“Have you need of me?” she said, after a long moment in which Ayla just stood there, silent and motionless. “Or—did you need something? Did my father send you?” She cocked her head. “Did something happen?”
“No,” said Ayla, her voice wooden. “Nothing happened.”
That’s a lie, Crier thought.
Ayla wasn’t happy. She could see that much. Ayla turned her gaze away, and Crier, out of respect, did the same.
She sat back down on the edge of her bed and kept her eyes on the glowing ashes in the hearth, the sparks leaping and winking out.
“You’re not breathing,” Ayla finally said.
Crier glanced up. Ayla was standing barely an arm’s length away. The fading firelight was warm on her skin, catching all the places that were usually shadowed: the hollows of her cheeks and clavicles, the darkness of her brown eyes.
“No,” Crier agreed. “Sometimes I forget.”
For some reason, that made Ayla’s jaw tighten. Crier was trying not to look for too long, but it was a rare moment that she was facing Ayla and Ayla was not paying attention to her—not watching her warily. Ayla looked particularly small right now, hands shoved into the pockets of her red uniform pants, her shirt untucked and loose around her frame. There was a gleam of gold at her throat, mostly hidden beneath her collar and the fall of her dark hair. The Made thing.
All of a sudden, the sounds came to her mind. The ones she’d heard through Queen Junn’s door tonight. The moaning, soft and sweet, flecked with gasps. How the idea of it had made her shudder and grow warm.
“Why did you come here?” she asked quietly.
“I—I can’t sleep,” Ayla said, and then pressed her lips together like she had not meant to say anything at all.
Crier nodded. “I am familiar with that affliction.”
“Really?” Ayla didn’t sound curious. She sounded angry. And exhausted.
She considered it. “Yes. I sleep barely one night out of ten.”
Neither of them spoke for a moment. This was a rare kind of interaction, Crier realized: they were together, but it was unscheduled. Like the evening by the tide pool. There were no tutors, no tasks, no upcoming meals. Crier had already bathed. Ayla was not even supposed to be here for another few hours. Until dawn, they could do anything. They could visit the music room or the library. They could sneak into the kitchens and Ayla could eat the bread she liked, the kind with nuts and fruits baked in. They could go to the gardens to see the night flowers blooming in the moonlight, or they could go up to the rooftop and look at the stars, or they could even walk all the way out to the bluffs and watch the waves crash against the black rocks.
Crier looked at Ayla’s face. The shadows under her eyes. There was something terrible in her, something clawed and angry and afraid and sad. She didn’t know how she knew it, but she did. The truth of Ayla, the pain of her, was like a song you could feel vibrating on the air, even if you didn’t know the words. It was a hum, low and throaty and full of sorrow.
“Come,” she said. “You need more sleep than I do. And my bed is softer than anything in the servants’ quarters.” She patted the bed beside her.
“I—I’m fine. I shouldn’t be here,” Ayla said.
She said she shouldn’t be here . . . but she didn’t move to leave.
Another lie. This one better than the last, though.
“Stay. There’s plenty of space.” Crier wasn’t sure where the words had come from; she knew only that something had possessed her, making her behave differently around this one person than she would around any other. She could only replay the teasing way Ayla had plunged into the tide pool, so many nights ago now, the way a single drop of water shone like a pearl on her lower lip.
The way the thought of Junn and her human adviser together had made Crier think of one thing only: Ayla.
“You need to sleep,” she said, because it was true. “A lady needs her handmaiden to be at the pinnacle of health, you know.”
Slowly, almost hesitantly, Ayla circled around to the other side of the bed. She stood there for a long moment, just breathing. Crier held so, so still. And then the bed dipped beneath Ayla’s weight.
“Thank you,” she whispered. Her voice wavered, and Crier felt that wavering all through her body.