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.
S NAP
Such a little thing, and brittle, and the sound it made: a sharp, clean snap.
W HOLE
Snap.
Rushing, like wind through a door, and Karou was the door, and the wind was coming home, and she was also the wind. She was alclass="underline" wind and home and door.
She rushed into herself and was filled.
She let herself in and was full.
She closed again. The wind settled. It was as simple as that.
She was whole.
M ADRIGAL
She is a child.
She is flying. The air is thin and miserly to breathe, and the world lies so far below that even the moons, playing chase across the sky, are seen from above, like the shining crowns of children’s heads.
She is no longer a child.
She slips down from the sky, through the boughs of requiem trees. It is dark, and the grove is alive with the hish-hish of evangelines, night-loving serpent-birds that drink the requiem blooms. They’re drawn to her—hish-hish—and dart around her horns, stirring the blossoms so pollen sifts down, golden, and settles on her shoulders.
Later, it will numb her lover’s lips as he drinks her in.
She is in battle. Seraphim plummet from the sky, trailing fire.
She is in love. It is bright within her, like a swallowed star.
She mounts a scaffold. A thousand-thousand faces stare at her, but she sees only one.
She kneels on the battlefield beside a dying angel.
Wings enfold her. Skin like fever, love like burning.
She mounts the scaffold. Her hands are tied behind her, her wings pinioned. A thousand-thousand faces stare; feet stamp, hooves; voices shriek and jeer, but one rises above them all. It is Akiva’s. It is a scream to scour ghosts from their nests.
She is Madrigal Kirin, who dared imagine a new way of living.
The blade is a great and shining thing, like a falling moon. It is sudden—
S UDDEN
Karou gasped. Her hands flew to her neck and wrapped around it, and it was intact.
She looked at Akiva and blinked, and when she breathed his name, there was a new richness in her voice, an infusion of wonder and love and entreaty that made it seem to rise out of time. As it did. “Akiva,” she breathed with the fullness of her self.
With longing, with anguish, he watched her, and waited.