Page 128 of Ship of Smoke and Steel

“Meroe?”

She’s staring at her fingers, stretching them. “Hmm?”

“Can I kiss you?”

Silence. My heart stops.

“You said you needed some warning,” I say, desperately. “But I thought”—no, don’t say just in case, rot rot rot; think of something else—“if you’re not ready, that’s fine, I just wanted to check it’s—”

“Isoka.”

“Yes?”

“Please be quiet.”

She leans over me, supporting herself with one hand. Our lips meet, a dry brush at first, and then more, her mouth opening against mine, hot breath tickling my skin. I push against her, desperately, craning my neck when she starts to pull away. The wound in my chest gives a stab of pain, and I fall back to the deck.

Ow. Rot.

“You can do this,” I tell her.

In spite of her hollow eyes and gaunt cheeks, Meroe is smiling. “I can do this.”

She puts her hands on me, and does it.

If you ever have the chance to be awake while a ghulwitch heals you, I do not recommend you take it. A gentle heat throughout my body contracts to burning fever where I’m torn and bleeding. I feel something move inside me, as though there were rats under my skin, burrowing around and looking for an escape. The heat changes, becoming something else, raw energy that stimulates every nerve at once, simultaneously orgasm and agony, sensation too strong to touch, like staring directly at the sun. It lasts for roughly ten million years, and then stops. I slowly become aware that I am still breathing.

“Isoka?” Meroe’s voice is distant and timid.

“Am I…” My own voice sounds like a stranger’s. Blood roars like the ocean in my ears. “Am I about to explode?”

“I don’t think so,” Meroe says. “I think it worked.”

I open my eyes. Meroe is leaning over me, looking worried. I put one hand on my stomach, worm it down under the bandage, to where I would expect to find the ragged edge of the wound. There is only smooth skin, slicked with leftover blood.

“How do you feel?” Meroe says.

The answer is, as though I’d been struck by lightning, full to the brim with a strange, crackling energy. I sit up—too fast, my head spins—wrap my arms around her, and kiss her again. The energy seems to flow into her, too, lighting her up from the inside. She kisses me back with the same desperation I felt, moments or millennia before. My hands are sliding down her flanks, and hers are fumbling under my shirt, undoing first the bandages and then my chest wrap.

“Meroe.” I speak in fragments, between gasps. “I don’t. Exactly. Know what I’m doing.”

“I have. Mmm. An idea.” When I pull back for a moment and raise an eyebrow, she gives me an innocent look. “I had … instructional books.”

“Of course you did.” I grin, and kiss her again, and pull her close. “You’re a very strange princess.”

26

“Hagan?” I keep my voice soft. Meroe is lying beside me, snoring gently, one brown shoulder protruding from where my shirt serves as makeshift blanket. “Are you there?”

Eddica energy flows in a thick stream through the pillar behind us, stronger down here near the Deeps than it was back in the Upper Stations. I’m hoping that means it’ll be easier for Hagan to talk to me, but I’m still surprised when he actually appears, gray motes drifting out to form the approximate shape of a human and then slowly sharpening into detailed features. It apparently surprises him, too, because he looks down at his hands with exactly the goofy smile he used to wear. Something inside my chest clenches.

“Hi,” he says. His voice is clearer now, with only a touch of the strange distortion. “I’m glad you’re okay.”

“So far.” I sit up a little, tugging the blanket. “I should have listened to you earlier.”

He gives an awkward shrug. “I’m not sure I would have listened to me, in your position.”

My heart is beating fast. This is the most coherent he’s been, by far, and I have to ask. “Hagan, how did you get here?” I hesitate. “Do you know that you’re…”