Page 49 of The Winter Princess
I grunt. The rain has all but stopped, and there are wide puddles across the road. I slow, navigating the turn into the gates of the Summer Palace. My appetite is satisfied, there’s plenty of gas in the tank, and I’ll have time to read a few chapters of a Luftslottet thriller when I return home. I shouldn’t be feeling this gnawing unrest in my stomach.
I halt by a guardhouse, rolling the window down, unprepared when Freja leans across to exchange a few words with the security officer, hand braced on the edge of the door. Breathe. But don’t breathe hard. Inhale. But don’t inhale the scent of her hair.
“That way,” she points, shifting into her seat, leaving me almost gasping, thankful for the dark. “I’ll take you in the side door.SehorFornasari isn’t far.”
She guides me to an illuminated path, and we walk quietly together, stopping outside an insignificant door where she punches a code in a keypad. The door swings open, pouring us directly into a passageway lacking a grand entry or high ceiling. There are only a few sconce lamps casting pools of light down the hall and a whiteboard affixed to the wall with a message reading, “The next sister who takes my car without asking is going to get beheaded. Alma.” She’s included a doodle of a guillotine, a basket, a severed head, and seeping blood. There’s a row of key hooks underneath, and hers is missing.
Freja turns, her posture polite and official. Our interlude is finished. Tomorrow we’ll have the width of a worktable between us, the dark eye of a camera recording each word.
I look around, tracing every line of molding, the precise fall of the carpet runner, and the path between Freja’s throat and lips and eyes like I have a hundred times tonight. A son of Pavieau has entered the palace, as soft-footed as any mouse, and likely as welcome. The thought makes me want to engage in a little insurrection.
“Thanks for dinner,” she says.
Before I think better of it, I ask in Pavian, “May I kiss you?” My tone is threaded through with a challenge.
She’ll laugh. She’ll trot out one of her father’s essential phrases and thank me for giving her the chance to use the words in actual practice. She’ll say that Pavian boys are just like he said. Instead, her eyes narrow and blood roars in my ears. Thud, thud, thud. Then she lifts her chin, almost daring me to kiss her. Her eyelashes drift down.
Dominanstid.
I try to hang on to self-control only to find it’s been burned away like a stubble of hay in a field, the earth rich and black, the soil dense with potential. There’s so much I don’t know yet—how she’ll feel under my hands and how she’ll take this—but I rest my fingers lightly on her waist, each point of contact like the strike of a match against a coarse surface.
I lean forward and time slows, compresses. She’s going to stop this with a laugh and a hand on my chest. She’ll see how much I want this, even if I can’t understand it all. Terror forks through my body, blinding and hot. She’ll see me.
She’ll think I’m getting above myself or that I’m a fool. Then I inhale her scent.
So I’m a fool, I think, brushing my lips against hers, waiting for regret to catch up, pulling us apart. I wait and wait and wait.
I taste lemon amidst the shock of discovering I want to kiss Freja forever.
I can’t want that. This is nothing but a dare. Nothing. But Freja’s hands fist the fabric of my sleeves, and I mold my palm to match the narrow point of her waist, deepening the kiss with the next breath.
The current is strong and already beginning to twist out of control. In another moment, we’ll lift our heads and step back. We’ll retreat. We’ll remember ourselves.Vede, how? I can’t remember my name. Or I could pull her into my arms and admit I want something from this.
I feel the still, weightless moment, balanced perfectly between two choices. Not flying, not falling.
She takes a small breath and her fingers curl around my lapel. My hands shift to her back.
A noise crashes into my concentration. A whirr and a click. The sound of the door.
16
Sondish Icicle
FREJA
Oskar takes a hard breath and leans against the opposite wall.
When he crosses his arms over his chest the boundaries between us, momentarily blurry, harden. No need to freak out. It was a kiss, not a thermonuclear weapon. I haven’t exploded, though I crush the impulse to pat myself down for missing parts and check my vitals. I have kissed and been kissed before.
I’m almost sure I have.
A lava-hot blush washes over my cheeks, and I struggle to compose my features. On the other side of the hall, Oskar looks nonchalant, as though he’d done little more than bump around a fellow commuter. I’m torn between wanting to slip back into his arms and wanting to throw something at his head, but I lean against the opposite wall, maximally calm. The current World Record Holder of Unconcern.
The door swings back to reveal Ella at her most grubby, with headphones and a hoodie hiding her distinctive curls, and massive fogged-up glasses speckled with rain. She’s got a reusable shopping bag in her hand and jumps slightly when she sees us, slipping Alma’s keys onto the hook.
“Oh, hello.” She wipes her glasses and slides them back on, eyes darting from one side of the hall to the other. She gives me a narrow look. “Am I interrupting something?”
Not the time, I say, in a silent language she understands–semaphore with eyebrows.Really, not the time.
