11
“I’m drunk,” Tasia announced. “D’you know how long it’sss been since I’ve been drunk?” she slurred.
Joslyn propped Tasia atop her bed and knelt to unlace her shoes. “A while, I’d imagine.”
Tasia leaned sideways against a bedpost for support, wrapping an arm around it as though it was a lover. “Such a serious face. Why’re you always so serious? You’re the most s-s-” she hiccuped “-serious person I know. You’re even more serious than Evrart, and he’s very serious. Very serious.”
She reached down with the hand that wasn’t wrapped around the bedpost to clumsily pet the top of Joslyn’s head.
Joslyn pulled one shoe off and went to work on the second. “I’m serious because I have to be, my love.”
Tasia sighed dramatically. “I s’pose that’s true. D’you think we’ll ever just have a normal life, where we don’t have to be so serious?”
“Youmight, maybe,” Joslyn said without looking up.
A beat passed.
“What’s that s’posed to mean?”
“Just that your life might be normal one day, as normal as it can be for an Empress.” Joslyn glanced up. “You’ll marry Mace, end the War in the East, raise your royal children. Once the tumult of the current era is over, life will settle into a predictable pattern, eventually.”
The two of them had left Tasia’s coronation ball a few minutes earlier, where servants had refilled Tasia’s wine glass again and again while she and Mace presented the picture of the perfect royal couple for all the nobles important enough to receive an invitation. Joslyn had spent the evening scanning the room for assassins – either assassins, or lords and ladies drunk enough or stupid enough to challenge the newly crowned Empress and her future husband.
It was Mace who had finally sent Tasia from the party, taking that last, half-emptied glass of wine from her hand, guiding her to Joslyn, and saying gently, “I think, perhaps, the Empress might be ready to retire for the evening.”
And he was right – Tasia had presided over the execution of her grandfather, her childhood tutor, the father of her former best friend and lover, and several others that morning, and the evening had brought with it the placing of her dead father’s crown upon her head. It was no wonder Tasia had gotten drunk. And Mace was right – and kind – to recognize that it was time for his fiancé to take a well-deserved rest, before her drunkenness had an opportunity to embarrass her in front of this assembly of the most important highborn in the Empire.
But Joslyn resented Mace all the same. Resented that he’d had Tasia on his arm the whole night while Joslyn stayed a respectful distance away. Resented that he was the one who got to suggest when it was time for the inebriated Empress to go back to her chambers.
Joslyn pulled Tasia’s second shoe off, using slightly more force than was strictly necessary.
Tasia let go of the bedpost and flopped backwards onto the mattress, flinging her arms wide. “Ugggggh, not with Mace again, Joslyn. I told you already, it’s less of a marriage than a diplomatic pact.”
Joslyn carried Tasia’s shoes to the large wardrobe across from the vanity, placing them on the shelf at the wardrobe’s bottom, next to the two dozen or so other shoes. She closed the wardrobe again, unable to stop herself from thinking about all the children of Arun’s Quarter who went barefoot or wrapped their feet in rags because they were too poor to own even one pair of shoes as she did.
“I know,” Joslyn said, turning away from the wardrobe and back to Tasia.
Tasia rolled onto her side, propping her head on a hand so that she could look at Joslyn. Her hair had half-fallen from the bun one of the handmaids had put it in earlier, curls shining gold and red in the lantern light.
Her golden girl. Her Empress, newly crowned just this evening. Pride in Tasia – strong, resilient, extraordinary Tasia – drove out some of the bitter resentment for Mace. And how did Joslyn, who’d gone in one lifetime from nomad to slave to soldier, wind up here, standing in the bedchamber of the most powerful woman on the continent?
Tasia patted the open spot on the bed beside her. “Then stop being so serious and come warm my bed.”
Joslyn tried to smile, but it faltered. Flashes of her day came back to her, and Mace was in every one. Mace beside Tasia at the execution. Mace dancing with Tasia at the coronation ball, the two of them laughing and spinning across the ballroom. Not Joslyn’s golden girl. The Empire’s golden girl. Mace’s golden girl. Joslyn was the one on the perimeter all day, prowling in her palace blacks like a mountain leopard stalking prey. The highborn made way for Joslyn, but underneath the veneer of the deferential nods their eyes betrayed something other than respect.
Fear.
Joslyn had made her way to the Shadowlands and battled an undatai, a shadow more powerful than all the rest, and lived to tell the tale. And as if travel to the realm of shadows and back had not been enough, she went on to save the city – perhaps the entire Empire – from its infestation of shadows. They called her the Heroine of the Battle of Port Lorsin. They addressed her as Commander.
But they still feared her more than they respected her. To them, Joslyn was more predator than protector.
Finally alone with Tasia after a long day of worrying over what threats might be lurking, now Joslyn found she could hardly even look at her love. She turned towards the wall so that Tasia couldn’t see her face as she kicked off her boots, set her sword belt aside, and unfastened the buckles that held her leather armor in place. In general, Joslyn judged herself to be quite adept at hiding her emotions, but somehow, Tasia could read even the subtlest changes in her face and eyes, like a master Adessian sea captain capable of reading the slightest shifts in an ocean current. Even drunk, Tasia would read Joslyn the moment she saw her face.
And what would Tasia see in Joslyn’s face? The truth – that Joslyn was beginning to hate her life inside the palace of the House of Dorsa.
