“You smoke a lot,” Ash murmured.
“Settles the nerves,” Mia replied.
“Make you nervous, do I?”
Mia held out her hand in answer. She was usually rock-steady, never a tremor to weaken her swordgrip. But her hands were shaking now.
“O, you’re all aquiver, love,” Ash cooed. “First times will do that to a girl, neh?”
“Let’s see yours then, smart-arse.”
Ash held up her own hand, and though she tried to hide it, Mia could see she was shaking too. She could feel the girl’s breast pressed against her, the heart beneath running to the same thunderous tune. Threading her fingertips through Ashlinn’s own, she sensed the current crackling between them. Realizing she was still thirsty.
“Perhaps you should take up smoking.”
Ash made a face. “Don’t enjoy the taste, I’m afraid.”
“I can make it sweeter…”
Dragging deep on the cigarillo, Mia inhaled another warm lungful. And tipping up Ashlinn’s chin with her fingertips, she leaned in close and kissed her, lips parted, breathing into her mouth. Her lips were sugared from the cigarillo paper, the clove-scented smoke drifting around their tongues as the kiss deepened. Ash tilted her head and sighed, pressing the length of her body against Mia’s own. Mia’s hands roamed her back, feeling the goosebumps rising on Ashlinn’s skin, the sweet ache rising once more between her legs. Ashlinn closed her mouth, sucking on Mia’s tongue before breaking the kiss.
“Not bad,” she smiled, exhaling gray. “But I’m still not taking up smoking.”
Mia shrugged, taking another drag. Ashlinn settled in against her side again, Mia’s arm around her shoulder. They lay in silence for a time, listening to the sounds of the nevernight outside. She took a good look at the girl in her arms, the slender curves, the twin divots at the base of her spine, fingers pushing the long tresses of blood-red aside and exposing …
… the inkwerk crawling across her back.
“… What’s that?” Mia whispered.
Ashlinn tensed, sitting up and tossing her hair back over her shoulder.
She’d only caught a glimpse, but Mia had seen intricate lines and shading, a hint of strange writing, the shape of a curved blade on Ash’s left shoulder …
“One stipulation,” Solis said, holding up his finger. “An item of import to your patron. A map, written in Old Ashkahi and set with a seal shaped like a sickle’s blade.”
… Goddess.
“The map,” Mia realized. “Duomo’s map.”
“Is that why you came here?” Ash asked softly.
Mia frowned, cigarillo bobbing on her lips. “What?”
“Eclipse is always skulking about. Maybe she caught a glimpse.” The girl fixed Mia in her blue-sky stare. “So you figure the only way you’ll get a better look is to get my clothes off? Smart play, Corvere.”
“… Is that what you think?”
“I don’t think anything.” Ash squared her shoulders, making sure the tattoo was hidden from sight. “That’s why I’m asking.”
“Ash, I had no idea. Why do you have Duomo’s map tattooed on your back?”
“Not tattooed,” she said, nodding to the double circles marked on Mia’s cheek. “It’s arkemical, just like your brand.”
Mia blinked as realization struck her. “So if they kill you…”
“The brand disappears. No map for them.” The girl shrugged. “People who play with fire do better if they expect to get burned.”
A dozen questions burned in Mia’s mind. What was so important about this map that Ashlinn had it indelibly branded on her skin? What did Duomo and Scaeva want with it, that they were set to move so openly against each other to obtain it? Where did it lead? Where did the girl she’d just been holding in her arms fit in with all of it?
“There’s a lot about this you’re not telling me, Ashlinn.”
“I could say the same for you, Mia.”
“Such as?”
Ashlinn looked deep into her eyes, swallowing hard.
“Why did you come here? Why now?”
“Because I wanted to be with you.”
“But why?”
Mia took a drag of cigarillo, mulling it over.
“Because I was thinking. About all the things that brought me to this point. The things that made me what I am, and all the things I could’ve been if I’d been given a choice. And then I didn’t want to think anymore.”
“So that’s all this was?” Ashlinn kept her face steady, her voice cool, but Mia could see the storm building in that sunsburned blue. “Just a distraction?”
“The sweetest distraction,” Mia smiled.
“No jesting,” Ashlinn said. “You run hot and cold as a faulty bathhouse, and if this was just a quick roll to fuck unpleasant thoughts away, that’s fine. I’d rather that than a ruse to see the ink on my skin. But whichever it was, I need to know.”
“It was neither, Ash.”
“I know a lie when I taste it, Mia.”
Mia sighed, shook her head. She’d pondered it on the way here, stealing down through the nevernight streets. Why it hadn’t been right before, why it felt right now. Her fight with Furian had left her enflamed, her fight with Sid had done nothing to sate it. But it wasn’t simply that, wasn’t the thought of her parents or the painful reminders of being locked up in that place or the thought of where she’d been or what was to come.
“I thought about all the things I could’ve been if I’d been given a choice,” she finally said. “And I realized that mostly I’ve never had one. Ever since my father was killed, my feet were set upon this course. No denying it. No escape. So I wanted to choose something for myself. Something that could just be mine. My choice.”
Mia looked at Ash, running trembling fingertips across her cheek.
“And I chose you.”
Ashlinn simply stared, bee-stung lips parted as she breathed, and Mia found herself falling, down into a long, sweet kiss. Ashlinn surged against her, hands cupping her face, lost in the sweetness of a kiss that seemed to shiver all the way to Mia’s soul. She pulled away only with reluctance, dark eyes searching Ashlinn’s own.
“Do I taste like I’m lying?” she asked.
Ashlinn smiled soft, shook her head.
“No. Do I?”
Did she? Had anything changed here? Wasn’t everything still the same? The question of this map—where it led, why Duomo wanted it, what it all meant—still hung between them. Ashlinn J?rnheim was still a girl who’d do anything to get what she wanted. Lie, cheat, steal, kill. She had secrets. She was dangerous.
But was Mia so different?
The more time they spent together, the more kinship she saw with this girl she supposed she should despise.
“You taste like honey,” Mia whispered.
Ashlinn smiled, pressed her forehead to Mia’s. Mia closed her eyes, listening to the sounds of the streets outside, to the cool nevernight winds, now slowly dying. She had questions. Too many questions. But the turn would soon begin, Executus would rouse them for another session of sweat and beatings and bloody Furian, and all of it—for a blessed moment forgotten in the arc of this girl’s arms—came flooding back. Mia remembered who she was. What she was. Opening her eyes and sighing.