would be a good queen, and that should have been enough, but she couldn’t help wanting other things.
“You can have them, Elyssa,” he told her, taking her wrist. “Everything you want.”
At that point, Elyssa became certain that she was dreaming. And that was a blessing, because everything was acceptable in dreams. Dreams were no one’s fault, and no one could be held accountable for them later. When Gareth slid off her shift, using his good arm, she did not feel even the slightest twinge of shame, for she understood now that the moment was everything. When she got old, when she reached her mother’s age, she knew that youth would have faded, lost its brilliance and turned dark and muted, like a pre-Crossing photograph. All she would have were flashes of memory, single moments . . . and she wanted this to be one of them. Gareth grabbed her hair, yanking her head back, and the feeling was so unbearably exquisite that Elyssa shuddered, forgetting all about her missing Guard, the two medics sleeping in the corner, even about the white witch down the hall.
It was only when they were nearing the end—Elyssa could sense that end, approaching for both of them, was working toward it with all her heart—that she turned her head and saw the witch, just beside the bed, less than a foot away. The albino’s face was twisted in a grin, lascivious and predatory at the same time, and her colorless eyes gleamed, a bright and burning white. She had loosened her dress, and her hands cupped her own breasts, which were firm and young, a terrible contrast to her ageless face. At that moment Elyssa began to climax, a dreadful, crowning spasm that seemed only partly hers. She moaned, and the witch moaned with her. Elyssa began to scream, and in that moment, the witch vanished.
“What is it?” Gareth asked roughly. His voice was drifting, almost lost, as though he too had been dreaming.
Maybe we both were, Elyssa thought wildly, feeling a desperate hope. Maybe none of it was real.
But the hope vanished in an instant, for she could still feel Gareth between her legs, warm wetness beginning to drip down her left thigh. And now her mother’s medics were sitting up, staring at the two of them: Elyssa astride Gareth, neither of them wearing a stitch.
“Great God,” Elyssa breathed.
The medics ran for the door, shouting for the Guard, and Elyssa leapt off Gareth and sprinted toward the far wall, not bothering with her clothing. All around her, she could feel the Queen’s Wing stirring, all of them waking from a deep dream. She heard the pounding footsteps of Queen’s Guards in the corridor. They were coming, swords in hand.
“Over here!” she cried to Gareth. “Now, if you don’t wish to die!”
Gareth followed her, grabbing his trousers as he went. Elyssa fumbled against the stones until she found the invisible crevice that triggered the door. It opened into darkness, and Elyssa nearly shoved him through. His bad arm hit the wall, but he did not cry out.
“Go left,” she ordered him. “Go left, find the staircase, and keep going down, under the moat. Run. The Guard know the tunnels. They will come for you.”
He looked at her for a moment, and Elyssa thought perhaps he would say something; some ultimate summation that would crown her memory when long years were gone. But he said nothing; in fact, he looked as horrified as she did, and now Elyssa began to wonder whether he actually had been dreaming, whether the entire night had been his doing at all, or even hers. But it was too late to ask. Gareth disappeared into the darkness, and Elyssa yanked the hidden door closed.
Gone, she thought. Gone, but we had our moment first.
Her shift still lay on the floor by the bed; she darted that way, but the door burst open before she even came close, and the entire Guard seemed to pour into the room in small, tight groups: Givens and Barty, Elston and Coryn and Dyer, Bowler and Kibb and Wallace. Elyssa stood before them as though paralyzed, her thighs sticky, her entire body red with shame. When Givens charged off toward the hidden door, she tried to stop him, but he shoved her aside, and Elyssa could do nothing but huddle on the bed, wrapping her arms around her legs to cover her nakedness . . . and waiting for her mother.
Chapter 15
SONG OF THE SCYTHE
The Almont Uprising