talking about? I just stood and listened to that crusty old prick for an hour, and despite all his bluster and bullshit, his best-case scenario seems to be one where you end up dead! Aelius wants you to kill yourself!”
“Aelius wants to restore the balance between Night and Day.”
“Because he wasn’t good enough to do it himself!”
“Ever since I arrived here,” Mia said. “Every step I’ve taken. Everything I’ve ever done has pointed me toward the Crown of the Moon.”
“That’s bullshit and you know it.”
Mia rubbed her aching brow and sighed. “I don’t know anything.”
“I won’t come with you if that’s what you’re thinking,” Ashlinn declared. “I’ll not give you the map, nor help you kill yourself. I can’t.”
“… I’ve seen you naked enough to have the map memorized by now, Ash.”
“Daughters damn you, Mia Corvere,” Ashlinn hissed.
Mia sighed and snatched up her cigarillo again, dragging the covers back over her bare skin. “You know, I don’t remember them ever teaching classes in it here, but you’ve a wonderful knack for killing the mood.”
“I’m serious, Mia!”
“You think I’m not?” she shouted, her temper breaking loose. “You think I don’t know what’s happening? What’s at stake? I’ve been sitting here for the past hour trying not to think about the fact that I can’t conjure a single reason to actually do this!”
“Then don’t!” Ash cried. “Fuck Aelius. Fuck the Moon, fuck the Goddess, fuck it all! We never asked for any of this! The Red Church is gutted, Scaeva’s Blades are all gone, he ran from here like a whipped dog!”
Ash stormed across the room and sat on the bed. She grabbed Mia’s hand, looked intently into her eyes. “We’re two of the finest assassins left in the Republic. I say we head to Godsgrave, slit that bastard’s throat, steal your brother back, and be done! Who gives a shit about Anais or the balance or any of it?”
“There’s a piece of him inside me, Ash.” Mia let out a long, heavy sigh. “Anais. I can feel him. In my heart.”
“And what about me?” Ashlinn put a hand on Mia’s chest. “Aren’t I in there, too?”
“Of course you are,” Mia whispered, grabbing hold of her fingers and squeezing.
“I love you, Mia.”
“I love you, too.”
“No, you don’t.” Ash shook her head. “If you did, you wouldn’t be in such a hurry to say goodbye.”
Mia felt tears welling in her eyes. An ocean of them waiting inside her.
“I don’t want to say goodbye.”
Ash caressed the slave brand on Mia’s cheek. The scar cutting through her other.
“Then stay. Stay with me.”
“I … I want to…”
Ashlinn lunged forward, their lips meeting in a desperate kiss. Mia closed her eyes, tasting tears, slipping her arms about Ashlinn’s waist and pulling her close. They kissed like they never had before, clinging to each other as if they were drowning, two people adrift in a world of fire and suns and night and storms. All the divinities against them, trying to tear them apart.
Their kiss ended slow, Ashlinn still holding Mia as their lips parted, as if afraid to let her go. She buried her face in Mia’s hair, squeezing tight, her voice a murmur.
“Stay with me.”
Mia closed her eyes and sighed. Holding on for dear life.
“I don’t know what to do,” she said. “I don’t know how to make this right.”
Their lips met again, softer this time. Longer and sweeter and full of an aching, blissful need. Ash’s fingertips caressed her cheeks and slipped through her hair, and Mia sighed as she felt her girl’s tongue brush her own. Their kiss deepened as Ashlinn’s hands began to roam. Down her throat to her collarbone. Skimming over her breasts and finally to the ribbon around Mia’s waist.
“I want to be with you forever,” Mia whispered.
“Just forever?” Ash murmured, descending.
Mia shook her head, closed her eyes.
“Forever and ever.”
* * *
She dreamed.
She was the child again, beneath a sky as gray as the moment between waking and sleeping. Standing on water so still it was like polished stone, like glass, like ice beneath her bare feet. Stretching as far as she could see.
Her mother walked beside her, holding her hand and a pair of lopsided scales. She wore gloves of black silk, long and glimmering with a secret sheen, all the way up to her elbows. Her gown was black as sin as night as death, strung with a billion tiny points of light. They shone from within, out through the shroud of her gown, like pinpricks in a curtain