Little Moon

Chapter Two: No Mark

The boy did not look at my face.

He walked fast through the inner doors. I walked behind him. My dress was still damp. My mouth still felt like Kenelm.

The room had no window. A lamp burned low. A bowl of water sat on the table. The water was already pink.

Kenelm sat on the edge of the table. His shirt was open. Cloth was packed against his side. The silver pin was not in sight.

“Come here,” he said.

I stayed by the door. “You sent a child to fetch me.”

“I sent the one person who would not ask why.” He nodded at the bowl. “Give me your hands.”

“I can wash my own hands.”

“I know you can. Give them to me anyway.”

I went to him. He took my wrists like they might break. His thumbs moved over the old burn on my knuckles. The water turned darker. It should have felt like work. It did not.

“You keep doing kind things in secret,” I said. “Then you give orders in a loud voice.”

“That is the job.”

“It is a bad job.”

His mouth moved. “Yes.”

He dried my hands on a clean cloth. He did not let go of my left wrist.

“If I mark you tonight, the old men will call it fear,” he said. “They will say I put my teeth on a wash girl to hide a mess. I will not put that story on your neck.”

“So you put nothing on me.”

“I put my word on you.”

“Your word is a thin thing, Kenelm. I saw you hide a pin.”

He looked at the door, then back at me. “Say that quieter.”

“I said it once. I do not need to say it all night.”

For a moment he only breathed. His side rose and fell under the packing. I could smell pine. I could smell blood. I could smell him.

“You can leave,” he said. “If you walk out now, I will not call you back.”

I should have walked out.

I did not.

“I am already here,” I said.

He drew me between his knees. His hands settled at my waist, over the cheap cloth of my dress. I felt the heat of him through it. My wolf went still, then loud.

“Tell me you want this,” he said.

“I want this.”

“Say it with my name.”

“I want you, Kenelm.”

He made a sound that was almost a growl and almost a prayer. “Good. Stay with me. If it hurts, you tell me. If you want to stop, you tell me. I am cut, not deaf.”

“You talk too much for a man who sent for me before the sun.”

“I talk because I do not want to be the other kind of king tonight.”

I put my mouth on his.

This kiss was slower than the one in the tunnel. He tasted like iron and cold water. His hand slid up my back and found the damp knot of my hair. I opened for him. He said my name against my teeth. Linnet. Linnet. Like he was pinning it in place.

He lifted me onto the table. The wood was hard under my legs. I felt him against me, thick and ready, even with his hurt. I should have been afraid of the rank in that. I was afraid. I still opened my knees.

“Easy,” he said. “I have you.”

He pushed my dress up. His fingers found the plain cloth between my legs and drew it aside. I was already wet. I hated that he could feel it. I also wanted him to feel it.

“Little moon.” Soft. Once. “Look at me.”

I looked. Brown and gold. A king on a table with a wash girl in his hands.

He freed himself. I took him in my palm, careful of his side. He was hot. He hissed, and it was not only the cut.

“In me,” I said.

“Say please.”

“Do not make me beg for a thing you sent for.”

His forehead touched mine. “Please was for you, not for my pride.”

“Then please,” I said. “Kenelm. Please.”

He pushed into me slow.

It stretched. It burned in a way that was not the same as hurt. I gasped into his neck. He held still. One hand stayed on my hip. The other stayed in my hair.

“Breathe,” he said. “That is it. I have you.”

I breathed. He began to move. Not fast. He could not be fast. The cut would not let him. Each slow push filled me and left me wanting the next. The table tapped the wall. I bit his good shoulder so the inner rooms would not hear me.

“Yes,” he whispered. “Take it. You feel like heat. You feel like the first true thing in this house.”

“Do not say pretty words you will not repeat in the yard.”

He laughed once, broken, and thrust deeper. “God. Your mouth.”

“You like my mouth.”

“I like your mouth. I like your hands. I like the way you came up those stairs when you should have run.” His lips found the place under my ear. “Come on, Linnet. Let go.”

The feeling built low in my belly. My wolf pressed against my skin from the inside. I shook. I came apart on him with his name in my mouth and my teeth in his shirt.

He followed soon after. His face was in my neck. He did not bite down. I felt him choose not to. The choice sat between us like a third person.

We stayed like that until his blood felt cooler on my palm.

“You did not mark me,” I said.

“No.”

“If they drag me into the yard tomorrow, that empty place on my neck will not save me.”

He eased out of me and fixed my dress with hands that were suddenly too gentle. “If they drag you into the yard, I will be there.”

“That is not the same as a mark.”

“I know.”

I slid off the table. My legs were not steady. I smoothed my skirt because I did not know what else to do with my hands.

“Go through the steam,” he said. “Dorcas will be at the vats. Eat if she feeds you. If Idony smiles, you do not smile back.”

“You already told me that.”

“I am telling you again. People forget the second they leave a dark room.”

I looked at his side. The packing was redder.

“Do not die,” I said.

“I already promised the laundry.”

Grey light was starting to leak under the door. Same night. Same house. Only the dark had thinned.

I went out the servants’ way.

The wash room hit me in the face. Heat. Soap. Wet cloth. Dorcas stood over a vat with her bun falling down. She took one look at me and pinched my wrist.

“You climbed,” she said.

“I heard the bell.”

“Do not lie with your mouth still soft.” She shoved a heel of bread into my hand. “Eat. You have gone the colour of old washing.”

“I am fine.”

“You are not fine. You are vertical. That is different.” She glanced at the door. “If the yard asks, you hid by the pots. You do not offer them a tunnel. You do not offer them a name.”

“What name?”

Dorcas gave me a look that could strip paint. “Eat the bread, Linnet.”

I ate. The food sat wrong in my stomach. I told myself it was fear. I did not have another word yet.

“Idony is in the yard,” Dorcas said. “She has a cup and a kind face. Both are traps.”

“I know her flower.”

Dorcas’s eyes sharpened. “I did not hear that. Go put water on your face. Then you walk like a girl who only washed sheets.”

I put water on my face. It did not take his smell off me. It only made it quieter.

The yard was already waking. Men on the steps. Girls with baskets. Kenelm stood two levels up, pale, packed under his shirt, looking like law again.

Idony Flint came to me with a cup as if we were friends.

“You poor thing,” she said, loud enough for the steps. “Were you very frightened in the night?”

I took the cup because a maid does not slap a lady’s hands in front of the King.

“I heard the bell,” I said. “I hid.”

Her fingers were cold on mine. Her smile did not reach her eyes.

“Careful, Croft,” she said, too soft for him. “Kings remember rooms. They do not remember the hands that opened them.”

Kenelm’s gaze found the cup. He did not find the whisper. I did not smile.

I drank. The water tasted like metal.

I went back inside when the second bell rang. My room was as I left it. Bed. Peg. Bowl.

Almost as I left it.

A round thing sat on my blanket.

It was old bone and black metal. A wolf was cut into it. The cuts were so deep they held shadow. I had seen it once, far off, on the chapel stone. People said a low wolf who touched it burned. I had believed them.

The air stil

l held a thin thread of cold flowers.

Boots filled the passage. Too many. Too soon.

My wolf said pick it up, or they will say you ran from your own theft.

I reached for it.

The door began to open.