I take the cup. Before I can second-guess myself, I follow your example. Honey, warm and sweet, trickles onto my tongue. My eyes find yours, and I catch you staring.
“It’s excellent. Different from the honey I gather here. It’s a bit lighter in taste. Different flowers . . .” I realize that I am talking quite fast. I replace the cup of honey on the floor between us for fear I might lose my grip and let it spill. “Different flowers give honey a different flavor. There’s something smooth and mellow in this honey. It’s good. Really very good.” I wish I could stop babbling. “Did you gather this yourself?”
Even before the question is out I regret asking it. The answer will be no, of course. And somehow asking the question feels like I’m passing judgment on the answer.
“No, I wouldn’t know how. I’d like to learn—”
“I’d be happy to teach you—”
You fall silent. Are you remembering the encounter earlier today, when I found you here in camp after hive hunting with Lo and Shava? “Maybe. I think I’d be interested in learning where honeybees hide this far north—”
Something in the way you pronounce the word north makes me flinch. You possess the most confounding ability to say things that are insulting or critical without showing any awareness of how your words might sound.
“You really hate it here in the north, don’t you?”
“Hate is a strong word.”
“A strong word, but no less the right word.”
“Perhaps.”
Should I offer you a taste of the honey I’ve collected here? Is there any hope that you might see, as I’d hoped on the night I’d first offered it to you, that not everything in my clan’s camp is bitter and cold? It’s so tempting to offer it again—to have a second chance at the exchange that set us on the wrong path. But I decide against it. I don’t want to bring up that evening right now.
“Can I ask you,” I start, my voice low. But then I stop myself. Why do I insist on asking you questions? Part of me suspects the less I know of you, the better.
“Ask me anything,” you say, which, I must admit, seems a bit bold coming from a girl who, when I first entered this hut, appeared painfully embarrassed. But that was a Mya I’ve never seen before, and she has vanished.
She has been replaced by the girl across from me—a girl who sits with a casual ease that is clearly calculated. You sit with your feet tucked up beneath you, forcing your posture just slightly forward, leaning into the space between us. Your hair drapes over each shoulder, framing your face and neck in just the right balance of shadow and light. I can see your eyes but I cannot read them, which only makes me want to see them more.
“Fine.” I slide my hands under my thighs to ensure I will resist the temptation to brush your hair from your eyes. “Why did your family come to the north to visit us in the first place? It’s clear you hold no interest in my clan, and only five years ago there was enough trouble between our clans to stir whispers of war.”
You lean back on one elbow and stretch your legs. Your face slips into shadow—all but one eye, sharp and intense, illuminated by a pale shaft of light streaming through an overhead vent. “It’s simple—it’s because there are boys here. Isn’t it obvious? Chev needs to find a mate for me. After all, Seeri is betrothed, but I am the oldest. Chev is hesitant to allow Seeri to marry before me. I think he’s afraid if he doesn’t find someone for me soon he’ll be stuck taking care of me forever.”
“I hardly think you need to be taken care of,” I say.
A murmured laugh rises in your chest. Maybe it’s because of your supine posture, or maybe because a thickened breath of bitterness mixes with the exhale of levity, but the laugh breaks in your throat.
A stretch of leg, an arch of neck that rolls down your spine to your hips, and all at once you sit up. Your shoulders lift from the bed and your face floats toward me, your hair stirring a scent of smoke into the sweetness rising from the open honey. My heart gallops, but there’s something else—a heavy ache, a hole behind my racing heart—a clutching hunger that claws at me, calling to my attention the soft curve of your throat, the warm glow of the skin just below your ear, the tension in your lips as they curl into a cryptic grin. “Another question?” I ask, focusing my attention on the echo of your words repeating in my head—Chev needs to find a mate for me. “Why wasn’t your brother’s friend, your sister Seeri’s betrothed—why wasn’t he promised to you, since you’re the oldest?”
The grin vanishes. Your teeth press into the corner of your bottom lip.
“By the time of Seeri’s betrothal, I was already betrothed. I was betrothed so long ago I can’t remember a time when I wasn’t. The match was forged when I was a little girl and still lived with the Bosha clan.”
This answer, so calm and measured from your lips, sends my heart sputtering again.