Kushiel's Scion - Jacqueline Carey [109]
I remember her freeing my erect phallus from the confines of Baldur's tight breeches, and her face above me, gone soft with pleasure behind its mask.
I remember the feel of her buttocks, taut and yielding beneath my urging fingertips.
"Joy!" she gasped. "Oh, yes!"
Holding her braced against a column, I closed my eyes. Behind my lids, I saw too much. It was better open, staring into the face of masked anonymity. "Joy," I echoed, feeling the leap of desire in my loins, as urgent and mindless as a salmon surging upstream. With a vast sense of relief, I spent myself, and shuddered. "Joy."
"Ah, Elua!" With a breathless laugh, my masked companion slipped away from me. I stayed there for a moment, gazing at the lights and revelry, feeling the familiar aftermath of melancholy threaten. I thought about Joscelin, kneeling beneath the frozen stars, and the careless oath I had sworn to Sidonie. And then I pushed away such thoughts, and left the shadows.
So passed the Longest Night.
* * *
Chapter Twenty-Two
The days following the Midwinter Masque were filled with gossip and hearsay. To be honest, there was little else to do in the City during the dead of winter. I found myself growing weary of it, feeling cooped and cloistered.
The Game of Courtship recovered from whatever blows were dealt it on the Longest Night and continued apace, but I held myself back from it. There were young women I liked well enough among my friends, but it was a tame emotion, fond and easy. I listened to my friends' protestations of heartbreaking passion, and measured them against what I knew of love, which was all at once terrible and wondrous and cruel. I could not imagine any of them surviving what Phèdre and Joscelin had endured.
I could play at pleasure, but not love.
Since it seemed unfair to play the game while my heart wasn't engaged, I didn't. There was pleasure to be found elsewhere. When Eamonn and I weren't continuing our respective studies, we went often to Night's Doorstep, accompanied by Montrève's none-too-reluctant retainers. It was still the fashion for daring young gentry to do so, but we were more welcome than most. There were more Tsingani than ever in Night's Doorstep, and they had not forgotten what Phèdre had done.
I liked it there, as did Eamonn. There was an honesty and a spontaneity present that was lacking in mannered Court life. We sat for hours, talking and arguing over jugs of wine or tankards of ale, joined by folk from all walks of life. And too, Naamah's Servants plied their trade in Night's Doorstep. They were of a less rarefied ilk than the adepts of the Night Court, but they took their calling no less seriously.
The Night Court, alas, was beyond our everyday means. I received an allowance from the proceeds of my estates, but most of that was held in trust until I reached my majority. I daresay Phèdre would have had it increased if I had asked, but I felt awkward. Her father had been a merchant's son, and it was owing to his feckless ways that she came to be sold into indentured servitude in the Night Court. I would sooner cut off my right hand than ask her.
As for Eamonn, he had little concept of money's value. Isolated from the rest of the world for long centuries, Alba's trade remained a fledgling industry; and the Dalriada were not at its forefront. Eamonn had arrived in Terre d'Ange with a purse of newly minted gold coin, and left to his own devices, he would have spent it until it was gone. It was Phèdre who hauled him to meet with her factor, who taught him about banking houses and shrewd investments. Eamonn had sufficient funds to live on, but it was not enough for the luxury of the Night Court.
So we made do.
For as much as I fretted at winter's confines, I dreaded spring's arrival. But as surely as dawn follows dusk, it came. Snow melted in the passes of the Camaeline Mountains. In the south, the earth thawed. Dormant plants burst forth with green