was freshly bathed as well, her hair and shirt both damp and clinging to her skin. She went straight for the brandy and poured herself a tall glass. From the smell of her skin, it wasn’t her first either. The talon scratches on her face had scabbed dark and angry red.
“Are you all right?” Savedra asked, after watching the princess pace several circuits across the rug.
“I lied,” Ashlin said, jerking to a halt. She set down her half-empty glass and brandy splashed against her fingers. Her cheeks were flushed, eyes shining. “I don’t envy you. I envy Nikos.”
Savedra opened her mouth and closed it again. “What do you mean?”
Ashlin closed the space between them. The heat of her skin was a furnace, and the smell of brandy clinging to her reminded Savedra how much she’d drunk herself. It also reminded her that she wasn’t wearing anything beneath her robe; her good hand clenched at the collar.
“I watched you come to harm, and I couldn’t bear it.” She cupped Savedra’s cheek with one calloused hand. “It’s you I want, Vedra.” She took the last step, pressing the length of their bodies together. The princess was hard and lean against her, lips soft and demanding.
“I don’t like girls,” Savedra whispered when she could breathe again. But there was no denying the attraction, not with the sharp beat of her pulse, the heat and hardness of her traitorous flesh. She tried to pull away, but a bedpost trapped her.
Ashlin’s laugh caught in her throat. “Neither do I. But I like you.” She shifted her hips and Savedra gasped. Lips and tongue traced the line of her throat.
“Nikos will never forgive me,” Savedra whispered, even as she arched into the touch. Pins and combs fell away beneath Ashlin’s insistent fingers and the damp cloud of her hair enveloped both their faces.
“He will. He loves you. It’s me he won’t forgive, and I hardly care.” Teeth scraped her earlobe. “I want you, Vedra.”
A turn and gentle push and the edge of the bed met the back of Savedra’s knees. She sat, and Ashlin’s knee pressed between hers. With a scramble and shrug Ashlin cast her shirt aside and crawled forward, forcing Savedra back against the featherbed.
Curiosity and envy made Savedra raise her face to her breasts, but the shudder and moan that answered her only made the pressure at the base of her spine build all the more. “This is madness,” she murmured against clean soap-scented skin. A nipple brushed her mouth, taut and creased. “Not to mention adultery and treason.”
Ashlin pulled away, and she nearly whimpered with pain and relief, but the princess only stripped away her trousers, and then Savedra’s robe. The sour-sweet musk of her was alien but not unpleasant. Savedra slid a hand along the silken skin of her inner thigh, driven by curiosity and the insidious desire to feel Ashlin shudder again. This much she could trespass—
Ashlin knelt above her, one hand teasing her nipple rings while the other closed around her erection, calluses scraping tender skin. Savedra opened her mouth for a denial, a refusal, but all that came out was a groan. Not like this, she wanted to say, memories of the Black Orchid and the hijras’ temple house thick as opium smoke in her mind. But Ashlin was already taking her inside, all warmth and wet and rhythmic pressure, and she could only sob.
It was quick and awkward and drunken, and Ashlin swore in Celanoran when she came. It was enough to make Savedra laugh, which in turn became a breathless shuddering gasp as her own climax took her. She was crying, and both of them were slick with sweat and tears and fluids.
“I’m sorry, ma chrí,” Ashlin said when their trembling stilled, holding her close and stroking her sticky hair. She was soft and pliable now, all the hardness of bone and muscle melted away. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt you.”
“You didn’t—”
She wiped away tears with her thumb. “Didn’t I? I shouldn’t have pressed.”
“We can’t do this again.” It might have sounded more convincing had her face not been pressed against Ashlin’s collarbone, her hand cupping her hip. “What are we going to do?”
“I don’t know,” Ashlin whispered into her hair. “I don’t know.”
They lay together in silence, until pain and fatigue and brandy rolled over Savedra like a wave, and sucked her down into the dark.
She dreams of black wings.
Wings spread wide to catch the wind, the dying sun warm on her back.