House of Sand and Secrets (Books of Oreyn #2)(80)
OFFERINGS
“What are you trying to do?” Jannik says the moment we are alone in our suite of rooms.
“I don’t know what you mean.” Outside has gone dark with the afternoon thunderstorm. If Pelimburg was a city of impossible times, MallenIve in summer is a pocket-watch. By three the clouds begin to gather low and black, rumbling ominously to each other as they convene, and within the hour, they release their downpour on the sweating city. A fat blob of rain splatters on the glass. Four o’clock, then.
“This – hurting people, using them. It’s not like you.” He walks closer, and the room shifts around him, growing small and close. Trapping me. “First Merril, and now her.”
“I protected you,” I say. “Would you rather I stood back and watched you suffer?” I can hear the tears in my voice, that thick sound of a female weakness for which my brother always mocked me. I swallow over and over, willing myself back to a calm state – a vacant, logical state.
“I would rather you work with me, than use me like a replacement for scriv.” Jannik is behind me now. The heat of his body flows through the small space between us. It feels like someone is holding a brand to me.
Far away, lightning jags down on the edges of the city, and I count under my breath. It seems to take forever before the low thunder echoes. I press my hand on the glass, and watch the rain fall. “I’m not using you–” I take in a deep breath when he puts his hands on my shoulders and leans in close, so his breath is a hot whisper against my ear.
“Yes, you are. And I almost understand why.”
I let him turn me around. A slight frown just pinches his brow, and his third eyelids are half-closed across his eyes, like a sick cat.
“Oh really?” I try to sneer but I don’t even have the ability to do that. I feel broken inside, confused. What I did to Carien, I know it was wrong, so why am I not feeling any guilt? Perhaps I am more like my brother than I ever believed. Perhaps what I saw in him and hated was not a male thing, but something deeper, an inbred Pelim atrocity.
“I think,” and he says it slowly as if he himself is not totally sure, “that you are tired of being used, and you believe you’re going to save yourself from being the victim if you attack first.”
“No,” I say, because have I not thought these very things – that I refuse to let someone make me weak ever again – and I hate him for being right and for saying it. For making my thoughts real.
“It doesn’t work that way.”
“Don’t,” I say. “I’m not like that.”
“Fine.” He steps away from me, taking with him his heat and magic. “Then stop acting as if you are.”
He’s leaving, and I am not yet ready to face Carien. “Stop,” I say to him. He waits, one hand paused on the handle. “You’re right. I don’t want to be the victim.”
Jannik’s third eyelids slide completely over his eyes.
“And I won’t let myself be.” I take a step toward him. “But I also won’t let the people I care for be hurt, and if that means I need to arm myself, then I will.”
“So you plan to use me anyway?”
“No.” I close the space between us, coming closer to him, close enough that his magic flutters against me. “Not if you don’t want me to.” I press my palms to my cheeks and take a small gasping breath. When I drop them, I am ready to say what I need to tell him. “I can give you up.” My smile is small and tight. “I don’t want to, but I can, so that you can live.”
“What are you talking about – oh.”
“I will go back to scriv, and I will never touch you again, as long as it means you live.”
“You live as long as I live,” he says. “Your bargain isn’t about me–”
“Jannik.” I put my hands to his face; the skin is smooth and slightly rough at the same time, like untreated silk. His magic prickles under my nails. “I’m not trying to force a bargain.” I lean forward, and wonder if this kiss will be the last one we have.
If it is, if it must be so that this new-made bond can falter and die, then I want it to be a thing I can carry with me forever. Like the minute glass pendants the jewellers make in Pelimburg, that open at the imprint of a lover’s thumb to reveal the preserved eye of a nightfish, glowing softly. I will let the memory be my bit of light. I can’t walk away with nothing. I can’t.
But I will use scriv if I have to, to save him.
He stands still, letting my mouth touch his, but does nothing in response. I nip at his upper lip and pull back a little. I can taste the blood just under his skin, and I wonder how much worse it must be for him. “Please,” I whisper my breath to his.
His mouth opens and there, the slide of warmth and tongues and the slightest danger of sharpened teeth.
We stand like this for longer than we should. The storm turns the air black, approaching on prowling feet, spitting white fire through the rain. I undo buttons, undressing him with a feverish demand.
The rain hammers louder, slamming on slate and glass and we repeat it in flesh and friction. The room smells of the electric blue of magic, leather and musk, the sweetsour of sweat. I am drowning under the sensation of silk on my back, skin slicked against skin. Taste and texture. I stop kissing him for one moment, just long enough to catch my breath and press my forehead against his. “Wait,” I say, even though I am the one holding him closer to me, as if we could turn into one creature for just a moment and know each other’s thoughts and wants and truths. All the things we seem incapable of letting our tongues spill. “Show me.”