He just looked at her, the statue Kier she knew so well, trying to stare into her mind as if for the first time he was uncertain what he would find there. His eyes changed back to Illukar’s grey, but he did not speak.
"What do you think we should do, Illukar?" she asked.
Those grey eyes lit with the elusive amusement she found so special. "Medair, there is no force in this world which could urge me to argue you out of sharing my bed. If you truly feel yourself capable of it, I think we should go home."
The smile she should have given him in response went all awry and she pressed the base of her palms into her eyes to try and stop them from stinging. "I very much want to hold you to the understanding we had."
But Illukar’s face had become Ieskar’s blue-eyed mask, shadowed and unyielding.
"You don’t believe me," she said. "Do you?"
He didn’t reply straight away, examining her expression in minute detail. "I believe you do not wish to lose my brother," he said finally.
Medair blinked. Did he really think she would lie? When she had already admitted that it had been his tears which had driven her away? Did he think she would be able touch him, if her hate was stronger than the love it had tried to kill? She stared at his statue-still face and realised what a very thin thread was holding that mask of composure in place. Even Ieskar’s self-control had its limits.
"And you told me I ran from things."
His face didn’t change but his chin lifted, just a little. That was something she’d seen Illukar do, but it was Ieskar who had reacted. It made her feel strange, to see Ieskar react to anything at all, and an immense rush of feeling forced her to snatch at breath. She wanted to do that again, to crack the mask. She wanted to touch.
"I’m not lying," she told him, in a voice which sounded shocked to be genuine. She was trying to imagine Ieskar smiling at her. The very idea made her tremble.
Ieskar just sat there, expression once again completely blank. "Then how?" he asked, at last. "How did you come to love me, Medair an Rynstar? For I saw very well that you hated."
Medair tried to channel all that morass of emotion into speech, to make him understand the feelings which had endured despite her hate, to become the kind of wordsmith Telsen had been. And said, "I don’t know." The words fell out and a gasping kind of laugh followed. She shook her head, cheeks hot, and pressed on. "It was an unpleasant shock, when I understood. Hate was a great deal easier, and for a long time I called everything I felt hate, even when it wasn’t."
He tilted his head just a fraction to one side. She wasn’t sure if he did it deliberately, and decided it meant he was listening. Illukar’s grey eyes flashed at her, and she struggled on, face growing ever warmer.
"You are beautiful, Ieskar," she said, with stilted honesty. "And you looked straight through me. And you were so alone." She closed her eyes, dismayed at how wrong that sounded. "I hated the rules which bound you. Could not understand how you stood them. I used to watch your hands turning the marrat pieces. The grace – it, I – I would only let myself think of stopping you. Hating you. I would have used the Horn of Farak on the Ibis-lar. I would have killed you. And it would have–" She looked away, remembering the stinging of the Horn, and the way her chest had seemed to vibrate like a struck gong, when she knew that she had the power to kill the Ibis-lar. "I would have done it, and it would have destroyed me," she whispered.
After a long silence, she lifted her head and stared into those pale eyes, willing him to accept. He seemed to be gazing past her, and she looked over her shoulder at a huge, hazy lake fringed by the border of reeds and islets which had escaped the Blight. Tiny ripples reflected the pale sunlight creeping over the hills, and turned it all into a thing of vast and delicate beauty. It would sparkle at midday and burn at sunset, but in the dawn it earned its name: Shimmerlan.
Ieskar’s voice, cool and dreadfully even, inserted itself into this vista: "What would you have done, Medair, if I alone had returned?"
Horrid thought. She turned back to look wide-eyed at him, not even trying to hide her dismay. "I would have mourned Illukar," she said, roughly. "And–" She swallowed the next breath. "And I would have run from you. Frantically." She looked down at the ground, feeling utterly lost. There didn’t seem to be anything else to say.
Ieskar stood up. She supposed they would go to The Avenue now, to rest, recover, and shred themselves inside because of the bar which divided them. Slowly, she climbed to her feet, flayed by self-recrimination. She could have lied, she could have told him she was strong enough to overcome her hatred for him alone, to openly be Ieskar Cael las Saral-Ibis' lover. She could have at least tried. When she thought she knew an argument which would convince him, she would try. She refused to just give up.
Cool fingers touched her cheek. Teetering into astonishment, Medair looked into ice-blue eyes as Ieskar cupped her face between his hands. He still wore no expression as he traced the shape of her cheekbones with his thumbs, touching her because he could, because there was no longer a law to forbid it, and she had said she wanted him to. Because he had believed her, after all.
She knew she must look stricken, terrified, and lifted her hands to cover his, to declare her desire. Her coward self and her vengeful self could be suppressed. Not hating wasn’t one choice, but many, and she would make them all.
His eyes went grey, then blue again. Ever graceful, Ieskar bent his head to her, and paused. He shivered, and that ran through his hands. Then there was the warmth of his breath, and then the tiniest graze against her lower lip. The smallest touch, and it made her blood turn somersaults and ignite. She had not lied to say she wanted him.
Wondering if she could possibly put into words this sudden burning sun, Medair shifted so that they touched: knee, hip, chest. He was still sodden, shirt and skin cold and damp. Her chin grazed his, soft and smooth. So close, she could see in precise detail the way grey flecks rose to crowd out the blue of his eyes. Like a storm of snowflakes, or a hundred thousand butterflies. Then, just as quickly, that ice blue was at the fore, and his lids dropped, a screen of heavy white lashes.
When he moved again, she opened her mouth to meet his, remembering that he had become Kier very young, that the laws which bound him would have meant he would not even have been permitted to touch Princess Alaire, would have had to use magic–
She tasted his lips, and had to grip his wrists tightly because her legs did not seem quite able to keep up with her disbelief. But she did not stop, nor shift away, or even take breath as tentative exploration turned into deep, needy investigation. Hers to touch, hers to taste, to take.
Medair might possibly have stayed there forever, trying to weld her mouth to his, but a distant shout brought an unwelcome reminder of a world outside a white-skinned man with eyes of blue and grey. She quite literally sobbed as she broke from his lips, turned her head only just enough to see the riders.