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His eyes are liquid, aglow with reflected light.
I duck my head. My body is warm all over, and I have a feeling I’m smiling like a fool. It’s too much; I don’t want anyone to have this kind of power over me.
He follows me as I weave my way through the whirling dancers, out onto the sidelines. He calls after me, quiet. “Vesper?”
I soften at the worry in his eyes. “Sit with me,” I say, and pull him down onto an empty stoop, where the shadow of a doorway gives us a little shelter.
I search for something mundane to distract me from the brush of his knee against mine. I touch the leather cord around his wrist. “You’re always wearing this. Does it mean something?”
He traces its length with the tip of his finger, and a soft, embarrassed look comes over his face. “When I was small, my father looked after the kinnari birds whose feathers make the Wardana’s cloaks. He raised the last one from when it was a hatchling. They were clever birds, but prone to loneliness. Father gave them a bell to ring, for when they wanted him.”
My stomach tenses at the vulnerability in his voice.
Dalca’s eyes dart away from my face. “I had bad dreams as a child. My grandfather was... strict. But he was the Regia. Father gave me a bell on a cord, one that would bring him running, night or day. After his... accident, I kept the cord on me.”
“That’s...” I feel like I’ve walked off the edge of a watchtower and only just noticed that there’s nothing but air under my feet.
He groans. “Please don’t make fun of me.”
I don’t think he realizes he’s plucking at the cord. I put my hand over his. “I wouldn’t.”
Dalca looks at me, startled, lips parted. In this low light, mosscloth cloak over his clothes, he could be any other boy. What if he were?
If he were just a boy, would I admit what I feel for him?
His gaze falls to my lips.
Would I lean in and give him the kiss he’s hoping for?
Our last was so brief that I remember only the shock. I remember nothing of the feel. His lips are a shade darker than his skin. They don’t seem soft. But they might be.
His breath stills.
My body leans forward before my mind catches up. My hand covers his lips, and I press a kiss to the back of it.
“That’s as much as I can give.” My voice comes out no louder than a whisper. I pull back, pressing my fingers into my tingling palm.
His eyes are soft and a little bemused.
“Don’t make fun of me,” I say.
His lips part. “I wouldn’t.”
An electric something hangs in the air between us all the way back through the tunnels—where we leave our mosscloth cloaks—and to the Ven. In the shadow of the main arch, I hesitate, not willing to part ways just yet. I won’t be able to sleep, not when I know what tomorrow will demand of me.
Dalca’s fingers press against the inside of my wrist, soft as air. “I have something for you.”
He strides off, throwing me a look over his shoulder, the dimmed glow from the wall sconces catching in his eyes.
I jog after him, biting back my curiosity. He takes me on a path through the Ven’s sandstone halls, past a pair of heavy double doors, into a room I can tell is large by the way our footfalls echo loud and tinny. All the ikonlights are off, save one that dimly casts light across the wide room, onto the racks of weapons and gauntlets that line the walls. The armory.
Dalca beckons me through an archway into another connected room. It’s dominated by two large tables with rolls of fabric and strips of leather neatly arranged on their surfaces. One strip of red leather has a needle and thread sticking out of it, as if someone paused in the middle of embroidering an ikon.
“Through here.”
A door so small I hadn’t noticed it. Through it is a tiny room, where full-length, slightly mottled mirrors have been mounted on the walls. Dalca doesn’t follow me in.
I meet my confused eyes in the mirror and turn to him. “Dalca—”
