He didn’t seem to notice and ended the kiss with a wet, delicious swipe of his tongue along the crease of my mouth that made me wonder why I was pushing my head into the pillow.

Only then did he slide off, turn me to my side and press into me along my back, cocking my knees with his own.

I lay still in his arm and the curve of his body and stared into the dark.

Cassius settled in closer and settled me in closer by nestling me deeper into his frame using his arm about my belly.

One thing in that moment I knew for certain.

This, he and I, were not working.

“I should have gone to see the pixies with you,” he whispered into my hair and burrowed even further into my back at the same time nuzzling my hair with his face. “I regret I did not.”

Oh goddess.

And wasn’t that just the crux of it?

For I would make up my mind that it wasn’t working between us.

Then Cassius would say something like that, and say it holding me like that, snuggling me like that.

And then I’d think that it could.

47

The Plan

Farah

Fifty Miles Inside the Southern Border

WODELL

True woke me with his movements.

I lay, staring into the dark, as he turned from me, and in his sleep—as he had done four times before (not including this time, this made five, and I was most assuredly counting)—he moved agitatedly.

Very agitatedly

But unconsciously.

As he had promised, we went to bed together every night since the night after my mother had been killed.

And as he had promised, in the days, he was the strong one, allowing me to be weak.

This included, after my mother’s funeral…

After her body had been treated, she had been shrouded and I had laid her favorite things about her slab.

And Mars had adorned her dressings from neck to feet with long, delicate chains of gold sparkling with rubies and emeralds and onyx and amethyst.

And Elpis had carefully arranged the jeweled, intricate headdress over the wrappings on her face and head.

And last, True had surprised me after sending a bird and having a man on the fastest horse in Wodell race to Firenze so he could set the gold Dellish scepter on her chest with its large aquamarine jewel at the top. A scepter he shared any mother of a queen of Wodell would be buried with.

Then my mama had been set deep in her clan’s tomb for eternity.

After all of that, we had gone back to the palace with me feeling numb.

And there, in my bed (that had in the time that had passed become True’s and my bed), he’d held me close to him, silently, often rubbing my back, my arms, kneading my neck, doing this for what felt like hours.