The Winter of the Witch (Winternight Trilogy #3)(55)

“I can heal this for you,” he said.

She nodded once, vain enough to be glad that at least there would be only a white scar instead of a scarlet one. He cupped his hand, trickled water onto her cheek, while she set her teeth against the flare of agony.

“Tell me,” he said, after.

“It is a long story.”

“I assure you,” he said. “I will not grow old in the telling of it.”

She told him. She started with the moment he’d left her in the snowstorm in Moscow and finished with Pozhar, Vladimir, her journey into Midnight. She was wrung out at the end, but calmer too. As though she’d laid the skeins of her life out neatly, and there was less of a tangle in her soul.

When she fell silent, he sighed. “I am sorry,” he said. “For Solovey. I could only watch.”

“And send me your mad brother,” she pointed out. “And a token. I could have done without your brother, but the carving—comforted me.”

“Did you keep it?”

“Yes,” she said. “It brings him back when I—” She trailed off; it was too fresh, still.

    He tucked a short curl behind her ear, but said nothing.

“Why are you afraid?” she asked him.

His hand dropped. She did not think he would answer. When he did, it was so low she barely caught the words. “Love is for those who know the griefs of time, for it goes hand in hand with loss. An eternity, so burdened, would be a torment. And yet—” He broke off, drew breath. “Yet what else to call it, this terror and this joy?”

It was harder this time, to move close to him. Before, it was—uncomplicated, reckless, joyful. But now emotion freighted the air between them.

His skin had warmed with hers, beneath the blankets; he might have been a man except for his eyes, ancient and troubled. It was her turn to push his hair back where it fell over his brow; it curled coarse and cold beneath her fingers. She touched the warm place behind his jaw, and the hollow of his throat, laid her spread fingers on his chest.

He covered her hand with his, traced her fingers, her arm, then her shoulder, slid his hand from spine to waist, as though he meant to learn her body by touch.

She made a sound in her throat. The coolness of his breathing touched her lips. She did not know if he had moved, or if she had, to bring them close together. And still his hand moved, gently, coaxing suppleness from her. She couldn’t breathe. Now that they were no longer talking, she could feel the tension gathering in him—shoulder to hand—where his fingers dug into her skin.

One thing to take the wild stranger to herself. Another to look into the face of an adversary-ally-friend and…

She wound her fingers in his hair. “Come here,” she said. “No—closer.”

He smiled then: the slow, unknowable smile of the winter-king. But there was a hint of laughter in it she’d never seen. “Be patient,” he murmured into her mouth.

But she could not, not an instant more; rather than answer, she caught him by the shoulders and rolled him over. She felt the strength in her body then, saw the shift and play of muscle in the faint candlelight: hers and his. She bent forward to breathe into his ear: “Never give me orders.”

    “Command me, then,” he whispered back. The words went through her like wine.

Her body knew what to do then, even if her mind did not quite, and she took him into herself, snow and cold and power and years and that elusive fragility. He said her name once, and she barely heard, lost as she was. But after, when she lay pliant, curved into his body, she whispered, “You are not alone, anymore.”

“I know,” he whispered. “Neither are you.”

And then, finally, she slept.





18.


    On the Backs of Magic Horses




HE ROSE FROM THE TANGLED heap of snow-colored furs some unmarked hours later. She did not hear him go, but felt his absence. It was still midnight. She opened her eyes, shivering, and sat up. For an instant, she did not know where she was. Then she remembered and lurched to her feet, afraid. He was gone, he had vanished into the night, she had dreamed it all…

She seized hold of herself; would he really vanish without a word?

She didn’t know. The madness had gone from her; she was only cold now, teeth set against a rush of shame. The voices of her upbringing sounded loud in her ears, all of them accusing.

Teeth sunk into her lower lip, she went to retrieve her clothes. Damn this shame, and damn the darkness. She turned her head, and light flared all at once from the candle in the wall-niche. Lighting it shook her not at all, as though her mind had accepted at last a world where she could make things burn.

Groping, she found her shift, drew it over her head. She was standing in the doorway between rooms, undecided and chilly, when the outer door opened.

The candlelight highlighted the bones of him, and filled his face with shadows. He had the bundle of her boy’s clothes in his hands. She caught the sound of voices and crunching footsteps outside the bathhouse.

    Fear filled her, unbidden. “What is happening outside?”

He looked rueful. “I think that between us we have sealed the murky reputation of bathhouses.”

Vasya said nothing. In her mind, she was hearing again the sound of the mob in Moscow.