mount. When Liis left the king’s chamber near midnight, she was worn from evading his hands and his mouth and weary from trying to sing him to sleep. He was a child throwing tantrums, and when he finally succumbed, she washed herself in the basin in his chamber, though she feared he might wake and she would have to do it all again.
Hod waited for her in the hallway, his face pensive, his jaw tight, his staff in his hands, and his shield on his back.
“There must be somewhere we can go,” she whispered. “Surely . . . there is some place where we can lie behind a locked door. Where we don’t have to run. Or fear. Or speak in whispers. Where you don’t have to carry your shield and staff. Just for a while.”
She didn’t want to run to the hillside or hide in the Temple Wood. To be gone too long would result in chaos, and to go too far was too great a risk. And they had so little time; Hod would leave in the morning.
He turned, listening to the sentry who nodded off in the alcove, and then took her hand and pulled her down the corridor and up a flight of stairs. He stopped beside a small room at the end of a hushed hallway.
“There is no one on this floor but me, and those stairs lead all the way down to the yard at the rear of the castle.”
He ushered her inside, barred the door, and set down his staff and his shield as she surveyed the simple space.
A surge of tenderness welled in her chest. He always asked for so little, and he’d been given even less. A bed with a worn blanket was neatly made. A tub filled the corner, and a set of three drawers stood against the back wall. A basin sat atop the drawers; a bar of soap and a neatly folded towel were placed beside it. Everything was ordered and nothing was extra, except for the long, oval looking glass that hung on the wall adjacent to the door. She turned toward it, and he moved behind her, resting his cheek in the crown of her hair. It was odd to look at them together this way, framed in glass, as though they were a painting, permanent and fixed.
“There is a looking glass on your wall,” she said.
“I thought it might be,” he murmured. “It’s broken, though. When I look in it, I can’t see anything.”
He began to take down her hair, and she watched him, her blood warming beneath her skin. When he ran his fingers through the tresses, spreading them over her shoulders, she loosened the ties between her breasts.
There was no question, or even caution, no hesitation between them at all. He did not ask, and she did not instruct. He was suddenly impatient to touch her skin, and she didn’t shimmy or shy away or giggle at his urgency when he drew her skirts up in his hands and pulled her dress over her head. She helped him, tugging at her stays and loosening the sash at her waist.
Her underthings intrigued him, but only for as long as it took to remove them, and then she stood naked in the looking glass, shivering with anticipation, the cool night air whispering through the shutters that kept the wind from watching them.
“I want to see you,” he said.
She brought his palm to her heart and stroked the back of his hand.
“I have no songs that describe my flesh,” she said, “or capture the look of my face. But if you look into the glass while I sing, maybe you’ll see us the way you saw my sky.”
“Violet,” he breathed, remembering.
“Yes.”
He lifted his face and waited, hopeful.
“I am Ghisla . . . I am . . . small,” she sang, feeling her way into a song. “I am . . . summer . . . more than fall.”
He smiled. His grim face and empty eyes were transformed by the flashing of his teeth and the parting of his lips.
“There you are,” he cried. “There . . . we are?”
She nodded, humming softly.
“My eyes are blue, just like the sky. My hair is gold . . . don’t . . . ask me why.” She wrinkled her brow, trying to write lyrics even as her breath caught and his hands began to rove.
“Your waist is small, your hips are round,” he murmured, helping her. She repeated his