basin’s note remained high and glassy, pulling the water toward morning. My father lay in the third row east beneath the waystation woman’s lamp, perhaps trying the count without its hold. Astra’s weight rested along my arm.

The eastern ridge would remain dark for another four hours. Then the valley would rise and become a march. That night I let the sounds pass without sorting them. Astra’s hand remained over the line at my wrist, holding nothing down.

37

Astra

We came down into the Court’s valley an hour past first light. Aldric had taken us the long way around the ridge so the sun would be behind us when the valley opened. From the cart, his injured leg braced beneath a folded blanket, he waited until sunlight reached the outer channel before signaling us forward.

The column behind us wore no uniform and carried no banner. Network cells from six towns walked with tools still on their belts. Hall folk marched beside families of the kept and the Dimmed, many carrying names chalked on slates. The people Kieran had freed from the Tower came behind them, some walking steadily and others supported by strangers they had met the day before. The road carried the uneven sound of four hundred different paces trying to become one. Whenever the Court appeared between the trees, the slates rose higher. Along our flanks rode the grays who had unbuckled the Council seal. Pale rectangles marked their saddle straps where the badges had protected the leather from the sun. Sadie remained with the rear camp at the valley mouth. She had chosen the post and stated the choice twice so nobody would decide she needed rescuing from it. We would not carry her back through those doors.

Zenith Court filled the valley floor as if the water had built it, which the founding records suggested it had. Silver channels ringed the outer galleries. The Conclave dome rose at the center, with the kept floors and founding basin below the waterline. Every channel ran high and glassy, drawing inward toward the basin. I knew that thin note. I had been below the Court’s waterline when it began. The Rite was entering its final night, and the pull was strengthening.

Twelve days earlier, I had been inventory inside those walls. I knew when the linen changed on the kept floor and how boiled cloth, lye soap, and damp stone lingered afterward. I knew the grates and the places where old plumbing had defeated newer locks. Buttoned into my coat was a numbered chit for a silver wren held in the intake vault. I had kept the receipt because I meant to collect what it represented. This time, I had brought witnesses too numerous for the Court to dismiss one at a time.