Uprooted(45)
Author: Naomi Novik

I felt his shocked alarm. By instinct I pulled him with me towards where the magic was running thinner, as though I really was in a rising river, striking out for a shore. Together we managed to drag ourselves out. The rosebush dwindled little by little down to a single bloom; the false bees climbed into flowers as they closed, or simply dissolved into the air. The final rose closed itself up and vanished, and we both sat down on the floor heavily, our hands still entangled. I didn’t know what had happened: he’d told me often enough of the dangers of not having enough magic for a spell, but he’d never before mentioned the risk of having too much. When I turned to demand an answer, he had his head tipped back against the shelves, his eyes as alarmed as my own, and I realized he didn’t know any more than I did what had happened.

“Well,” I said after a moment, inconsequentially, “I suppose it did work.” He stared at me, outrage dawning, and I started laughing, helplessly, almost snorting: I was dizzy with magic and alarm.

“You intolerable lunatic,” he snarled at me, and then he caught my face between his hands and kissed me.

I didn’t properly think about what was happening even as I kissed him back, my laughter spilling into his mouth and making stutters of my kisses. I was still bound up with him, our magic snarled up into great messy tangled knots. I didn’t have anything to compare that intimacy to. I’d felt the hot embarrassment of it, but I’d thought of it vaguely like being naked in front of a stranger. I hadn’t connected it to sex—sex was poetic references in songs, my mother’s practical instructions, and those few awful hideous moments in the tower with Prince Marek, where I might as well have been a rag doll as far as he’d cared.

But now I toppled the Dragon over, clutching at his shoulders. As we fell his thigh pressed between mine, through my skirts, and in one shuddering jolt I began to form a startled new understanding. He groaned, his voice gone deep, and his hands were sliding into my hair, freeing the loose knot around my shoulders. I held on to him with my hands and my magic both, half-shocked and half-delighted. His lean hardness, the careful art of his velvet and silk and leather lush and crumpling under my fingers, suddenly meant something entirely different. I was in his lap, astride his hips, and his body was hot against mine; his hands came gripping almost painfully tight on my thighs through the dress.

I leaned down over him and kissed him again, in a wonderful place full of uncomplicated yearning. My magic, his magic, were all one. His hand slid along my leg, up beneath my skirts, and his deft, skillful thumb stroked once over me between my legs. I made a small startled huff of noise, like I’d been shocked in winter. An involuntary glittering raced over my hands and over his body, like sunlight on a moving river, and all the endless smooth buckles running down the front of his jerkin opened themselves up and slid free, and the lacings of his shirt came undone.

I still hadn’t quite realized what I was doing until then, with my hands on his bare chest. Or rather, I’d only let myself think far enough ahead to get what I wanted, and I hadn’t let myself put that into words. But I couldn’t avoid understanding now, with him so shockingly undone beneath me. Even the lacings of his trousers were open: I felt them loose against my thighs. He could push aside my skirts, and—

My cheeks were hot, desperate. I wanted him, I wanted to drag myself away and run, and most of all I wanted to know which of those things I wanted more. I froze and stared at him, wide-eyed, and he stared back at me, more undone than I’d ever seen him, high color in his face and his hair disheveled, his clothes hanging open off him, equally astonished and almost outraged. And then he said, half under his breath, “What am I doing?” and he caught my wrists away from him and heaved us both back to our feet.

I stumbled back and caught myself against the table, torn between relief and regret. He turned away from me already jerking his laces tight, his back straightening into a long stiff line. The unraveled threads of my magic were gradually coiling back into my skin, and his slipping away from me; I pressed my hands to my hot cheeks. “I didn’t mean—” I blurted, and stopped; I didn’t know what I hadn’t meant.

“Yes, that’s patently obvious,” he snapped over his shoulder. He was buckling his jerkin shut over his open shirt. “Get out.”

I fled.

In my room, Kasia was sitting up in bed, grimly struggling with my mending-basket: there were three broken needles on the table, and she was only with enormous difficulty making long sloppy stitches in a spare scrap.

She looked up as I came running in: my cheeks still red and my clothing disheveled, panting like I’d come from a race. “Nieshka!” she said, dropping the sewing as she stood up. She took a step and reached for my hands, but hesitated: she had learned to be afraid of her own strength. “Are you—did he—”

“No!” I said, and I didn’t know if I was glad or sorry. The only magic in me now was mine, and I sat down on the bed with an unhappy thump.

Chapter 12

I wasn’t granted any time to contemplate the situation. That very night, only a little past midnight, Kasia jerked up next to me and I nearly fell out of the bed. The Dragon was standing in the doorway of the room, his face unreadably stiff, a light glowing in his hand; he wore his nightshift and a dressing-gown. “There are soldiers on the road,” he said. “Get dressed.” He turned and left without another word.

We both scrambled up and into our clothes and went pell-mell down the stairs to the great hall. The Dragon was at the window, dressed now. I could see the riders in the distance, a large company: two lanterns on long poles in the lead, one more in the back, light glinting off harness and mail, and two outriders leading a string of spare horses behind them. They were carrying two banners at the front, a small round globe of white magic before each one: a green three-headed beast like a dragon, on white, Prince Marek’s crest, and behind it a crest of a red falcon with its talons outstretched.

“Why are they coming?” I whispered, although they were too far away to hear.

The Dragon didn’t answer at once; then he said, “For her.”

I reached out and gripped Kasia’s hand tight in the dark. “Why?”

“Because I’m corrupted,” Kasia said. The Dragon nodded slightly. They were coming to put Kasia to death.

Too late I remembered my letter: no answer had come, and I had forgotten even sending it. I learned some time after that Wensa had gone home and fallen into a sick stupor after leaving the tower. Another woman visiting her bedside opened the letter, supposedly as a kindness, and she’d carried the gossip of it everywhere: the news that we had brought someone out of the Wood. It traveled to the Yellow Marshes; it traveled to the capital, carried by bards, and there it brought Prince Marek down upon us.