was gone, she hunched, head down, simply breathing past the burden of the food moving through her gullet. There was no sense of satiation, only discomfort.
There was a bleat, and Sintara lifted her head. Another creature! The one she had scored in passing! It was down, kicking all four legs in a way that said it would soon be dead. Sintara clawed her way up the steep hillside, feeling rocks displaced by her feet tear free and bound down the hill behind her. She didn’t care. She gained ground and then literally fell upon her prey. She clutched it to her, feeling the precious warmth of fresh blood and, almost tenderly, closed her jaws on it, squeezing the breath out of it. Moments later, it shuddered and was still. Only then did she drop it.
This animal she ate in a more leisurely fashion, clawing its belly open and eating the tender, steaming entrails before shearing off satisfyingly large pieces of meat with her ranks of sharp teeth. When she had swallowed the last bite, she sank down slowly on the bloody site of her kill, sighed out a deep breath, and sank into a stupefied sleep.
She was in love with him as she had never loved any of the other men in her life. Their courtship had been slow and delicious, a delicate dance of shyness and uncertainty, followed by the warlike strategies that her jealous nature and his charming ways were bound to provoke. All of their friends had cautioned both of them against taking the relationship too seriously. She knew how his friends had warned him of her, knew that they thought her jealous and possessive. Well, she was. And she was determined to have him, for herself alone, forever. Never had she felt that way about any other men she had taken to her bed.
Her own companions had warned her she could not hold him. Tellator was too handsome for her, too clever and charming. “Be content with Ramose,” they had urged her. “Go back to him; he’ll take you back and with him you will always be comfortable and safe. Tellator is a warrior, always going into danger, called away at a moment’s notice. He will always put his duty ahead of whatever he feels for you. Ramose is an artist, like you. He will understand your moods. He will grow old with you. Tellator may be handsome and strong, but can you ever be sure he will come home at night?”
But she had lived too long in comfort and safety; that was no longer what she wanted. And she could not ignore Ramose’s infidelities. If all of her was not enough for him, then let him have none of her and seek what he needed elsewhere. As she, Amarinda, had sought and found Tellator.
She awaited Tellator in the garden court outside a little gaming parlor, a venue so discreet and select that it did not even hang a blue lantern by its door to attract its clientele. She had left Tellator throwing the bones of chance with a tubby little merchant newly come to Kelsingra, and she walked through the open doors and out into the summer evening. The music of trickling water in one fountain vied with the leaping flames of a dragon fount in the center of the garden. Evening-blooming jasmine trailed from hanging pots, scenting the air. She found a bench in a very private corner of the grounds and took a seat there. A serving girl, a pretty barefoot child clothed in the shimmering colors of the gaming parlor, followed her and asked if she wished refreshments. After a short time, the girl returned with apricot biscuits and a gentle spring wine. She dismissed the girl, assuring her that she need not return.
Amarinda sipped her wine. And waited.
She knew the risk she took. She was making him choose. He had lifted his eyes briefly as she departed. He could remain where he was, in the light and glitter and sparkle of the gaming parlor with his friends. There was music there and sweet smoke and rare cinnamon wine from the South Islands. And one of the players at the gaming table was a slender Elderling minstrel, newly arrived in Kelsingra from a city in the north, her scaling gold and cobalt around her eyes and the rumors of her amorous skills as exotic and varied as the notes she plucked from her harp. Tellator had looked at her and smiled. Amarinda had smiled, too, as she departed the gathering and left him there to choose, knowing that it was really to herself that she was giving the ultimatum. If she did not win him this night, if he did not forsake all other pleasures to come to her, then she would never give him another chance.
Because the risk to her own heart was too great. She had come to care for him too deeply. If he did not reciprocate fully, then her only choice was to turn aside. She had loved like that once before and vowed never to do so again.
