Page 137 of Zenith Court

Caspian lowered his forehead to my knee, breathing hard. His hands stayed beneath my hips as if he still needed proof of my weight. “I thought I’d lost you down there.”

I touched his hair. “You didn’t.” Kieran was close enough for me to catch by the wrist. I pulled.

He sat with his back against the fleece stack and drew me into his crossed legs, face to face, my knees around his waist. I curled one hand around his cock, guided him to me, and sank down at my own pace. The grin he tried to give me failed halfway. I kissed what remained of it and took him deeper.

“Move,” I said.

We rocked together, deep and close, his hands spread over my back. The race beat beneath the boards, and we found its rhythm without trying. Each roll of my hips dragged him against the place still tender from my first climax. His mouth opened against mine as if a joke might save him. Nothing came. I kissed him harder.

His hands tightened when I gasped, and he stopped. “Too much?”

“Again.”

Caspian knelt behind me with his mouth at my shoulder while Jonah closed his hand over our crossed wrists. Green-gold burned beneath his palm. Kieran drove up into me again, harder, and the chord pulled all four of us tight. I came against his chest with my face buried in his neck, the water’s pulse moving beneath us and three bodies braced around mine. He followed before the last of it had passed. His release returned through the line—warm, bright, and startlingly tender. He said my name without a joke attached and held me until my breathing eased.

Jonah had stayed within reach through all of it, one hand on me whenever I sought him. Want ran dark and steady along his line. I turned in Kieran’s lap and held out my hand. Jonah’s fingers missed mine once before he caught them.

“Jonah. Come here.”

He took my hand. “How?”

“Slow. Close.”

He lay back on the fleeces and opened his arms. I stretched along him, chest to chest, my thighs outside his, and took him by slow degrees with my face against the warm skin of his throat. He was hard enough to make the first descent tight; I paused halfway and felt his hands spread across my back, holding without pulling. When I was ready, I took the rest. I moved in long, deep grinds that kept him inside me, slower than I had been with either of the others because this was what I wanted from him: no distance, no impact, only the steady drag of our bodies and his breath changing beneath my ear. Kieran stretched beside us and put his mouth to my shoulder. Caspian’s hand closed around my ankle and traveled slowly up my calf to my thigh.

The rain-dark line pulsed under my wrist. Each movement sent feeling outward; green-gold and marble answered until I could no longer tell which shudder had begun in my body. Jonah’s hands shook once against my back. Then his arms locked around me.

I pressed closer and lost the slow rhythm I had asked for. Jonah met me, control breaking one breath at a time.

The last climax rolled through me instead of breaking. I pressed my mouth to Jonah’s throat and moved through it, my thighs trembling against his hips. The chord sounded all at once, too full to separate. Jonah held me against his chest until my body clenched hard around him; then his breath broke, his hands pulled me flush, and he came with my name once against my ear. He kept both arms around me afterward, one palm moving over my back until the trembling stopped.

Kieran climbed down bare-legged and returned with a rainwater can, one tin dipper, and a damp cloth warmed beside the picking-room stove. Jonah kept me against him while Kieran cleaned my thighs without speaking, his hand warm and careful. I drank first, then held the dipper while Caspian drank. They passed the water around. Jonah pulled fleeces over us, and Caspian tucked the upper edge along my shoulder before settling at my left.

Kieran claimed my right side and one of Jonah’s arms. “For anyone unclear on the trade, a fulling mill takes loose, soaked cloth, beats it in cold water, and sends it out tighter and stronger.” He patted the floorboard. “Gentlemen, we have been professionally fulled.”

The laugh went around all four of us, and Caspian’s was loud enough that Kieran sat halfway up to look at him. I lay in the middle of them with Kieran’s knee against mine, Caspian’s hand open near my shoulder, and Jonah warm along my back. Tomorrow, Sadie’s healing would ask everything I had. Soon the Tower would call Kieran north. But the lamp still had an inch of oil, and I spent it beneath the fleeces, letting the chord settle from a blaze to three steady lines while their separate heartbeats gradually slowed.

The packet’s hour came after the loft went quiet.

I climbed down in an old millworker’s shirt with the oilskin packet in my hand. Delphine sat in the picking-room, mending a pack strap beside the low lamp. Sadie slept beneath her quilt with her hands folded on her chest. One bare foot had escaped the blanket; Delphine had placed her own coat across the foot without waking her. Delphine’s needle stopped when she saw what I carried. She set the strap aside and wiped both hands slowly on her trousers.

“Your kept-case file,” I said, putting the packet in her hands. “The administrator’s people copied it and sent it with the keys. I didn’t open it. It was never mine to open.”

Delphine unwound the oilskin. The cover was Court gray, her case number written across it. She held it on her knees for three breaths before opening it. Her eyes crossed one line of the first page and stopped on a name—the one she had carried before the Council replaced it with Delphine. Her mouth tightened. Her fingers closed around the cover. She did not turn the page. Then she shut the file and kept her palm flat over it until her breathing steadied.

“I’d rather be the one who decides who I am next,” she said.

She slid the file beneath the bench, under her folded coat, and picked up the needle and strap again.

“Go upstairs,” she said without looking up. “You’re wanted. I have the watch.”

I went. Behind me, Delphine drew the needle through the old canvas while Sadie slept beside her. The unopened file remained beneath Delphine’s coat, waiting for whatever name she chose.

33

Astra

The fulling mill had been empty for decades. Fuller’s earth grayed the cracks between the floorboards, lanolin darkened the beams, and tenter frames stood along the south wall with their hooks intact. Beyond the Court’s western wall, rain had swollen the river. I had spent the night feeling its pull beneath three warm lines at my wrist.