Daughter of Smoke & Bone

42





ACHE AND SALT AND ALLNESS



“In here,” Karou said, leading Akiva to a sky-blue door set in a dusty wall. Their fingers were laced together. They couldn’t not touch, and guiding him through the medina, Karou had felt like she was floating. They might have hurried, but instead they drifted, pausing to watch a carpet-maker, to peer into a basket of puppies, to test the points of ornamental daggers with their fingertips—anything but haste.

But as slowly as they went, they still arrived at their destination. Akiva followed Karou down a dark passage, where they were spilled into the light of a courtyard, a hidden world open only to the sky. It was fringed with date palms and brilliant with zelij tiles, a fountain plashing in its center. A balcony ran around the second story, and Karou’s room was up a twist of stairs. It was bigger than her flat, with a high, timbered ceiling. The walls were vermillion tadelakt with a deep, earthen glow, and a Berber blanket on the bed spelled out some mysterious blessing in a language of symbols.

Akiva closed the door and let go of Karou’s hand, and the moment that she had been pushing ahead of them, forestalling—the breaking of the wishbone… It was here.

This was it.

This was it.

Akiva paced away from her, looked out a window, raised his hands and raked his fingers through his hair in a gesture that was becoming familiar, then turned back to her. “Are you ready, Karou?”

No.

Suddenly, no. She was not ready. Panic, like a chaos of wings in her rib cage. “We can wait,” she said with artificial brightness. “We don’t want to fly until nightfall anyway.” The plan was to fetch Razgut once the sun went down, and to fly with him under cover of darkness to the portal, wherever it might be.

Akiva came back toward her, a few halting steps, and stopped just out of reach. “We could wait,” he agreed, seeming lured by the idea. Then he added, very softly, “But it won’t get any easier.”

“You’d tell me, wouldn’t you, if it was something awful?”

He came closer, reached up and stroked her hair, once, slowly. Feline, she leaned into his touch. He said, “You don’t have to be afraid, Karou. How could it be awful? It’s you. You can only be beautiful.”

A shy smile tugged at her lips. She took a breath and said with resolve, “Okay then. Should I, um, sit down?”

“If you like.”

She went to the bed and climbed to its center, curling her legs under her and tucking down the hem of her orange dress, which she’d bought in the souk with the thought of Akiva seeing her in it. She had bought more practical apparel, too, for the journey and whatever might come after. It was packed in a new bag and ready to go, along with such mundane necessaries as she’d had to leave Prague without, having fled town so abruptly. She was glad Akiva had brought her knives—glad to have them, that is, and afraid of needing them.

He sat facing her, his legs long and easy, shoulders rolled forward in a way that accentuated their breadth.

It was then that Karou had another flash, a split in the surface of time, and a glimpse, within, of Akiva. He was sitting just like this, his shoulders heavy and relaxed in just that way, but… they were bare, as was his chest, and he was all tawny muscle, the right shoulder a snarl of scar tissue. Again, on his face, the smile that hurt with its beauty. Again, an instant and it was gone.

She blinked, cocked her head, and murmured, “Oh.”

“What?” Akiva asked.

“Sometimes I think I see you, in another time or something….I don’t know.” She shook her head and waved it off. “Your shoulder. What happened to it?”

He touched it, watching her intently. “What did you see?”

She blushed. There had been something so sensual about that moment, him sitting there shirtless and happy. She said only, “You… smiling. I haven’t seen you smile like that, not really.”

“It’s been a long time.”

“I wish you would,” she said. “For me.”

He didn’t. Pain flashed over his face and he looked down at his knuckles and then back up at her. “Come here,” he said, and reached out, easing the wishbone’s cord up and over her head. He hooked a finger around it. “Like this.”

She didn’t take it. She said in a rush, “Whatever happens, we don’t have to be enemies. Not if we don’t want to be. It’s up to us, isn’t it?”

“It will be up to you,” he said.

