Page 24 of Her Cruel Redemption

A bubble of semi-hysterical laughter burst in my mouth. ‘I know it must seem so… so…’

‘It’s alright,’ he said. ‘You don’t have to explain yourself. The last thing I want is to make you uncomfortable.’

‘I’m not—’

‘I know. It’s okay.’ He swept a hand to the ground, picked up his coat and arranged it over my shoulders. ‘I’ll get dressed and we’ll go back.’

I clutched his coat around my shoulders and watched him dress, a phrase balancing on the tip of my tongue that I was trying to find the courage to speak. ‘I like it when you’re only half-dressed,’ I said, so quietly he might not have heard it. But I could tell he did when he paused in the act of pulling his trousers on, mouth twisting in a crooked smile.

When he was dressed again, he took my hand. ‘Come on. Let’s go before I change my mind and try to get you in the water after all.’

I smiled to myself as I followed him, nursing a bloom of warmth in my chest at the idea that he perhaps would like it if I was half-dressed, too. Or perhaps entirely undressed.

When we returned to camp, Elias’s wet hair and my semi-wet dress was explained with our discovery of a stream, news met with a deal of enthusiasm. It seemed Elias wasn’t the only one who was tired of being covered in dirt. The water cans were quickly rounded up for a second expedition to the stream.

‘I’m going to show them where it is,’ Elias said as I settled myself on one of the logs circled around the fire. ‘Are you going to stay here?’

‘I don’t need you getting my dress wet again,’ I teased. ‘I think I’ll stay and dry it out.’

He dropped a kiss to my hair, his hand lingering a moment at the small of my back, before shouldering a string of water cannisters and following the others.

I only realised Rhiandra had stayed behind when I turned and caught her watching me from the log next to mine. She had this way of looking at you, sometimes, dark eyes so sharp, like she was cutting you open and examining your insides. I blushed and glanced at the ground, suddenly intensely uncomfortable. I hadn’t done anything wrong, had I? Was she offended by the casual way Elias touched me? It was always like he wasn’t even thinking about it, like his hands were just drawn to me. Did she think he was taking liberties that he shouldn’t? My stomach squirmed as I imagined having to defend against an accusation of improper conduct. Would she bring up our walk into the trees, my damp dress and his wet hair? Oh Madeia, what would I say? How would I endure it?

‘It seems so easy between the two of you,’ she said finally, surprising me enough to drag my gaze from the ground. ‘You really love him, don’t you?’ The question wasn’t spoken with the same scorn with which she’d accused me of the same when she’d given me the apple.Don’t tell me you’ve fallen in love.

But even so, I couldn’t answer the question. The answer felt too fragile. Maybe I did love him. It was hard to know when I’d never been in love before, but surely this fluttery bubbling in my chest, like sparkling wine was running through my veins, could be called by no other name. But did he love me? What if he didn’t? What if the Yoxvese didn’t love the way humans did? We’d never spoken about what we were to each other, and while kissing him ignited me and made me want things I didn’t know how to name, what if for him it wasn’t the same?

‘Have you ever been in love?’ I asked instead of answering her question.

She straightened, as if my question made her as uncomfortable as hers had made me. ‘Not like that,’ she said. ‘Whatever I’ve had, it’s been nothing like that.’

‘Maybe you could have that kind of love someday,’ I said, because there was a strange kind of regret in the way she’d spoken that tugged at my heart.

‘I don’t think I’m made for that kind of love.’ She touched fingers to the scars on her face almost absently, and I wondered if she thought they somehow made her unlovable. They didn’t, surely she knew that? But I didn’t know how to say that to her. And before I could, her eyes had narrowed, seeming to come back from whatever thought she had been mulling on, and she was cutting me up with a gaze even sharper than it had been before. ‘Has anyone spoken to you about the physical side of all this?’

I stared at her blankly. ‘The physical side?’

‘Sex.’ She spoke the word so matter-of-factly, and I was immediately blushing again, even hotter now than I had been.

‘I’ve… read some things.’ I stared very hard at the toe of my shoe, scuffing it against the dirt. I wasn’t even sure I’d ever heard anyone say the word aloud. The only times it had been spoken of in my presence had been in hushed tones and with veiled metaphors about wedding night duties that didn’t give me a lot of information about what actually went on.

‘Read what exactly? Scientific books on the mechanics of it all, or soppy romances that don’t deal with the practicalities?’

‘Maybe a little of each,’ I admitted, scuffing harder at the dirt and feeling terribly exposed. I hoped the others weren’t anywhere nearby and wouldn’t hear this conversation. It was mortifying to disclose that I’d sought out those sorts of books. No one had ever known I did before. No one had ever paid much attention to the books I took from the palace library.

‘Then do you know how to be safe?’

If I’d thought I’d been squirming before, that was nothing to what I was doing now. My gaze darted back to her face. ‘Rhiandra—’

She held up a finger. ‘No, you’re not going to tell me it’s not like that between you because I have eyes and I know better than that. You’re sixteen and I know what sixteen-year-olds are feeling and thinking about, and if the way you’ve been ogling each other is anything to go by, what you’ve been taught about marriage vows and chastity and what have you is feeling very far away right now. I’ve seen plenty of noble girls your age wind up pregnant and in trouble. My own mother was one of them. There is a very simple way to make sure that doesn’t happen to you.’

‘Seventeen.’

‘What?’

‘It was my birthday a few days ago. I’m seventeen.’

‘Oh.’ Her mouth twisted. ‘Why didn’t you say anything?’

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