again too quickly, and staggered sideways into Sparks's waiting arms. He smiled at her, but it was no smile she had ever seen on his face, and it turned her cold inside. 'Sparks ... what is this place?'
'What do you think it is, Cuz?' He twisted her in his arms until she saw the wide bed in the center of the room. His arms locked around her as she began to squirm; his hand groped her breast. 'It's been a long time for you, hasn't it, sweeting? I could tell when you looked at me out there. So you've come all this way to be Starbuck's lover, huh? Well, any way you like it, honey—' He jerked open his shirt front, she saw scars like thin white worms along his ribs. 'I can oblige you.'
'Oh, Lady, no—' Her hand covered his side, shutting them away from her eyes.
'No? Then we'll make it fast and uncomplicated, the way Summer girls are used to it.' He hauled her to the bed and threw her down across it, pinning her there with his body. She kept her mouth i clamped tight against his rough kisses, bit back her cry as his hand squeezed a breast hard enough for pain. 'This shouldn't take long.' He fumbled with his pants, his eyes never leaving her face.
'Sparks, don't do this!' She worked a hand free, stroked his face with desperate gentleness. 'You don't want it to happen, and I don't—'
'Then why don't you fight back, damn it?' He shook her, with a kind of wildness in it. 'Contaminate me, sibyl! Prove you're something I can never be. Kick me, bite me, make me bleed — make me crazy.'
'I don't want to hurt you.' Staring up at her own face in the ceiling, Sparks's fiery hair, his body obliterating hers, she saw only the image of Taryd Roh's face going slack and mindless, the image of Sparks's the same way ... too easy, too easy! She sucked in a harsh breath. 'I can! Believe me, I can do it! I can make you mad. But I don't want to hurt you.' She shut her eyes, turned her face away, feeling the weight of his breathing body press the air out of her lungs. 'She's hurt you enough, because of me.'
His eyes were a wall. 'Don't waste your pity on me, sibyl, because you won't get any back.' He gripped her jaw with his hand, turned her face to him. 'You're with Starbuck — you wanted Starbuck, and there's nothing lower on this world than he is.' But it was his gaze that broke under hers this time; and she realized suddenly that even it he had wanted to go on with it, his body had refused him.
'I wanted Sparks! And I've found him. There's no crown of spines on you, no black hood, no blood on your hands. You aren't Starbuck! Throw them away, Sparks — you don't have to wear them any more.'
'I'm not Sparks! And you're not even Moon...' He shook his head, she felt a tremor flow through their bodies. 'We're ghosts, echoes, lost souls; caught in limbo, damned hi hell.' He let her face go.
'Sparks ... I love you. I love you. I've always loved you.' Wincing, murmuring the breathless words like a charm to bring calm seas. 'I know what you've done, but I'm here. Because I know you. I know it was meant to be. I wouldn't be here if I didn't believe we could make up for the time and the wrongs between us. If you don't believe it's true, then send me away... But first look at yourself, look in the mirror! It's only you there, only me beside you. We're the waking, not the nightmare.'
He rolled off of her slowly, staring at her. 'What — what happened to your cheek? Did I do that to you?'
She lifted a hand to the smudged yellow remains of the bruise, nodded.
He got up from the bed, his face pale and expressionless, went toward his reflection waiting impassively in the wall. Their hands met at the interface; he pressed his forehead against its image, and Moon saw his body tighten like a coiled spring.
'Sparks—'
His hands turned into fists, and he smashed them into the mirror; sent his reflection clamoring down in a hail of splintered ice. He backed away, turned ... she saw blood trickling down his hand like zigzag lightning.
She pushed herself up and went to him, closing his hand in hers, staunching the wound.
'No, don't!' he cried. 'Leave it, let it bleed!' eagerly, almost joyfully. She looked up at him, sickened, but he shook his head. 'Don't you see? I'm alive! I'm alive, Moon ...' He made a sound that was like laughter, but wasn't. She saw his eyes become the color I of emeralds; and tears overflowed with the flicker of the lids. He raised his wet hand to his wet face. 'Moon. My Moon.' His arms went around her again; but this time there was nothing hurting about his embrace except the pain of rebirth and release. 'Alive. Alive again...'
She felt sudden fire pass into her through her skin and kindle at his nearness. She reached up to unfasten her cloak, let it fall, pressing herself even closer. Her fingers found the slashes of his shirt; she felt his flesh, warm and smooth, his muscles sliding under her touch. His own hands slipped down along her sides, rose again, tracing the line of her back. He began to lead her to the bed, moving with her, drawing her down beside him on the cool sheets, this time with infinite tenderness. 'No, let me... just let me...' He kissed her I softly. He slipped her dress down over her shoulders, along her body to the floor, with hands that sang against her skin. He removed his own clothes, self-consciously; she tried not to see the scars on his body.
They lay back together, and now looking up she saw nothing but the moment reflected, and her heart's desire. They began to touch f each other again; slowly, almost shyly, rediscovering the secret joys that had been theirs hi Summer, Time began to spiral toward infinity, and her body became the source point of the universe as he brought every part of his own body to the realization of her pleas' ure. He took her to the brink of ecstasy with a skill that had never I been his before, holding her there, circling in the ah-... with a motion letting her fall in glorious flames, to rise again like a phoenix again and again. Swept out beyond the depths of her anticipation lost in time, she answered him as best she could, murmuring ' the breathless love words that could not tell him enough about her ytk joy, filling her own instinctive response with the passionate energy of her pent-up longing set free. And at last they fell together, consumed in fire; lay as soft as ashes in each other's arms. Complete hi their love, complete hi each other, they slept.
Chapter 42
'Moon ... Moon, wake up.'
Moon sighed, dreaming in the warm embers. 'Not yet.' She kept her eyes closed, half-afraid to open them.
'Yes. You have to.' Spark's voice stirred her gently, insistently. 'We can't stay here much longer. The reception will be over soon. We've got to leave the palace before Arienrhod comes looking for me.' Fear closed the words hi. 'But the police are looking for me too.'
'I know.' She nodded. 'We'll find a place where you can stay until after the Change.'
'The Change!' He turned rigid under her hand. 'Oh, my gods oh, my Lady!' He sat up, his fists clenched.
'What is it?' Moon sat up beside him, abruptly awake, and afraid.
He faced her, pale with anguish. 'There won't be any Change, if Arienrhod has her way. She's going to start a plague that'll kill most of the Summers here in the city.'
Moon shook her head. 'How? Why?'
'She's hired an off worlder to do it, a man called the Source. He does a lot of her dirty work; he even had the old Commander of Police poisoned. I paid him today with the water of life.' He bit his lips. 'She wants to stay Queen, and keep Winter here forever; that's why!'
Moon shut her eyes, concentrating on the enormity of horror so that she would not see his hand in it. 'We've got to stop it!'
'I know.' He threw the covers back. 'Go to the Blues, Moon, and tell them everything. They can stop it, if it isn't too late al ready.' He twisted the covers between his hands. 'Mother's Eyes! How could I—?'
Moon felt panic clog her throat as she remembered why she could not go to them either. 'Sparks, I've been off world And they know that, too.'
He looked up sharply. 'They'll deport you.'
She nodded, pushing back her hair. 'But they have to be told.'
'Then we'll both go. Maybe ... they'll let us stay together.' He let his hand fall along her back.
She felt her skin turn to gooseflesh. 'Yes.' She pushed herself up and off the bed, knowing that if she hesitated she would never be able to separate herself from him again. 'We'd better go now.' She remembered abruptly that BZ would be waiting; she closed her eyes again, blotting out their reflections.
