Graceling (Graceling Realm #1)(62)

She knew what it was rattling around inside her. It was fear, plain and cold.

She turned to him. “I understand why we shouldn’t fight each other when one of us is angry. But is there harm in fighting when one of us is frightened?”

He looked into the fire and considered her question evenly. He looked into her face. “I think it depends on what you hope to gain by fighting.”

“I think it’ll calm me. I think it’ll make me comfortable with – with you being near.” She rubbed her forehead, sighing. “It’ll return me to myself ”

He watched her. “It does seem to have that effect on you.”

“Will you fight me now, Po?”

He watched her for a moment longer and then moved away from the fire and motioned for her to follow. She walked after him, dazed, her mind buzzing so crazily it was numb, and when they faced each other she found herself staring at him dumbly. She shook her head to clear it, but it did no good.

“Hit me,” she said.

He paused for a fraction of a second. Then he swung at her face with one fist and she flashed her arm upward to block him. The explosion of arm on arm woke her from her stupor. She would fight him, and she would beat him. He hadn’t beaten her yet, and he wouldn’t beat her tonight. No matter the darkness, and no matter the whirlwind in her mind, for now that they fought, the whirlwind had vanished. Katsa’s mind was clear.

She hit hard and fast, with hand, elbow, knee, foot. He hit hard, too, but it was as if every blow focused some energy inside her. Every tree they slammed into, every root they tripped over, centered her. She fell into the comfort of fighting with Po, and the fight was ferocious.

When she wrestled him to the ground and he pushed her face away, she called out. “Wait. Blood. I taste blood.”

He stopped struggling. “Where? Not your mouth?”

“I think it’s your hand,” she said.

He sat up and she crouched beside him. She took his hand and squinted into his palm. “Is it bleeding? Can you tell?”

“It’s nothing. It was the edge of your boot.”

“We shouldn’t be fighting in boots.”

“We can’t fight barefoot in the forest, Katsa. Truly, it’s nothing.”

“Nonetheless – ”

“There’s blood on your mouth,” he said, in a funny, distracted sort of voice that made plain how little he cared about his injured hand. He raised a finger and almost touched her lip; and then dropped his finger, as if he realized suddenly that he was doing something he shouldn’t. He cleared his throat and looked away from her.

And she felt it then, how near he was. She felt his hand and his wrist, warm under her fingers. He was here, right here, breathing before her; she was touching him; and she felt the risk, as if it were water splashing cold on her skin.

She knew that this was the moment to choose. She knew her choice.

He turned his eyes back to her, and in them she saw that he understood. She climbed into his arms. They clung to each other, and she was crying, as much from relief to be holding him as from the fear of what she did. He rocked her in his lap and hugged her, and whispered her name over and over, until finally her tears stopped.

She wiped her face on his shirt. She wrapped her arms around his neck. She felt warm in his arms, and calm, and safe and brave. And then she was laughing, laughing at how nice it felt, how good his body felt against hers. He grinned at her, a wicked, gleaming grin that made her warm everywhere. And then his lips touched her throat and nuzzled her neck. She gasped. His mouth found hers. She turned to fire.

Some time later, as she lay with him in the moss, clinging to him, hypnotized by something his lips did to her throat, she remembered his bleeding hand. “Later,” he growled, and then she remembered the blood on her mouth, but that only brought his mouth to hers again, tasting, seeking, and his hands fumbling at her clothing, and her hands fumbling at his. And the warmth of his skin, as their bodies explored each other. And after all, they knew each other’s bodies as well as any lovers; but this touch was so different, straining toward instead of against.

“Po,” she said once, when one clear thought pierced her mind.

“It’s in the medicines,” he whispered. “There is seabane in the medicines,” and his hands, and his mouth, and his body returned her to mindlessness. He made her drunk, this man made her drunk; and every time his eyes flashed into hers she could not breathe.

She expected the pain, when it came. But she gasped at its sharpness; it was not like any pain she had felt before. He kissed her and slowed and would have stopped. But she laughed, and said that this one time she would consent to hurt, and bleed, at his touch. He smiled into her neck and kissed her again and she moved with him through the pain. The pain became a warmth that grew. Grew, and stopped her breath. And took her breath and her pain and her mind away from her body, so that there was nothing but her body and his body and the light and fire they made together.

———

They lay afterward, warmed by each other and by the heat of the fire. She touched his nose and his mouth. She played with the hoops in his ears. He held her and kissed her, and his eyes flickered into hers.

“Are you all right?” he asked.

She laughed. “I have not lost myself. And you?”

He smiled. “I’m very happy.”