The Winter of the Witch (Winternight Trilogy #3) - Katherine Arden Page 0,63

of the steam as he moved through it.

She lifted her chin, to hide sudden fright, and said, “Won’t you melt?”

He looked affronted. But then, unexpectedly, he laughed. “I will try not.” He sank with undiminished grace onto the bench opposite her, leaned on his knees, his hands laced together. Her glance lingered on his long fingers.

His skin was paler than hers; he made nothing of nakedness. His stare was cool and frank. “You had a long road,” he said. She could not see his eyes in the shadows, but felt his gaze like a hand. Whatever he had not seen of her skin before, he was seeing it now.

“And it is not over,” she said. With unsteady fingers, she touched the scab on her cheek, raised her eyes to his, wondered if she was hideous, wondered if it mattered. Still he didn’t move. The faint light lit him in pieces: a shoulder, a hollow beneath the ribs. She realized that she was considering him, throat to feet, and that he was watching her do so. She blushed.

“Will you not tell me your secret?” he asked.

“What secret?” retorted Vasya, laboring to keep her voice steady. His hands were motionless, but his glance still traced the lines of her body. “I already told you. My people have need of you.”

He shook his head, raised his eyes to hers. “No, there is something more. Something there in your face every time you look at me.”

As I could, I loved you.

“My secrets are mine, Gosudar,” said Vasya sharply. “We sacrifices may take things to the grave as well as anyone else.”

He lifted a brow. “I have never met a maiden who looked less like she meant to die.”

“I don’t,” said Vasya. Still short of breath, she added, “I did want a bath, though, and I am getting one; that is something.”

He laughed again, and their eyes caught.

Him too, Vasya thought. He is afraid too. For he knows no more than I where this will end.

Yet he brought me here, he stayed. He wounded me and healed me. He remembers, and he doesn’t.

Before she could lose her nerve, Vasya slipped off the bench and knelt between his knees. His skin had not warmed with the steam. Even in the smoke-smelling bathhouse, the scent of pine, of cold water hung about him. His face did not change, but his breathing quickened. Vasya realized she was trembling. Once again, she reached up, touched her palm to his face.

A second time, he caught her wrist. But this time, his mouth grazed the scar in the hollow of her hand.

They looked at each other.

Her stepmother had liked to frighten her and Irina with tales of wedding-night horrors; Dunya had assured her that it was not quite so.

It felt like the wildness would burn her up from the inside out.

He traced her lower lip with his thumb. She could not read his expression. “Please,” she said, or thought she said, just as he closed the distance between them and kissed her.

The fire was barely embers in the stove, but they didn’t need the light. His skin was cool under her hands; her sweat streaked them both. She was shivering all over; she didn’t know what to do with her hands. It was too much: skin and spirit, hunger and her desperate loneliness, and the rising tide of feeling between them.

Perhaps he felt the uncertainty beneath the desire, for he broke off, looking at her. The only sound was their breathing, his as harsh as hers.

“Afraid now?” he whispered. He had pulled her with him onto the wooden bench; she was sitting crosswise in his lap, one of his arms about her waist. His free hand drew lines of cool fire on her skin, from ear to shoulder, followed her collarbone, dipped between her breasts. She could not control her breathing.

“I’m supposed to be frightened,” Vasya snapped, sharper than was warranted because she was, in fact, frightened, and angry too because she could barely think, let alone speak, while his hand came up again, and this time slid down her spine, curved lightly around her ribs, found her breast and lingered there. “I am a maiden. And you—” She trailed off.

The light hand stilled. “Afraid I will hurt you?”

“Do you mean to?” she asked. They both heard the tremor in her voice. Naked in his arms, she was more vulnerable than she’d ever been.

But he was afraid too. She felt it in the restrained tension of his touch, could