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It’s right.
I bury my face against his chest as he moves back to my neck and I reach for his pants.
His hand grabs my wrist.
And like that the need—the desire—is gone. It sucks from the room, leaving only dry air in its wake.
“Ad,” he manages between breaths, “I can’t.”
“Won’t,” I accuse. It’s the same way he reacted in my room before the play. He pulled away from me then. He’s been pulling away since we got to Earth.
“Don’t start this again,” he says, standing up and grabbing a shirt from the dresser nearby. “I don’t want to argue.”
“Considering you force us to drop it every time we’re in this situation, I wouldn’t call it having an argument,” I snap, smoothing my shirt back into place.
He turns from me and leans against the dresser, and I can’t decide if I should slip out. Is this my cue to exit, because he’s done talking? Or does he expect me to stay? It’s hard to know since he isn’t telling me anything these days. After a few minutes I stand to leave, an embarrassed blush creeping onto my neck.
“Don’t go,” he says softly.
I stop and wait.
“This isn’t easy for me,” he continues.
“And it is for me? Do you think I’m happy here?” I wonder if I’m even capable of happiness anymore, but I don’t say this to Jost. Too much moving forward. Too much planning the next move. There’s no time for happiness, and it’s becoming clear that there’s no possibility of it with what we’ve discovered here. If we can’t get lost with each other, what’s the point?
“I could be happy with you anywhere if…”
And there it is: if. I’m not sure what I expect him to say. If you were happier. If you hadn’t brought Erik. If we weren’t caught in the middle of a war. If. If. If.
“Don’t you understand that we can’t sleep together?” he finally asks. It’s the last direction I expected this conversation to go in.
“Is that what this is about? Sex?” My voice peaks on the word.
“Ad, if we have sex, we can’t go back.”
I stare at him for a long moment, hoping he’ll elucidate what he means, because it makes no sense to me.
“Wait,” I say slowly, starting to grasp the heart of the problem. “Is this because of purity standards?”
“Of course,” he says. “If we have sex, we could go back to Arras to rescue the girls, but your skill is our most powerful weapon. We’ll never get to Sebrina or Amie without it.”
It’s hard to tell which emotion wins out at this proclamation: anger, annoyance, relief? They mingle and leave a sour taste in my mouth.
“You know purity standards aren’t real, right?” I hate how condescending I sound, but I thought Jost was smarter than this.
“How do you know that, Adelice?”
“Seriously? Because Cormac told me but also because half of the Spinsters were sleeping with officials and valets.” I bite my tongue to keep from using Erik as a definite example of this phenomenon.
“Are you willing to risk the girls on a hunch?”
That does it.
“Why don’t you ask your brother?” I say, without hiding the seething frustration in my voice.
“So he screwed Maela. That hardly proves your point. She didn’t have any talent anyway.”
“Well, what about Enora?” I ask. “I’m sure she and Valery, you know…”
