“That’s not what you are, Asha. And it’s not how you should be looked at.”
All around them was the soft sound of the lake lapping at the shore. Asha crossed her arms. His words struck something soft and exposed. Something she needed to protect at all costs.
Very quietly, she whispered, “How should I be looked at?”
Torwin lowered his gaze to her throat. A breath shuddered out of him.
“Like you’re beautiful,” he said. “Beautiful and precious and good.”
The words cracked her open, tearing that soft, exposed thing out from the safety of her chest. It angered her that he could do it so easily. It infuriated her that he could do it with just his words.
But Asha remembered the sight in the mirror.
She knew what she was.
“I’ve spent my whole life believing lies.”
His gaze rose to meet hers.
“Please,” she whispered, “no more.”
Torwin no longer hesitated. He stepped toward her. “If I’d spent my life believing lies, I wouldn’t trust myself to know the truth when it stood staring me in the face.”
Asha narrowed her eyes at him, forcing him to look at all of her. She didn’t turn her cheek. Didn’t hide her scar. She forced him to look his own lie in the face.
“Why is it so hard for you to hear, Asha? You’re beautiful.”
Asha opened her mouth to refute this obvious untruth, but he interrupted.
“You’re precious,” he said, softer this time. “You’re—”
“Stop it!” She swung her fist, and he caught it. When she tried to free it, his grip tightened, so she elbowed him in the stomach.
The breath went out of him. He put his hands on his knees, breathing unsteadily.
But Torwin never gave up easily.
“It’s what I thought the very first time I saw you,” he said, recovering. “In my master’s library, pulling down scrolls.” Asha shoved him again. He staggered back. “It’s what I thought after Kozu burned you, when you stood before the entire city. It’s what I thought when they shouted at you and turned their backs on you and spat at your feet and you . . . you stood there and took it. I’ve never, not once, stopped thinking it.”
Tears burned in her eyes. Her throat stung with heat.
“You’re a liar.”
He grabbed her fist, pulling her into him. Asha tried to push him off, but his arms tightened around her. She used her elbows and knees, but Torwin only buried his face in her neck and held on.
When the fight went out of her, she collapsed against him. Her teeth chattered and her body shook. Her arms moved around his neck, hugging him close, surrendering to the warmth of him.
“You’re going to freeze to death,” Torwin whispered against her neck. “Why didn’t you change?”
When she didn’t answer, when she only hugged him harder, Torwin pulled away, silent and considering. She could hear the thoughts forming in his head as his gaze ran over her gown.
He was a house slave. House slaves knew these things.
“You can’t take it off,” he realized.
Asha looked down to the sand, hugging her arms now, willing her traitorous body to be still, her chattering teeth to be silent.
He held out his hand.
She didn’t reach for it. Didn’t dare look up at him. She stared at her toes. Toes she was starting to lose feeling in.
“Asha.” He said her name like it was something exquisite and exasperating at the same time. Crooking his finger beneath her chin, he tilted her face up, bringing her eyes back to his. “This won’t be the first time I’ve undressed you.”
Asha’s pulse quickened.
“I’ve spent my whole life dressing and undressing draksors,” he said. “It’s just a task. Nothing more.”
But his trembling fingers betrayed him. The nervous wobble in his voice matched Asha’s own fumbling pulse.
And still, she went with him.
Thirty-Seven
Inside the tent there was darkness, then the sound of a match being struck. The smallest of flames lit up Torwin’s hands as he cupped the match and ignited the lantern hanging above. It swung, scattering light across the tent and illuminating a bedroll, a pile of folded clothes, and the lute she’d bought in the marketplace.
They stood face-to-face, Asha chattering and trembling and dripping. Torwin, waiting and silent and still.
Asha had been dressed and undressed by slaves before. But they’d always been female slaves. Torwin was not. And the dress in question was her binding dress, meant to be taken off by her husband.
She needed to turn around so he could undo the buttons. She didn’t, though. In case a better option presented itself. Maybe she could call Kozu, fly back to camp, and get Safire to help her instead. But the thought of flying wet, in the freezing wind, made her shiver all the harder.
Torwin touched the knot in her sash. When she didn’t resist, he stepped in close. His fingers trembled as they untied the knot. The wet silk slid across her waist when he pulled and the dress loosened, letting her breathe.
The sash fell to the floor.
Torwin pushed the gossamer overlayer off her shoulders. With the slightest of tugs, it joined the sash at their feet.
When Asha still didn’t turn, he touched her wrist. His fingers trailed slowly up to her elbow, turning her gently until she faced the rough canvas wall of the tent. With her blood humming, she gathered up her wet hair and pulled it over her shoulder.
His fingers started at the top of her underlayer, sliding the tiny pebble-like buttons out of their corresponding loops.
The silence grew like a storm rolling in.
Soon, Asha couldn’t bear it.
“Thank you,” she said, breaking the silence.
Her voice startled him. He fumbled, his knuckles brushing across her bare skin. Asha’s heart raced like a desert wind.
“This is no imposition,” he whispered.
As the dress loosened and air rushed against her, Asha felt his gaze trail over her. The bumps of her spine. The wings of her shoulder blades. The curve of her lower back.
“There.” He swallowed softly, undoing the last button. “You’re free.”
Asha turned her back to the tent walls. She kept her arms crossed against her chest, holding the loosened dress up as she looked at him. The light cast by the hanging lamp made his skin glow. The shadows sharpened his cheekbones. Her gaze slid to his mouth, where the line of his lower lip dipped like the mantle of the Rift.
What would it feel like to press her mouth against his? To close the space between them? To claim him right here in his tent?
As if sensing her thoughts, Torwin raised his eyes to her face. Asha turned her scarred cheek away.
“Why do you keep doing that?” His voice hardened around the words.
When she didn’t answer, he slid off his shirt.
A feeling rushed through Asha, like plunging through the air with Kozu. Dropping the shirt at their feet, Torwin turned so his lacerated back—scabbed and finally healing—was on full display.
“Do you hate the sight of them?”
Asha sucked in a breath. “What? No.”