Three Dark Crowns (Three Dark Crowns #1) - Kendare Blake Page 0,100
and slides closer to Joseph to hide beneath his arm.
“Well,” Billy says, and sighs. “You don’t need to keep me company. I intend to stay here all night until those priestesses escort me back to my launch.”
“Are you sure?” Joseph asks, but Jules tugs his arm. They wave good-bye and walk off through the crowds.
“What are we doing?” Joseph asks as she slips her hand into his.
“I thought it a good idea if we were seen,” she says. “So that when I am not here tomorrow, anyone wondering will think that I am only off in a tent somewhere with you.”
The night is filled with bonfires and laughter. Slender girls pull boys into a dance with rosy, warm cheeks, and in Luke’s gown, Jules feels as beautiful as any of them.
“I have never seen you like this,” Joseph says, and the way his eyes move over her body fills her with pleasure. “Luke will have to close down the bookshop and become a tailor.”
Jules laughs. The weight that she felt when Beltane began has lifted. Arsinoe has returned. And they will not stand by and let her be killed. They will take action, and the idea buoys her so completely that Camden leaps in a joyful circle, as if she were a kitten.
In the corner of her eye, a girl slides her fingers down a boy’s bare chest. Many couples tonight will disappear into tents or to the soft ground beneath the trees.
“How did we get here?” Joseph asks.
Jules has navigated the fires in a slow circle, so that they are standing directly beside her tent.
She pulls Joseph inside. “I feel like I should apologize, for the time I’ve wasted,” she says.
“No,” Joseph says. “Don’t ever apologize.”
She lights a lamp and closes the tent flap. Her tent is not very large, and her bed is nothing more than a thin roll of blankets. But it will have to do.
She steps close and slides her fingers under the collar of his shirt. His pulse races before she raises her lips to kiss his throat. He smells of the spices used to prepare the feast. His arms wrap around her.
“I have missed you,” she says.
“Before the Hunt, you didn’t want me,” he starts, but she shakes her head. Everything hurt before. Now, everything is different.
Jules draws his mouth down to hers and presses her body fiercely against him. She is bold tonight. Perhaps it is the gown or the energy of the fires.
They kiss hungrily, and Joseph’s hands clutch Jules’s back.
“I am so sorry,” he says.
She unbuttons his shirt. She moves his hands around to the fastenings of her dress.
“Jules, wait.”
“We have waited long enough.”
She backs up toward her makeshift bed, and they lower to their knees.
“I have to tell you,” he says, but Jules stops him with her lips and her tongue. She does not want to hear anything—about Mirabella. It is over. Done. Mirabella does not matter.
They lie down together, and Jules hands glide under Joseph’s shirt. She would touch all of him tonight. Every inch of bare skin.
Joseph holds himself on top of her carefully. He kisses her shoulders and her neck. “I love you,” he says. “I love you, I love you.”
And then he squeezes his eyes closed, and his face crumples. He slides off her and rolls onto his back.
“Joseph? What’s the matter?”
“I’m sorry,” he says, and covers his eyes with his hand.
“Did I do something wrong?” Jules asks, and Joseph squeezes her tightly.
“Just let me hold you,” he says. “I just want to hold you.”
THE ARRON ENCAMPMENT
After the feast ends, and the fires burn low, Katharine and Pietyr lie in her tent, side by side, Pietyr on his back and Katharine on her belly, listening to the last of the night’s revel. The air smells of sparks and smoke, of different woods burning, and different meats cooking. Below those warm scents, there is evergreen needles, and salt air from over the cliffs.
“Do you believe Natalia?” Pietyr asks. “When she says that she will be able to alter the Gave Noir?”
Katharine drums her fingers atop his chest. “She has never given me any reason to doubt her.”
Pietyr does not reply. He was quiet during the feast. Katharine climbs on top of him to try to cheer him with kisses.
“What is wrong?” she asks. “You are not yourself. You are so tender.” She lifts his hand and drops it on her hip. “Where is your usual demanding touch?”
“Have I been such a brute?” Pietyr asks, and smiles. Then