Chapter 22 - Reap and Sow

The bonfires were lit again, but the riverfolk seemed more sedate tonight. Many had already retired to their boats. Those still awake greeted Eda as she strode by.

The Embel Morrowstones were a short ways through the trees. They stood nearly as tall, these ancient monoliths: silent sentinels guarding the forest in a neat half circle. Much debate was held as to how exactly such colossal structures had been arranged during such a primitive time and for what purpose. Eda liked the mystery of not knowing for sure.

She had no reason to think Kit would be here—only a feeling. She should go back. Women in fables didn’t tend to live long by wandering through dark woods at night. Little that mattered anymore.

“Kit?” The moon’s pale face peeked between the clouds, casting pearlescent light across the clearing. The sounds of nature’s melody were still so new to her: the breeze rustling through the dogwood boughs, a nightingale calling, small animals scurrying in the undergrowth. Eda stepped gingerly through the clearing’s snarl of protruding roots and riotous ivy. The growth lay so thick it swallowed her steps to the ankle.

“Kit?”

The shadows revealed nothing. If he could hear her, he was ignoring her. One more try. “Lord Arsehole!”

A low snort had her casting about.

“Up here.”

She found him then, squatting in that funny way of his atop the centermost monolith. With the horns and tail he looked like a disgruntled gargoyle looming overhead. Eda was sure he hadn’t been there before. Perhaps he’d been in one of his smaller forms, spying on her.

She put her hands on her hips. “I’d like to talk about your strangulation of my brother.”

“What about it?”

“I trust that isn’t a serious question.”

“He started it.”

“Ben’s just concerned for me. You didn’t have to antagonize him.”

Kit’s eyes were twin pinpricks of flame. “And you shouldn’t have to pussyfoot around him like a pot in danger of boiling over. He owes you his life. He should prostrate himself at your feet.”

“You think less of me for not reprimanding him?”

He looked away, churlish. “Who said I think of you at all?”

It stung as a nettle might, brief and depthless. She figured this was simply Kit’s way of pushing her away. He’d lashed out at Ben—that easy return to violence that so unnerved her—but had stopped when she asked it. For all his blood and bluster, he was not cruel. He was not heartless. His curse, she suspected, was a heart that felt too much.

Eda approached the towering stone. Ran her hands over the gnarls of ivy clinging to it like a second skin. “Can you come down?”

“What for?”

“To talk in a civilized manner.”

“No.”

“Fine.” She grabbed a tangle of vines and began to heave herself up.

“The fuck are you doing?”

His alarm only spurred her on. “You might have been raised a lord, but I won’t stand so far beneath you on your great rocky throne. If you won’t come down, I’ll come up.”

“Don’t be a fool, you stubborn little—Stop it!”

“What for?” she parroted.

He made a sound like an angry serpent. In the next instant he was beside her, standing perpendicular on the vertical face on the monolith like a branch spearing from a tree. He bent down and grabbed her arm.

The air fell heavy in a new direction. Eda’s curls drooped forward.

All at once she was kneeling soundly on the rock face rather than trying to scale it, as though it were the ground beneath her. She planted her feet where once her hands had fought for purchase. The gravitation of the earth had changed around them with his touch alone. She held out her arms for balance, fearing she might fall, but Kit’s grip was steady and his power true.

She wondered what someone would make of it, if they wandered into the clearing then. Demonic nonsense, probably—and they’d be right.

“You could have fallen and cracked your skull in two.”

Eda glanced back at the ground, then at the vast night sky ahead. Everything was sideways. She fancied she might step off the monolith and fall forever through the forest. “You could have just come down.”

“I’m not accustomed to being ordered about.”

“Nor I.”

“Clearly.”

His fingers slipped down her arm and curled about her own. She shivered. They walked up the monolith. As they stepped onto its crest, the earth’s pull righted itself, and they stood atop the great stone with the moon overhead as it should be.

“I’m not sure that I like that particular trick.”

“You think changing one’s own gravitational pull is a mere trick?”

