Page 110 of Ship of Smoke and Steel

“Probably not.”

“Okay.” She squares her shoulders, as though she’s marching to her execution. “You … kissed me.”

“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have.”

“It wasn’t…,” she begins, then stops, swallows. “You shouldn’t have. Not without asking. But I … afterward, I should have talked to you.”

“You’re under no obligation to me,” I say, remembering my night with Zarun. We’ve made no promises.

“I’m under the obligation that I—you and I—” She stops again, collects herself. “Have you ever done that before?”

I raise an eyebrow. “Kissing?”

“With a … a woman.”

“No.” I take a deep breath. “I know you don’t—”

“I have,” Meroe blurts out. “It’s…” She blinks, and there are tears in her eyes.

“We don’t have to do this, Meroe.” I put my hand, tentatively, on top of hers. “Just forget it, all right? Forget it happened.”

“No.” She shakes her head violently. “I’m sorry. This is just … harder than I thought. But you told me about you and your sister.”

“It’s all right.”

“Please just listen, Isoka?”

I nod.

“When I was … twelve, maybe, there was a girl. Sarama. A daughter of one of my mother’s attendants, from a noble family, but wild. She liked to explore the castle, and one day she found her way into my garden.

“I didn’t have many friends by that age. Everyone was so careful around me. My father wanted it that way. Princes and princesses didn’t have the luxury of friends, he said. Sarama was different. She was a little younger than me, and she wasn’t afraid of anything. And that made me feel different. Ever since I was old enough to understand”—she looks down at her hands—“what I am, I’d been careful, too. But not with her.”

She pauses, pressing her knuckles into her eyes. I squeeze her hand, and she takes a deep breath.

“One of the servants caught us. I think my sister Boloi tipped her off. It was the kind of thing she would have done.” Meroe swallows. “We were in the garden, back in one of the flower beds, and we were kissing. The servant told my father everything.”

Her eyes are filling with tears again. “It wasn’t Sarama’s fault. The kissing was … I told her it was a game. I was the one who talked her into it. She just wanted to run around the garden and pretend we were fighting bandits.

“The next day, my father’s guards picked me up from my room and marched me down to the basement. My father had Sarama and her parents there, and he accused her of defiling the Princess. Her mother screamed at her, and her father. I tried to scream, too, but the guards stopped me. I had to watch while Sarama’s parents beat her bloody. All to please my father, of course. They were desperate to keep their station at court, and Sarama was only a younger daughter, and a troublesome one besides.

“Afterward, my father asked me if I knew why he’d made me watch. I called him awful things, said it was me who’d started everything. He said he was well aware, and that was why he wanted to teach me a lesson. He couldn’t beat me, you see. Not without telling the whole court that I wasn’t … what I was supposed to be.”

“It’s not allowed, in Nimar? For two women to be together?”

Meroe shakes her head. “It’s all right for boys to run around and suck each other’s pricks. That’s all just in good fun until they’re of age. But girls have to be pure, and princesses doubly so.” She looks at me, hesitantly. “I heard it was different, in the Empire.”

“I guess.” I scratch my head, embarrassed. “It’s not exactly … usual, but nobody gets beaten over it.”

“In some parts of southern Jyashtan married women are expected to keep unwed girls as lovers,” Meroe says absently. “It’s supposed to keep them out of trouble.”

“That…” I try to picture it, and shake my head. “What happened? Did you ever see Sarama again?”

“No. Her parents sent her back to their estate and kept her there.” She rubs her eyes again. “So when you kissed me, I just…”

“I understand,” I say, though I wonder if I really could. If I’d had a father, and he’d done that to me, I’d have killed him, king or not. “Like I said, we can forget it ever happened.”

“I don’t want to.” Meroe turns to face me, and my heart double-thumps. Goose bumps race down my arm. “I want you to kiss me, Isoka. Gods, I’ve wanted that practically since we first met. I just need to … get used to the idea.”