“An hour or three won’t make a great difference, in this country of Midnight,” said Morozko. “You are all worn to shadows, Vasya.”
“It will make a difference,” she said. “I can’t fall asleep, here.”
“You can now,” he said. “I will keep you in Midnight.”
To sleep—to really sleep…Mother of God, she was weary. She was already beneath the blankets; after a moment, he slid beneath them too. Her breath came short; she clenched her fists on an impulse to touch him.
They watched each other, warily. He moved first. His hand stole up to her face, traced the sharp line of her jaw, brushed the thick line of the scab from the stone. She shut her eyes.
“I can heal this for you,” he said.
She nodded once, vain enough to be glad that at least there would be only a white scar instead of a scarlet one. He cupped his hand, trickled water onto her cheek, while she set her teeth against the flare of agony.
“Tell me,” he said, after.
“It is a long story.”
“I assure you,” he said. “I will not grow old in the telling of it.”
She told him. She started with the moment he’d left her in the snowstorm in Moscow and finished with Pozhar, Vladimir, her journey into Midnight. She was wrung out at the end, but calmer too.
As though she’d laid the skeins of her life out neatly, and there was less of a tangle in her soul.
When she fell silent, he sighed. “I am sorry,” he said. “For Solovey.
I could only watch.”
“And send me your mad brother,” she pointed out. “And a token. I could have done without your brother, but the carving—comforted me.”
“Did you keep it?”
“Yes,” she said. “It brings him back when I—” She trailed off; it was too fresh, still.
He tucked a short curl behind her ear, but said nothing.
“Why are you afraid?” she asked him.
His hand dropped. She did not think he would answer. When he did, it was so low she barely caught the words. “Love is for those who know the griefs of time, for it goes hand in hand with loss. An eternity, so burdened, would be a torment. And yet—” He broke off, drew breath. “Yet what else to call it, this terror and this joy?”
It was harder this time, to move close to him. Before, it was—
uncomplicated, reckless, joyful. But now emotion freighted the air between them .
His skin had warmed with hers, beneath the blankets; he might have been a man except for his eyes, ancient and troubled. It was her turn to push his hair back where it fell over his brow; it curled coarse and cold beneath her fingers. She touched the warm place behind his jaw, and the hollow of his throat, laid her spread fingers on his chest.
He covered her hand with his, traced her fingers, her arm, then her shoulder, slid his hand from spine to waist, as though he meant to learn her body by touch.
She made a sound in her throat. The coolness of his breathing touched her lips. She did not know if he had moved, or if she had, to bring them close together. And still his hand moved, gently, coaxing suppleness from her. She couldn’t breathe. Now that they were no longer talking, she could feel the tension gathering in him—shoulder to hand—where his fingers dug into her skin.
One thing to take the wild stranger to herself. Another to look into the face of an adversary-ally-friend and…
She wound her fingers in his hair. “Come here,” she said. “No—
closer.”
He smiled then: the slow, unknowable smile of the winter-king.
But there was a hint of laughter in it she’d never seen. “Be patient,”
he murmured into her mouth.
But she could not, not an instant more; rather than answer, she caught him by the shoulders and rolled him over. She felt the strength in her body then, saw the shift and play of muscle in the faint candlelight: hers and his. She bent forward to breathe into his ear: “Never give me orders.”
“Command me, then,” he whispered back. The words went through her like wine.
Her body knew what to do then, even if her mind did not quite, and she took him into herself, snow and cold and power and years and that elusive fragility. He said her name once, and she barely heard, lost as she was. But after, when she lay pliant, curved into his body, she whispered, “You are not alone, anymore.”
“I know,” he whispered. “Neither are you.”
And then, finally, she slept.
18.
On the Backs of Magic Horses
HE ROSE FROM THE TANGLED heap of snow-colored furs some unmarked hours later. She did not hear him go, but felt his absence.
It was still midnight. She opened her eyes, shivering, and sat up. For an instant, she did not know where she was. Then she remembered and lurched to her feet, afraid. He was gone, he had vanished into the night, she had dreamed it all…
