I touched her cheek. She turned to glide her mouth over my fingers. “Please,” I said, and pulled her toward me, my mouth hungry for hers. I kissed her. Her lips opened beneath mine. She made a low sound in her throat, and then her hands were on me, finding the shape of my body, its delicate spots, its needy ones. She unbuttoned the top crystal button of my dress, and moved slowly to the next one. Impatient, I began to undo them myself. She stopped my hands. “Let me,” she said. Her tongue lightly touched my lower lip, and I knew I would let her do anything.

She undid all the buttons, her fingers dipping lightly beneath the silk to touch my skin, until the dress fell from my shoulders and slid to the floor.

“I’m not sure,” I said, and her hands stilled. She pulled slightly away, her eyes hesitant, and I saw that she misunderstood. I said, “I’m not sure how.”

She smiled. “I am.”

She knelt before me, her lips and tongue on my belly. “Please don’t stop,” I said.

Her mouth went lower.

My hands twisted in her hair.

45

I LOVE THIS BED, I thought when I woke.

I loved how narrow it was, how close the scanty space made me to Sid, who slept on, her limbs tangled with mine, mouth relaxed and full, her lashes startlingly black, skin damp in the heat.

I loved the pillow, how it dented beneath her head, her blond hair messy against the cotton.

I loved the sheet that had slipped from her bare shoulder.

I loved the burning day, how soon it would pour honey over everything, the light getting golden before it dimmed.

When I shifted, Sid tugged me close. “Stay,” she muttered, and kept sleeping.

I loved that my mouth still tasted like her.

There was so much that was mine in that moment. I counted everything I had, at least then, and all that I was allowed to love.

This was not like the poem in Harvers’s book, where dawn came like a thief. Nothing had been stolen from me. Maybe it never would be.

Sid sighed in her sleep. My eyes got heavy again. I nestled into everything that was mine. I let it cover me like downy feathers and pretended it would always be like this.

When I woke again, the light had the glow of a late afternoon. Sid slept on.

I remembered my last thought before I slept: the poem from the book I had printed in Harvers’s workshop. I remembered his stamp on a book in a High-Kith library. I thought about this, about the Ward, about the tavern. I thought, reluctantly, about Aden.

I started to slip from the bed.

“No,” Sid moaned, her eyes still shut. “Don’t do that. Why would you do that?”

“I need to go back to the Ward.”

Her eyes opened in alarm.