She couldn’t resist teasing. “Can’t be that hard.”

“Even among my kind, such a skill is difficult to master.” He turned his hands out at the wrists and did a silly turn, gesturing around them. The stars surrounded him like a thousand little fires. “What can you do, darling?”

“I’m rather good at cross-stitch.”

His mouth curled.

Eda sat down, watching the bonfires flicker through the trees. “I want to stop him. The bishop.”

Kit lowered himself beside her. If his bandaged arm hurt, he made no mention of it; perhaps it was already healing. “That’s exactly what Baelion wants, you know. You and the bishop pitted against one another, scrapping like dogs. Puppets on the end of his string. He’ll delight in seeing which of you comes out victorious.”

“I’d wager he’d prefer the bishop’s three thousand years to our remaining ten. But he hasn’t interfered yet, so maybe you’re right. He might only be doing this for his own entertainment. I don’t know and I don’t care. I’m going to expose Florian Fane, and when he’s locked up and fails to deliver on his promise, Mr. Night will kill him for it.”

“You and your brothers still owe ten years.”

“I’ll give him my own if I have to. What’s left of them.”

Kit’s lips thinned. “You don’t have enough.”

Ah. Of course he knew how many years she had left. Any demon making a Pact could sense as much. No point in treating with a mortal who couldn’t make good on their end of the bargain.

“How—how long do I have?”

“Do you really want to know?”

No, she decided. Knowing might be worse. She could certainly guess: Kit had taken fifty years, and Eda had already lived out twenty. Few in Blackbridge saw their eightieth year. Whatever time she had left was likely in the single digits. Less.

Eda picked at her nails. The evening breeze toyed with their hair, and there was his scent again—something heady and strange, like the aftermath of a lightning storm.

Kit continued, “You weren’t interested in the bishop’s downfall before. You only wanted your brothers back. Now you have them. Get Lich the mirror and Baelion his last few years, then flee to some foreign shore. Wasn’t that the plan?” He said it smoothly, perfectly level. A falsehood. Only someone very interested in her response would ask in so disinterested a manner.

“It was. But now every time I close my eyes, I see that little girl, or my brothers in that cell, or Lawrie’s leg—” She stopped herself. Took a breath. “I wish I didn’t care about what he’s doing to Blackbridge. I spent most of my life hating the place. Fane called it a festering boil of a city, and he’s probably right, but it’s my home. It’s my festering boil.”

“Interesting analogy.”

“I want Ben and Lawrie to live long, happy lives. To be free men. Or else what did I sacrifice mine for? What matter is a life if you do nothing good with it?” She turned toward him.

With his eyes fixed upon her, open and patient, Eda’s words tumbled free like rockfall. “I’ve tried not to care, because that’s what we’ve always done—Ben and Lawrie and I. We kept everyone out. We couldn’t afford to think about what we were doing, bringing all those people to the mirror. I convinced myself that I hated them. Told myself they were all pathetic, greedy fools. That they brought it upon themselves. Maybe that’s still true, but the minute I was desperate, I went to you. I called you a hypocrite, Kit, but…so am I.

“I’ve made so many mistakes. If I could just make that sanctimonious shit of a bishop sorry he ever stepped foot in this city, I might finally forgive myself.” She felt breathless. “You said that the powerful get where they are by looking out for themselves. But maybe there’s power in caring about something beyond yourself too. I’m going to get Severin Lich that mirror, and I’m going to use it to prove Florian Fane is the farthest thing from holy. I won’t leave Blackbridge a moment before.”

She hadn’t realized she wanted that. Not until she said it aloud.

Eda had been looking at Kit without really seeing him, lost in her own ferocious thoughts, and he hadn’t said a word. She blinked. Refocused.

His pupils were huge and round, black pupils swallowing all but a thin ring of fire. Exactly as he’d looked when they sat in the shadows of the Maiden’s Lyre. This time there was no disguise concealing his ashen skin or knifelike ears.

