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There came a point when he hooked my leg over his and spread me wide and entered me as he lay on his side behind me. I arched against him, my hand anchoring behind his head so I could bring his mouth to mine until I could hold on no longer and instead braced myself against the ground as he thrust inside me. My eyes watered from the bliss of it, and he kept going until I felt like I could no longer handle the ecstasy of it and I burst open.
As I came down from the high, I felt raw and exposed, and I wondered if Casamir could see how I felt—how much Iwishedto have this for the rest of my life.
He placed a kiss in the hollow of my neck and spoke near my ear.
“I would give you a letter,” he said. “But I fear I cannot recall my name.”
I frowned and lifted my head to look at him. “It isn’t time to forget.”
He smiled faintly.
“Perhaps I have miscounted the days,” he said in a sleepy voice, and as he fell into an untroubled sleep, I lay awake, desperate for his name.
Chapter Twenty-One
The Riddle
We left the clearing and returned to the castle where I followed Casamir to his room. For a few more hours, I was able to forget my fear of losing him. When he was in front of me, touching me, making love to me, it was hard to imagine he would ever forget me, but I knew the evil of magic. It had hurt me before and it would again.
Casamir slept beside me, his warmth a welcome weight, and though I was exhausted, I could not stop my mind from reeling, turning over the mirror’s riddle in an attempt to make sense of the words.
His name knows no stranger.
It is the wail on the lips of a birthing mother,
the howl from the mouth of a grieving lover.
It is the cry that breaks the night when death is summoned
and the scream that echoes at daybreak when truth makes you ache.
You know his name. You have felt it.
I turned my head and stared at his profile and tried to imagine returning to my solitary life, knowing that his memory would always live beneath my skin. I would never be able to let him go. He would drive me mad, and he would not even know it because he would not know me.
Despite being tired, I left the bed and slipped into the white dress the elves had made me for the picnic. Dawn was just breaking, and a pure golden light warmed the curtains covering the windows. I crossed to the corner of the room where Casamir’s plants thrived.
“Will he remember why he loved them?” I asked as I took a velvet leaf between my fingers.
“He will remember nothing about himself,” said the mirror. “That is the power of losing one’s name.”
My chest felt tight, and I swallowed something hard in my throat.
“And if I were to give him my name?” I asked and then looked at the mirror. This time, I saw my reflection, haunted and pale.
“Well then, that would be power too.”
I left Casamir to sleep and wandered into the garden, hoping to clear my head. I needed time to think, to cycle through the letters I had and the words I knew. Now that I was faced with losing Casamir, I felt a bone-deep sorrow.
It hurt and ached.
I had been alone so long, I never thought I would desire anyone, but here I was, wishing for an elven prince to love me.
I halted in my steps.
Surely that was not what I had meant.
I wanted Casamir to remember me, notloveme.