The chained moments of the evening slipped by. The night grew cooler, and so did her heart. The dark jewels set in the walls of the garden awoke, and their soft glow gave back to the night the light they had stolen from the day. There were caged crickets in the garden. They sang for a time, and then stopped as the night deepened. Her heart grew emptier by the moment. Finally, she rose to go. Leaning forward over the small table, she pinched out the flame of the rose-scented candle as if she were pinching a dead blossom from a flowering plant.
She straightened and sighed and as she turned, she walked straight into his arms. In the dimness of the garden, he dared to enclose her in his embrace. “Here you are!” He spoke softly, his voice muffled by her hair. “Someone said you had left. I’ve been all the way to your home, where I made a complete fool of myself with your servants before I came back here. I even sought you at your shop, but the door was locked and windows dark. Coming back here was my final resort. They didn’t want to let me back into the parlor; they are trying to close for the night.”
In her surprise at the encounter, she had raised both her hands. They rested now, flat against the starched lace of his shirt front. The solid muscles of his chest were warm beneath her hands. She should just push him away. Or should she? Were his words true, or an excuse for coming to her only after he had dallied at his game and flirtation? Indecision held her motionless in his arms. She breathed in his smells as if he, too, were a night-blooming plant. The cinnamon wine spiced his breath. His skin smelled of sandalwood.
And nothing else, she realized. Her rival had reeked of patchouli, as if she had bathed in it, drunk it, and then drenched her clothes in it. But Tellator did not. She let her hands slip around him, finding no words to say. A seed of doubt had been planted in her heart and nourished by the delay, a delay created by her own foolish plan to test him. Had he mastered her challenge?
“Amarinda,” he said, his voice gone suddenly husky. He pulled her firmly to him, pressed the length of his body against hers so that she could feel how much he desired her. She lifted her face to counsel him to restraint, but his head darted down and his mouth seized hers in a kiss. She tried to turn her head aside, but he would not let her. Instead he held the kiss and deepened it, pushing her back and then astonishing her when he lifted her onto the table. “Here,” he said, and, “Now,” he demanded. He pushed the panels of her skirts aside and set his warm hands on her knees to open her legs.
“We cannot! Tellator, not here, not like this!” She was horrified, not only by his assumption that she would agree but also by her body’s hungry response to him.
“Oh, but we can. And I must. I cannot wait, not another moment. Not another breath.”
Something. Distress. Danger.
Thymara pried her eyes open. She was sitting, not on a table in a garden on a warm summer evening but on the hard stone steps with a chill winter day dying around her. Yet she was not cold. She was panting still with the passion she had shared, and Amarinda’s heat and desire still warmed her. She cleared her throat, coughed, and then was suddenly aware that she held his hand. Tellator looked at her from Rapskal’s eyes. “Here,” he said quietly. “And now. There is no better time than this.”
He set his long, scaled hand to the line of her jaw and lowered his face to hers. Rapskal kissed her knowingly, his mouth moving gently on hers. She was paralyzed with desire and wonder. Where did they stop, where did they begin? It was all one. The man who knelt suddenly on the steps before her, opening her worn blouse to his greedy kisses was not a clumsy boy but a skilled lover. Her own skilled lover, long schooled to what would most stir her. There was nothing new in how he touched her or what she longed to do with him. She gasped at the touch of his teeth and put her hand on the back of his head. Her fingers tangled in his dark hair, and she guided his mouth against her. She sighed his name and he laughed softly, his mouth still against her skin. “Rapskal,” he corrected her. “But you can call me Tellator. Just as I can call you Amarinda.” He lifted his face to smile deep into her eyes. “Do you see now, Thymara? Do you understand? Everything we need to know about being Elderlings, we can learn here. Even this. And you won’t fear it anymore, because you’ve already done it. And you know how good it will be between us.”
She didn’t want him to talk. She didn’t want him to pause, didn’t want to think about what she was going to do. He was right. She didn’t need to. Others had made all the decisions for them, all those years ago. She leaned back, letting him do as he knew she wished.
“I didn’t fear this,” she told him breathlessly. “It was just. .” She lost her words and her thought in his touch.