By the time Joslyn had stripped down to her undergarments and turned back around, she had composed her face back into a calm neutrality. But the effort was for nothing – the hand that had propped Tasia’s head up had fallen. The golden girl was fast asleep, head resting on the bicep of an outstretched arm, mouth half-open, chest expanding and contracting in a gentle rhythm.
Joslyn simply watched her for a few moments, because watching Tasia sleep always seemed to bring her a sense of peace, of uncomplicated love. But she also knew that Tasia would complain in the morning if she discovered she’d fallen asleep wearing her fancy ball gown, so Joslyn moved to the other side of the bed and unlaced the ties in the back – a handmaid’s job, really, but the handmaids had long since retired to their own quarters for the night, or to the quarters of whatever lordling they’d managed to charm at the coronation ball. Joslyn thought of Mylla as her fingers worked, of how undressing Tasia had once been her enjoyable duty.
Maybe it would be Mace’s duty in the future.
Tasia shifted and muttered in her sleep, but did not wake. She did wake with an irritated protest, however, when Joslyn sat her halfway up to wrangle the dress up and off of her.
“Put your arms up,” she told Tasia.
“Taking advantage of a girl while she’s sloppy drunk?” Tasia mumbled, her eyes still half-shut. “Thought you nobler than that, Jozzy.”
Joslyn gave a crooked grin – perhaps her first genuine smile all evening – at Tasia’s use of the recently invented pet name. She peeled the dress off, struggling for a moment to get it past Tasia’s head while Tasia continued to mutter incoherent protests. Joslyn carefully draped the dress onto the back of the chair at Tasia’s vanity.
“Let’s get the pins out of your hair.” Joslyn reached around the back of Tasia’s head. “You don’t want to sleep with those in.”
Bleary green eyes met Joslyn’s. She smirked, then leaned forward, planting a wet kiss onto Joslyn’s mouth. “I love you, you jealous brooder.”
Joslyn didn’t reply, just continued to ease the pins from Tasia’s hair. Tasia’s hands found their way to Joslyn’s loose undershirt, ran down the sides until she found its bottom edge. Joslyn shivered as Tasia’s fingers danced up her bare skin, but she stayed focused on the task at hand.
Then Tasia pouted. “You still have your bindings on?” She fumbled with the knot that held Joslyn’s breast bindings in place, then exhaled in frustration. “Take them off,” she said, managing to sound both commanding and petulant simultaneously.
Joslyn let out a short laugh. “Now? You’re drunk and half-asleep.”
“My nap sobered me up some.”
“Nap? You fell asleep for five minutes at most.”
“Regardless.” Tasia smirked. “I suddenly seem to feel more alert.”
“Never realized my bindings could serve as such a tonic.”
Tasia lightly cuffed the side of Joslyn’s head. “Don’t mock your Empress, guard.”
Joslyn arched an eyebrow. She’d piled the hairpins onto the nightstand beside Tasia’s bed, and now she pulled off her own undershirt and reached back, unknotting and then unwinding the bindings across her chest. Tasia’s hands found Joslyn’s bare stomach, then, once they were free, Joslyn’s scarred breasts.
“You’re beautiful, you know,” Tasia breathed.
Joslyn shook her head. “No. You’re the beautiful one.”
If Tasia, with her green eyes and strawberry-blonde hair, was golden, what was the obsidian of Joslyn’s eyes and the jet black of her hair? Coal?
That sounded right; Tasia was made of gold. Joslyn was made of coal, dusty and dirty and misshapen.
And yet the golden girl pressed soft lips to Joslyn’s exposed collarbone, cupped the ugly, fire-ruined breasts at the same time. Gooseflesh rose along Joslyn’s arms and she reached out, encircling Tasia as they both fell back onto the pillows.
Tasia raked her nails down Joslyn’s back, moaning softly into Joslyn’s mouth as she kissed her.
Joslyn broke the kiss to look at her. “You should sleep. It’s been a long day, and you’re still dr–”
But Tasia wouldn’t let her finish. She seized the back of Joslyn’s head, tugging her down into another passionate kiss. At the same time, she wrapped her thighs around Joslyn’s hips, crossing her ankles behind Joslyn’s legs.
“I’m never too drunk, never too tired for you,” Tasia whispered, breath hot and wine-scented against Joslyn’s cheek. “Forget Mace. I’m yours. Always. And I want you to take me.”
The knots that had been coiled in Joslyn’s stomach since the morning’s executions finally loosened. Tasia always did this to her – she unwound Joslyn, unmade her, in ways no one else ever had.
Joslyn pushed Tasia’s brassiere up and out of the way, then leaned down to slowly kiss first one bare nipple, then the other. Tasia arched her back, pushing her chest into Joslyn as she moaned. She was never this loud when she was sober; both of them were ever-mindful of the nearness of Linna or the guards, regardless of how thick the stone walls of Tasia’s bedchamber were. But Linna hadn’t been in the antechamber when they returned from the ball; Joslyn had given her strict orders to stay close to Princess Adela tonight, so Linna was wherever the Princess was.
Perhaps, then, Joslyn should take advantage of Tasia’s less inhibited state after all.
“I’m yours, too,” she said softly against Tasia’s bare stomach. “Always.”
Joslyn landed a series of kisses along Tasia’s abdomen, moving her mouth lower and lower until she at last reached Tasia’s warm, wet center.
“Yes,” Tasia breathed, squirming at Joslyn’s touch. “Please, Joslyn.”
Joslyn obliged.