Naamah's Curse - Jacqueline Carey [221]
“Oh, Moirin!” Amrita fussed over me, wiping my tears away with the draped hem of her sari. “Of course you do. Forgive me, I did not mean to make this harder for you.”
I smiled at her through my tears. “You didn’t.”
“I did.”
“No.” I shook my head. “It was a kindness. And I am always grateful for your kindness.”
“Ah.” Unexpectedly, Amrita kissed my lips, sweetly and gently. “Yes, I know. I have not forgotten. Your demonstration of gratitude was very memorable. Will your gods let you stay a while, at least? Until spring comes? It will be much easier to travel then. I would be grateful for your aid in changing the world, Moirin. And I have promised to see you and your Bao wed. I would like to see it done when all the flowers are in bloom.”
My diadh-anam did not speak against it.
“Yes,” I said gratefully. “We will stay until spring.”
Bao fetched up alongside us, sweat glistening on his brown skin. “I am too old for such acrobatics,” he announced. “It makes my bones ache. Moirin, why are you crying?”
“Because we will have to leave this place,” I said.
He frowned and glanced unerringly toward the west. “Not yet, surely?”
“No.” I rubbed my face. “But it makes me sad to think on it.”
“I know.” Bao stroked my back. “We’ll just have to make the most of our time here, all right?”
I nodded. “That we will.”
SEVENTY-EIGHT
Alone in the bedchamber with Bao that night, I found myself feeling suddenly and unwontedly shy for the first time since… ever.
It had been so long since we’d been intimate, and so much had happened to us both. He had survived Kurugiri and Jagrati’s favoritism. I had been the instrument of Naamah’s blessing, and the near-victim of Kamadeva’s diamond. As much as I wanted this, I didn’t know how to be an ordinary, mortal lover anymore.
Bao sensed my uncertainty. “Do you want to wait until after we’re wed?” he asked. “I can if you can. I have great strength of will, you know,” he added, making me smile.
“No.” I took his hand, traced the creases on his callused palm. “No, it’s just…” I shrugged, lacking words. “I feel strange. Unlike myself.”
“Come here.” Bao tugged me close to him. I slid my arms around his waist, pressing my palms against his back, burying my face against his shoulder. He held me and breathed the Breath of Earth’s Pulse, one hand sliding through my hair, lifting it and letting it fall, a motion rhythmic and soothing, as though he were petting a cat. “Do you know why I was unkind to you when we first met?”
“Because you hated Raphael de Mereliot,” I said in a muffled voice. “And you didn’t think I was deserving of Master Lo’s attention.”
He laughed deep in his chest. “True. But there was another reason. I did not like D’Angelines very much. They think so highly of themselves, of their beauty.” His fingers slid through my hair, rising and falling. “Maybe it would have been different if I’d let myself get to know some of them. Too proud, I know.”
“They probably didn’t encourage it,” I murmured.
“No,” Bao agreed. “But I did not find them all so beautiful, either. To a Ch’in eye, it is a hard, sharp beauty, deadly as a blade. You… you were different. You looked like them and unlike them all at once, a more subtle blade, exotic to them, but a blend of the familiar and the strange to me.” He lifted my face, stroked my cheekbones with his thumbs. “You wanted me to speak of desire, Moirin? You were the most desirable woman I’ve ever seen, and I resented you for it. Foolish, but true.”
“Oh,” I whispered.
He kissed me softly, and I felt Naamah’s gift stirring at last. Doves—the wings fluttering in my belly were doves, not ravens. “If I were a poet, I would write poems of praise to your golden skin and ebony hair and green, green eyes,” he said solemnly. “But I am not a poet, Moirin. Only a peasant-boy risen high above his station.”
My throat tightened. “No, you are a great deal more than that,