Kit said slowly, “Just when I think it impossible, I continue to be surprised.”

“By the foolishness of mortals?”

“By the bravery of you.”

She searched his face for jest. “I’m not brave.”

“You are.” He looked almost angry about it. His eyes skittered across her face.

“What will you do, when our Pact is done?” She swallowed. “Will I—will I ever see you again?”

He stilled. “Would you want to see me?”

“Suppose that I did.”

His gaze dropped, distant with thoughts beyond her ken. “I could tell you that I don’t know. It would be a lie.” Tentatively, Kit’s knuckles brushed hers—a deliberate touch. A question. An invitation. Eda stopped breathing. “Once our Pact is fulfilled, nothing ties me to you. And yet.”

His fingers spread with sudden greed, coiling around her wrist. His claws pricked without hurting as he drew her hand close. He turned it this way and that, loitering over the thin pink scar on her palm. His eyelids lowered, half-mast. Slowly, as though he anticipated she might pull away, he bent to place a featherlight kiss there.

A burst of heady warmth rushed through her. Eda hardly dared to breathe, afraid of breaking this strange spell. “Tell me the truth, then,” she whispered. Am I trembling?

“The truth?”

She nodded.

He shut his eyes. Brushed his lips again over her scar. “The truth is that since the moment you broke into my home, I’ve thought of nothing but you.”

Eda might have made a noise. She couldn’t be sure. Kit squeezed her hand and talked faster, as if a dam had broken. As if he’d never get another chance.

“I could tell you that when you take my hand, I already dread the moment you’ll let go. How I want to listen to everything you say, even when you rabbit on about the most asinine drivel. That I crave your laughter. Want to show you plays and music and art, if it will make you smile the way you did at that playhouse.” He looked up at her gravely. “Tell me to stop talking.”

Eda’s heart leaped in frenzy. His black hair had fallen over his brow—she itched to push it back. “There’s more?”

“Much. And I’ve no right to say any of it to you. I took your years. You should despise me. Maybe you do. But sometimes, I think you don’t despise me at all. And it drives me to distraction.” His tail curled around her calf. He mouthed at her knuckles.

“Would—would you give my years back? If you could?”

“Yes.” He didn’t even hesitate. “A poor demon that makes me, but I would give you many things. If I could.” He placed a soft kiss on her inside wrist. Then harder. Then another, farther up her arm.

“Kit,” Eda gasped. She waited for him to look at her. “Keep talking.”

He froze. She’d only ever asked him to shut up.

Suddenly he pulled her close, until she was practically in his lap. “What else would you have me confess?” he rumbled. “How I despise every moment your eyes aren’t on me? How low I would prostrate myself, just to earn another measly crumb of your attention?”

His nose trailed down her cheek, her jaw. When he planted an uncertain kiss just beneath her ear, Eda stopped breathing. Her silence he took as acquiescence, and he did it again, open-mouthed. Liquid heat bloomed between her legs. She gripped his shoulder.

“I’ll take any of it,” he said between fevered kisses. “Your anger, your disgust, your scorn. Anything but your apathy. That’s the problem with demons. We’re too damn greedy.”

She snuck a hand into his hair and gently pulled. Kit’s head tipped back obediently. He was panting, though she’d hardly done a thing, eyes like smoldering coals.

Eda hesitantly nuzzled her cold nose to his jaw—an exploratory touch. He made a sound decidedly unlike protest. “Would you take my affection?” she whispered.

Unable to resist, she placed a kiss upon his warm throat, smiling at the way his pulse leaped.

Then his lips were on hers.

Surprise made her gasp at first. The eager press of his mouth quickly dissolved into a hot, slow slide. It was inexplicable—rare and delicious and overwhelmingly lovely. He was so close. Not close enough. The angle felt slightly awkward, but it barely crossed her mind before she was being hauled into his lap proper. Eda straddled him and twined her arms about his neck. He rumbled his pleasure.