“But I already know—”

He shook his head, sorrowful. “You can’t know. You can’t know until you know.”

She let out an exasperated breath. “You sound like Brimstone,” she muttered, and set about composing herself. And then, finally, she lifted her hand to slip her pinkie around the wishbone’s free spur. Her knuckle came to rest against Akiva’s, and even that small contact kicked off an effervescence all through her.

Now, all they had to do was pull. Karou waited a beat, thinking Akiva would lead, but then she thought he was waiting for her. She checked his eyes—they were on hers, searing—and tensed her hand. The only way to do it was to do it. She started to pull.

This time, it was Akiva who jerked his hand away. “Wait,” he said. “Wait.”

He reached for her face, and Karou covered his hand with hers, pressing it to her cheek.

He said, “I want you to know…” He swallowed. “I need you to know that I was drawn to you—to you, Karou—before the wishbone. Before I knew, and I think… I think I would always find you, no matter how you were hidden.” He was focused on her with extraordinary intensity. “Your soul sings to mine. My soul is yours, and it always will be, in any world. No matter what happens—” His voice cracked, and he took a breath. “I need you to remember that I love you.”

Love. Karou felt bathed in light. The cherished word leapt to her own lips to answer him, but he beseeched her, “Tell me you’ll remember. Promise me.”

Here was a promise she could make, and did. Akiva fell silent, and Karou, sitting forward, breathless, thought that that was all—that he would just say something like that and then not kiss her. Which was absurd, and she would have protested had it come to that, but it did not.

One of his hands was already at her cheek; he lifted the other. He cradled her face in his hands, and then it was as smooth as inevitability: a gliding together. His mouth brushed hers. A dip, a touch like a whisper—a gentle, gentle grazing of Akiva’s full lower lip across both of Karou’s in an upward lilt, and then there was space between them again, so small a space, their faces so close. They breathed each other’s breath as the pull gathered between and around and in them, astral, and then the space was gone again, and all there was was the kiss.

Sweet and warm and trembling.

Soft and hard and deepening.

Mint on Karou’s breath, salt on Akiva’s skin.

His hands in her hair, plunged to the wrists like it was water; her palms at his chest, the wishbone forgotten in the discovery of his heartbeat.

Sweetness gave way to something else. Pulse. Pleasure. What overwhelmed Karou was the realness, the deep physical trueness of Akiva—salt and musk and muscle, flame and flesh and heartbeat—the feeling of allness. The taste of him and the feel of him against her lips—his mouth and then his jaw, his neck and the soft place beneath his ear, and how he shivered when she kissed him there, and somehow her hands slipped under his shirt and up, so that only her half gloves were between her hands and his chest. Her fingertips danced over him and he shook and crushed her to him and the kiss was so much more than a kiss now.

It was Karou who leaned back, drawing him down with her, over her, and the feel of all of him against all of her was total and burning and… familiar, too, and she was herself but not herself, arching into him with a soft animal mewl.

And Akiva broke away.

It was quick as shattering—a lurch and he was up, leaving behind the jagged edges of the moment. Karou sat up fast. She didn’t know where her breath had gone. Her dress was bunched at her thighs; the wishbone lay abandoned on the blanket, and Akiva stood at the foot of the bed, faced away from her with his hands on his hips and his head lowered. His breathing matched hers in rhythm, even now. Karou sat silent, overcome by the power of what had possessed her. She had never felt anything like it. With space between them now, she was chastened—what had made her take things so far?—but she also wanted it back, the ache and salt and allness of it.

“I’m sorry,” said Akiva, strained.

“No, it was me, and it’s all right. Akiva, I love you, too—”

“It’s not all right,” he said, turning back, his tiger eyes violently ablaze. “It’s not all right, Karou. I didn’t mean for that to happen. I don’t want you to hate me more than you already—”

“Hate you? How could I ever—”

“Karou,” he said, cutting her short. “You have to know the truth, and you have to know it now. We have to break the wishbone.”





And so, at last, they did.