Her voice is almost soundless by the time she stops speaking. Misery feels the same desperate emptiness. One hand wraps itself around the princess’s hip bone and grips it. Their eyes meet, and then she’s peeling off Alodia Lightning’s clothes like the skin of a fruit. Their bodies collide as Misery pushes her toward the bed, then Alodia Lightning is sinking into the obedient foam of the mattress, sighing, her knees falling apart, the battle over before it even began. Misery untangles herself from her clothes as her mouth finds the lines of Alodia Lightning’s neck, the shape of her clavicles, the textured bump of a nipple. Her body is a solid, breathing form under Misery’s, remarkably dependable and yet a surprising delight, the way it moves and ripples as Misery sinks into her. This too is holiness, a pulse in the throat and between the fingers, the soft rush of skin against skin. Coming undone is only half of it. The other side of the journey—the two of them knitting together, the synchronization of their bodies, of cause and effect—is where word incarnates into form. The joining of their flesh is the consummation of their fates. Misery rides high and watches as Alodia Lightning is resculpted by pleasure, novel feelings being shaped on her face.

Afterward they lie together in silence. Misery studies the languid rhythm of her partner’s breaths, the intimate geography of her veins and tendons. A calm settles over her like the heaviness of air after a windstorm. Is this contentment? Happiness? She doesn’t know. She feels comfortable, that is all. She is so rarely comfortable.

The princess stirs with sleep-laced determination. “I have a request.”

“What is it?”

“Call me Lightning,” she says, voice muffled by their proximity.

“Your personal name? Are you sure? No one here calls you that, not even the Duke.”

“I’m giving you permission,” she says.

Misery mouths the word carefully and slowly: “Lightning.” Testing how it fits on her tongue, against her teeth. It’s delicious, like a vine-fresh fruit, packed with sweet juices. “Lightning.”

A smile curves across Lightning’s face. “There. It’s yours now.”

Misery runs a fingertip under the curve of her lower lip. “It is.” That the princess belongs to her now in this intimate way delights her. She lets that thought carry her into sleep.

INTERLUDE 7