The Salt King's Innocent Bride

Chapter Two Part 4: "Don't you dare stop."

Dorvan was already there, leaning against the far wall with his arms crossed and his eyes on the passage entrance, and the expression that moved across his face when Meeka stepped through was not something Sanna had a word for in the vocabulary she had been given.

She had read about it though. Extensively.

"You're late," he said, and his voice did something in the low register that Sanna felt in her own chest despite it not being directed at her at all.

"We're exactly on time," Meeka said, and crossed the small space and kissed him before the sentence had finished landing, her hands going to his face, his arms coming around her immediately with the ease of people who had done this enough times that the choreography was instinct.

Sanna moved to the mouth of the passage and positioned herself just inside the entrance, one shoulder against the wall, her eyes on the passage back toward the market. This was her function. The alcove was small, six feet deep at most with the fountain taking up a third of it, which meant she was not so much standing watch as standing in the same space where the watching was happening. She had made her peace with this on a previous visit. Mostly.

The sounds behind her were quiet at first. Conversation too low to catch, Meeka's laugh at something he said, the rustle of fabric, the small intimate sounds of two people in the only private space they had ever managed to carve out together.

Sanna stood at the passage mouth with her shoulder against the stone and kept her eyes on the market avenue beyond. From here she could see the main flow of the crowd, the red canopies, the pale figures of nobility moving through the press of color beneath them. She could see the point where the Thornwall passage met the avenue, which was the point that mattered. Anyone coming down the passage toward them would have to cross that light first, and she would see the shadow before she heard the footsteps. She had chosen this position for exactly that reason. She kept her breathing even and her posture relaxed and watched the gap of light at the far end the way a person watches something they are being paid to watch, which was to say without blinking more than necessary.

Then Meeka made a sound that was not conversation.

Sanna kept her eyes on the passage. This was different from the other visits. She knew it immediately from the quality of the sounds behind her, from the shift in Dorvan's voice to something lower and more deliberate, from the soft catch of Meeka's breath that Sanna felt in her own throat and had no framework for.

She was standing at the passage mouth so she could see the approach. That was true. It was also true that the alcove was six feet deep and she could see everything in it without turning her head, the stone walls close enough on both sides that there was simply nowhere to look that didn't include some portion of what was happening behind her.

Meeka had her back against the far wall, Dorvan's hands at her waist, her fingers twisted in the front of his coat. Sanna looked at the passage.

She had wanted things. She knew she had, in the careful privacy of her own room with the door closed and the books she was not supposed to have open on the pillow beside her. She had wanted what she read about and been given nothing to compare it to, no reference point, no moment where the controlled life she actually lived came anywhere near the one she constructed in the dark. The Von Vellacourt daughters were presented and considered and eventually placed with appropriate families. Wanting things in the meantime was acceptable as long as it stayed theoretical and quiet.

It was considerably less theoretical at six feet.

She looked back. She could not help it.

Dorvan had Meeka pressed against the wall and his hand had found the hem of her dress, pushing the white fabric up to her hip, and his fingers were working between her thighs with the focused attention of someone who knew exactly what he was doing and had learned it for her. Meeka's head had dropped back against the stone, lips parted, her breath coming in short uneven pulls that bore no resemblance to anything Sanna had ever heard from her sister in any room of their shared house. Her fingers were twisted in Dorvan's collar, holding on, her hips tilting forward into his hand in small involuntary movements she was clearly not trying to stop.

Sanna looked at the market avenue. It was fine. The crowd moved. The canopies were red. Nobody was coming.

She looked back.

Dorvan kissed Meeka's throat, her jaw, the corner of her mouth, and with his free hand drew her neckline down carefully, the fabric parting at a fastening he clearly knew by heart. One breast came free into the low light of the alcove, pale and full, and he bent his head to it without any hesitation at all, his mouth closing over her n****e, his tongue working, and Meeka made a sound that Sanna felt in her sternum like a struck bell.

Sanna's grip on the passage wall tightened until the stone edge pressed into her palm.