“I should have—,” Alan began, but she interrupted him fiercely.
“They’re my people,” she said. “Not yours. I was the one who knew Lydie had magic, and I should have protected her. I was meant to be a leader, I was meant to take care of her, and I failed!”
She still could not cry, but she was shaking suddenly, hard, bone-jarring shaking, her whole body betraying her. Alan took hold of her elbow carefully, always gentle, and Sin turned to him blindly and locked her arm around his neck. She buried her face in his collarbone, gritted her teeth, and shook and shook.
“Cynthia,” Alan murmured, and rocked her for a little while, stroked her hair. She could feel it going electric with static, curls rising up to wrap around his fingers. She wished she could tie him down somewhere, keep him just like this, just for her. “Cynthia.”
She let him go and leaned back, stretching onto his pillow. She kept hold of his arm, pulling him toward her. “Come here,” she said. “Lie to me.”
Alan lay down beside her, a little awkward pulling up his bad leg onto the bed. His hand in her hair wasn’t awkward, anything but, fingers slow and light as the rays of the moon on her skin, drawing a curl back from her cheek. She reached up and took off his glasses, snapping the earpieces closed with her teeth, and smiled at him as she slid them onto the bedside table.
He was gorgeous by moonlight, hair and skin turned a hazy golden color, his eyes starlit-night blue and so sweet, so deep, pools you could drop your heart into and lose it forever.
“Cynthia,” he murmured, fingers still brushing her cheek, making her shiver. “I’m not lying.”
Sin closed her eyes and tucked her cheek into the curve of his neck and against his pillow.
“Yeah,” she whispered. “Just like that.”
8
Burning Wishes
SIN WOKE WARM AND SAFE, THE MORNING SO EARLY THAT THE rays of light falling across the bed just seemed like paler shadows. She had a hand curled around the front of Alan’s shirt, anchoring him close beside her. The blankets were heaped over her, Alan’s breath was slow and regular against her hair, and Sin felt no inclination to move whatsoever.
She tugged Alan a little closer. He made a drowsy inquiring sound.
Sin gave a sleepy hum in response.
Her hum wavered and died away in her throat when Alan’s fingers brushed her ribs. She hadn’t really registered before that her shirt had ridden up, but she did now.
Alan’s hand slid along her side, moving smooth and sure from cloth to skin. His gun-calloused fingers lingered at the hollow above her hip, and Sin realized that Alan had definitely woken up with a girl in his bed before.
She rolled a little toward him easy as a cat being stroked, and at that point Alan woke up all the way, yelped, and fell out of bed.
Sin would’ve laughed, except for the small stifled sound Alan made when he hit the ground.
She levered herself up on her elbows and said sharply, “Are you all right?”
“Fine,” Alan bit out, white around the lips, and she hated his stupid leg for ruining something that should have been ridiculous and warm. If it hadn’t been for that, they would both have laughed; if it hadn’t been for that, she would have noticed him before, the same way the other girls who had been in this bed must have.
“Your leg,” she began. “Is it—”
“Cynthia,
There was something furious and humiliated about the tight line of his mouth. If she had been another girl, someone who hated his leg less, he wouldn’t have been this embarrassed.
He grabbed at the bedpost with unnecessary force and hauled himself gracelessly to his feet. Sin closed her eyes, imagining how it would be if she knew her body was guaranteed to fail her.
“I apologize,” Alan told her stiffly.
Sin blinked her eyes open. “What?”
Alan was staring with great interest at the wall. “I didn’t know it was you,” he said. “Well, I did know it was you, but I was half-asleep, and—”
Sin blinked again as the fact that he was being a gentleman about not quite groping her sank in. She began to smile.
“That’s all right,” she said, and rolled back on the pillows, making a space. She glanced up at him through her fallen hair and asked, amused and inviting, “Are you getting back in?”
“Ah,” Alan said. “No. I have translations to do. And you—” He reached out then, not for her but for the blanket, which he pulled up over her shoulder. “Cynthia,” he said. “Just rest.”
Rejection number one hundred and fourteen—but who was counting—should have stung more, but his voice and the way he drew up the blanket were gentle, and she could stand to get more sleep.
Sin cuddled in under the covers. She was asleep again almost immediately. She stirred automatically every now and then, her hand reaching for the kids, but as soon as she surfaced from sleep she knew things were taken care of for now. For now, she could rest.
Every time she woke she glanced over at the little desk by the window, where Alan sat with an old scroll and a sheet of notepaper, occasionally scribbling something. His face in the morning light was serious and absorbed. The sound of the pencil on paper was like a whisper, shushing her back to sleep.
The last time she woke up, her eyes snapped open to the sound of Toby fussing.
Alan was standing up, hip propped against the desk, the baby in his arms.
