Kushiel's Justice - Jacqueline Carey [48]
I felt a twinge of guilt. "You shouldn't make mock of it. At least not in her own bed.”
"I'm not mocking." She sat up, shaking out her hair. "Well, only a little. Only in love. After all, it was very instructive. At least in the beginning. I learn quickly." She smiled at me. "And anyway, Amarante doesn't sleep here very often.”
"Oh, I see." I caught another lock of her hair, winding it around fingers damp with her pleasure. "The pupil has become an ardent scholar.”
"Yes." Sidonie leaned down to kiss me, the tips of her breasts brushing my chest.
No apology; no shame. She was half-Cruithne, but wholly D'Angeline in matters of desire. And strangely, there was no jealousy in me, only fondness. I gazed up at her and understood for the first time, truly understood, the gifts of Blessed Elua and his Companions. Even the heir to the throne, long schooled in the arts of discipline and self-control, was free to lay those concerns aside in the bedchamber. Even damaged goods like me could be healed here. It was a sacred place in which we were free to be whoever, whatever we wished. Such was the grace of the gods we worshipped.
The dark mirror and the bright alike; both reflected our true selves.
"What are you thinking, Imriel?" she asked.
"A great many things," I said slowly. "Not the least of which is that I love you.”
It was a violation of our unspoken pact, but Sidonie said nothing, only made another soft sound deep in her throat. She shook her head in impatient despair and kissed me again, over and over. I kissed her back, drowning in gold, her sun-shot hair falling around my face, hearing the echo of the Asclepian priest's words in my memory.
Even a stunted tree reaches toward the sunlight.
Another priest, a priest of Elua, had spoken a different prophecy for me, long ago, when I was still a boy When I had first undertaken Blessed Elua's vigil on the Longest Night. The priest had spoken to me of love.
You will find it and lose it, again and again.
That, I tried to forget.
I never dreamed there was such a vast difference between loving and being in love. When we were together, it was glorious. I was happier than I'd been since I was a child, since before I was taken. When we were apart, which was far too much of the time, my emotions ran rampant. Betimes I was filled with misery and self-pity, aching with longing. Betimes I brooded and conceived countless schemes wherein I confronted Queen Ysandre and the entire Court and proclaimed our love, challenging Barquiel L'Envers at the point of a sword when he rose to defame me.
And betimes I was angry and struggled against it. I didn't want this feeling, and it seemed absurd I couldn't shake loose of it. I couldn't, though. Absurd or no, love had set its hooks in my heart, and they were barbed and deep.
I loved her.
I hated it.
Elua, it was hard, so hard, seeing her at Court! After hours of blissful lovemaking, we'd lost the trick of being cordial with one another in public. Even before, there had been an invisible cord between us. Now it seemed like a living thing, pulsing with intimacy.
Still, we hid it; or at least I thought we did. We were careful and overly cool in the public eye. It spawned talk of ill will between us— over the absent Maslin de Lombelon who had never made any secret of disliking me, over my rumored dalliance with Sidonie's favorite lady-in-waiting, over my aspirations in Alba, over my long-standing favoritism toward Alais.
Betimes I would see Ysandre's gaze linger on us with regret, and all I could think was how much more distraught the Queen would be if she knew I was calculating how many hours or days it might be before I could lose myself in the arms of her naked, nubile heir, whose name ran like a constant refrain through my thoughts. And then I would have to look away for fear it was written on my face.
It was, of course, to those who knew how to read it.
I wasn't so great a fool that I thought I could keep my state from Phèdre; only its cause. As the days wore on and I was mooning and restless, sleeping poorly and picking