Aaru offered an awkward little smile. “All right. Me too.”

“Ilina’s from Darina. Chenda doesn’t take anything slowly. But we don’t— I mean— That doesn’t have to be us. We don’t have to—”

With any luck, the embarrassment would just set me on fire and put me out of my misery.

Aaru studied me while I stammered my way through a few simple words. “Is that what happens next?” His voice was soft. Curious. “I’ve been reading The Book of Love, but it doesn’t say what happens when.”

My heart squeezed around my ribs. “The Book of Love isn’t like that. It’s about emotions. Compassion. Good works.”

He nodded.

“I suppose it’s people who decide what they do. When they’re ready.” My voice trembled a little. “But there aren’t rules. We don’t need to do anything we aren’t ready for. It’s up to us to make that choice.”

Tension slipped out of his shoulders. “All right. Good.”

That yearning, wanting feeling coiled up inside me, wonderful but too big for me to fully explore. Still, it was tempered by the knowledge of what my friends assumed and expected. I wished they’d asked before moving me into the Fire Rose room with him, but I couldn’t deny that the idea of being so close to Aaru—no walls between us, no hard ground, no gap between hammocks—sent thrills into the deepest parts of me. And now, in here, with the beds bolted to the floor, I was both disappointed and relieved.

It was a peculiar feeling: the desire for him and the desire to wait, all at once.

How could I sleep like this?

Across the room, Aaru sat in a mirror of me. In the low light of a single sigil, his eyes were dilated wide, as soft and black as the spaces between stars.

“I think,” I ventured, “that on Damina, people sometimes forget about the other things. The in-between things.”

He tilted his head in curiosity.

“I think people get into a rush.” When I glanced down, I realized I’d been weaving my fingers around the top of my blanket. I pressed my palms to my knees to stop fidgeting. “They want everything right now, no waiting. But that’s not what I want. Not with you. I’d rather take our time getting there, if we decide we want to.”

He nodded. Closed his eyes. Nodded again. “Have you ever—”

“No.” I bit my lip and lowered my voice. “No. I never have. Partly because Mother would have killed me. She thought I needed to be pure—her word—and untouchable.” Although Mother had sent us off to go dance the other night. Maybe she liked him. Or maybe she didn’t see him—a quiet Idrisi boy—as a threat to my virtue. I cleared my throat. “But mostly, there was no one I’d have wanted to be with anyway. Not like that.”

A question grew in his gaze, but he didn’t ask, and I wasn’t going to answer. Finally, he drew in a heavy breath. “I want to take our time. We decide together. We decide for us.”