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She was cold last night. Even wrapped in my cloak, she was shivering. But when I moved beside her and draped my cloak over both of us, we fell asleep back to back. Even that felt too close, and I had to grit my teeth against the throb of my cock inside my pants as I struggled to fall asleep.
But sometime in the night, as my dreaming mind played out lush, erotic fantasies with her, my sleeping body must have turned toward Alindra like a flower toward a glowsoft orb, opening to her, pulling her in.
Shit.
I let my breath out very slowly and try not to move. My damn cock is so hard I’m afraid the heat alone is going to wake her up, and oh yeah, that would be awkward. I unravel my arm first, moving slowly, shifting my torso from her back. Alindra makes a sound that’s something like a moan and something like a sigh when I turn away, and it’s so much like the sounds she was making in my dream that I have to press my lips tight to keep from groaning.
Voids, how long has it been since I was with a woman? Casual sex wasn’t as appealing after Shenarah, and then I lost my arm, which pretty much means I have a lifetime of celibacy to look forward to.
Great.
It seemed unbearable enough when Rowan and Arryn were going at it like wild dogs in heat in our little cabin, but right now I feel like celibacy might just kill me. I pull my arm away from Alindra, lift my cloak, and manage to roll out onto the hard ground. I stay there for a moment, trying not to breathe as I listen to Alindra’s soft, sleeping inhalations and exhalations. My cock throbs against the dirt, a drumbeat of frustrated desire that absolutely does not respond to my repeated attempts to think of something other than sex. Anything other than the way Alindra’s soft, sweet body felt against mine.
Okay. Fine. I hiss a breath out through my teeth, roll over again, and pull myself to my feet. After another backward glance to confirm that Alindra’s still sleeping, I duck behind the stand of aspen trees and fumble with the lacings of my pants. I can always take care of this myself, clumsily and awkwardly with my left hand, just like I did when the wild sounds of Rowan and Arryn fucking on the other side of the thin wall between our bedrooms got to be too much.
My cock bursts free of its lacings. I wrap my fingers around it, close my eyes, and voids, it turns out that my mind is only too happy to provide hundreds of lurid images as my grip tightens around my shaft. Alindra’s chest pressed against the lacings of her dress. Alindra’s body against mine on the cliff wall, warm and trembling. Her lips. Her dark, sparkling eyes. Her—
A twig snaps behind me. My back goes stiff, and my eyes snap open. There’s a thick snorting noise against the base of my neck. My cock wilts as shock jolts through my body like magic, and I spin as I yank my pants back up, a half-formed apology on my lips.
The horse stares at me, its jaw moving in slow circles while grass sticks out both sides of its mouth. One ear swivels in my direction in a way that seems to sayyou fucking pervert.
“Shit,” I hiss as my heart beats a war cry through every muscle in my body.
I tug my pants back up, ignore my cock’s protests, and march toward the river, where I fully intend to submerge my entire body in freezing water until I lose the ability to even think about sex. The horse makes another snorting sound as I stomp past it, and I swear to the voids, that bastard is laughing at me.
Chapter15
Alindra
THE SILVER CITY
Nothing could have prepared me for the Silver City.
Sure, I knew it was big. I’d seen the maps, where the inky dot for the Silver City was three times the size of the one for the Kingdom of the Summer. I know it’s a trading hub for all the silver mines in the Barrier Mountains, and for all the grain and livestock of the lush central plains that float down the Ever-Reaching River toward the southern ports, and for anyone crossing the Dragon Pass to access the wind-swept lands beyond the borders of the Kingdom of the Summer.
And I’ve heard dozens of stories about the wild taverns of the Silver City, the dancing ladies and crazed magical light shows brimming with thieves and scoundrels, how the White Riders of the Towers manipulate magic in terrifying ways, harnessing it with animals or even with humans. Stars, I’ve even seen one of the White Riders, although I wasn’t certain if the Rider was the woman in chains or the man holding her prisoner.
Still, the Silver City takes my breath away.
We’ve watched it grow on the horizon for three days as we came down out of the mountains. Phaedron was unfailingly polite, but quiet, as the narrow Towers of the Silver City grew and grew against the dust-colored sky, and I found I didn’t quite have the courage to ask him if his silence meant something was troubling him.
Instead, we kept our conversation light, trading stories about growing up or the customs and celebrations of our worlds that both of us have always taken for granted. And when we fell silent, the looming Towers tugged our attention back to the plains.
The great Ever-Reaching River curves around the Silver City like a massive black snake, and the plains unfurl behind it in waves of patchy gold and pale green that stretch up to meet the horizon. I’ve heard those plains are sometimes called the Sea of Grass, but I didn’t really understand the name until the third evening when we watched the burning sun sink into the great plains like a scarlet orb being swallowed by the waters. Phaedron let out a long, slow whistle as the last gleaming circle of light vanished beneath the distant horizon.
“It’s all so damned big,” he whispered.
I wanted to say something funny, or clever, or sarcastic, but all I could do was nod. I studied the maps all my life, and I still had no idea how big my world actually was. We were camped in a sparse grove of twisted pine trees, to the side of the small road we’d followed out of the Barrier Mountains. It was the last stand of trees before the plains swallowed the world, and I felt horribly exposed, almost naked against this strange landscape. The Sea of Grass looked like it was going to swallow me up, and I almost wished for Phaedron to wrap me in his cloak again, to feel the press of his body against mine, keeping the worst of the night’s terrors at bay. But Phaedron had kept his distance ever since the night we spent near the top of the pass, when he joined me in his cloak to keep me warm, and once again, I found I lacked the courage to even mention it.
And now we’re standing together at the gates of the Silver City, and I’m not sure if I even have the courage to step inside. My insane suggestion that I could somehow steal the magic in the Silver City’s Towers to create a portal into the Lands Below seems laughable now, like a child’s idea of a joke. My breath catches in the back of my throat as the crowd around me hums and chatters and surges forward like water under a bridge.
“Stars above,” I whisper under my breath.
Phaedron’s hand tightens around my arm. It’s the first time he’s touched me since the one night we spent wrapped in the same cloak, and it’s both comforting and disturbing in ways I would have a hard time putting into words.
“Don’t worry,” Phaedron whispers. “You look great.”
I turn to him and find he’s smiling. Or at least his illusion is smiling. We’re both disguised as humans, short and squat and as ordinary as I could make us. Phaedron is modeled after a man who works in the kitchens, while I’m borrowing the visage of one of the women who cleans the throne room. Phaedron’s illusion has a wrinkled face and only a few remaining teeth. Still, when he smiles at me, heat floods my cheeks and trembles through my magic.