Fangs nipped her bottom lip. She nipped back. He growled. The vibration had her humming in delight. Claws wound themselves into her curls while his other hand clung to the small of her back, keeping her close. As though she might come to her senses and pull away.

Eda had no intention of leaving. Her skin burned everywhere he touched her, and still she wanted more. The glide of his lips over hers was so painfully arousing she thought she might expire on the spot. She abandoned his searching mouth to kiss the point of his ear. Kit shuddered in response. She did it again, grazing with teeth. He bit her jaw in reprimand before soothing it with his tongue. Eda gasped. He nosed her chin aside to press hot, wet kisses along her throat.

“This—” She scrambled to gather her thoughts. “This is the longest you’ve ever been quiet.”

“Would you rather me keep talking?” He dragged his fangs over her collarbone, not quite hard enough to hurt.

“Depends what you say.”

“Mm. Where was I, then?” Kit’s hand found her backside. He pulled her against the distinct, hard length of him. “Do you want to hear about all the ways I’ve imagined you undressed?” He kissed his way up to her ear. “How I’ve lain awake, unable to sleep, because I’m rock hard thinking about something as inane as the shape of your waist?”

“Pervert,” she whispered.

“Apparently,” he whispered back. Kissed her again.

Eda’s brain was quite removed from her body. She couldn’t help but roll her hips into his, desperate for more friction. He made a delicious noise. Kit’s hand shot under her shirt, roving up her spine. The sensation of his palm on her bare skin was like nothing she remembered. How could such a simple touch bring the very stars closer than before?

It was never like this with Wymond.

Trembling hands fisted in his jerkin. More, Eda begged with every kiss, and Kit obliged vigorously. He slanted his mouth against hers, again and again, loath to be apart. Eventually he reclined backward, lips never leaving hers as he pulled her down with him. Claws prickled at her hips.

When they finally broke apart he was flat upon the stone, staring up at her with dangerously dark eyes. As though she were the powerful one.

Eda very nearly kissed him again, but an owl hooted loudly through the dark. Suddenly she saw the swaying branches and the glow of the bonfires, remembered where they were.

What are we doing? She hesitated, hands braced on his chest.

Kit sat up at once. His mortal form shimmered into place, as though he thought that would please her better. “What’s wrong?” His husky voice induced shivers. He must have felt it; he brushed an imploring kiss against her cheek. Stay, the touch whispered. Stay, stay, stay.

“I need to know,” she murmured. “Do you mean to help me, after we get the mirror? Until the bishop is gone? Will you…”

Stay?

She dared not ask for more. What future could possibly await the two of them? She had a few years left at most. And he the one responsible.

You always did like making terrible mistakes, that tar-black voice sneered. This may be the most ruinous of all.

Something shadowed passed over Kit’s face, drawing his brow downward. His lips and cheeks were flushed. She thought he meant to dismiss her, to tell her that he’d only wanted a brief dalliance until their Pact was done and he took his leave. But then his arms tightened. He kissed her cheek again. “I’ll remain if you wish, darling. You are far too diverting.”

Her being diverting could not be the sole reason, Eda thought, but stifled a sigh of relief nonetheless. “More diverting than a convent of the Sacred Sisters? You did mention exploring their knickers once…”

“Cheeky tart.” He nipped her chin. “I should throw you off this oversize boulder.”

“Like you threw me in the river.”

“Now that you mention it, your clothes did cling to you in a rather delicious—”

She pressed her fingers to his mouth. He nibbled at them. “We should go back before my brothers come looking.”

Kit helped her up with visible reluctance, doing a rather poor job of smothering a pout. When they reached the riverbank, just beyond the glow of the Oriana’s portholes, Eda decided to kiss it away.

He clung to her. She pushed him back, smiling. “Now comes the part where you very gallantly allow me to return to my bedchamber.”

“I thought this was the part where you allow me to ravish you on the riverbank.”

Eda bit her lip. “Good night, Kit’rath.”

She forced herself not to look back as she disappeared into the cabin. Felt his eyes upon her all the same.