Page 134 of Of Iron and Moonlight

He felt the briefest stillness before she answered. “Of course not.”

“Of course not?” he echoed, unable to keep the edge from his voice.

Astriyed slipped from his hold abruptly and rose, reaching for her robes. “The goddess alone does not decide such things. There are herbs, if one prefers freedom to fate.”

Njall pushed onto one elbow, still disoriented from the sudden loss of her closeness. “You have been preventing…”

A sly glint flashed through her eyes. Half-dressed and acutely aware of it, she leaned down and traced a slow finger along his lip. The touch was gentle in the way a blade is gentle when testing a throat. “Of course,” she murmured. She leaned closer, kissed him, and bit his lip hard enough to draw blood. The sharp taste spread across his tongue.

“Wouldn’t you want a child?” Njall asked, slightly dazed. “If it were a girl, she would release you from the bindings of your position when she came of age.”

Astriyed drew back, expression cooling. “And condemn my daughter to be confined, displayed, and raped for the supposed benefit of Norrelia?” Her voice carried no heat. Only certainty. “I would rather see Selvara’s sacred line end with me.” She shook her head once. “My only regret is that I will not live long enough to watch the chaos that follows.”

Words knotted in Njall’s chest into guilt, sorrow, and a flare of anger with nowhere to land and no answer to give. He pushed himself upright and lifted a hand to cup her cheek. She allowed it for a moment before stepping away to resume dressing.

Njall let his hand fall and wiped the blood from his lip.

“I have favorable news for you,” she said, securing the final clasp. She slipped a hand into a hidden pocket of her robes and withdrew a small iron key, letting it dangle between two fingers. “Oorlon summoned me last night.”

“Thank you,” Njall said quickly. “It’s for—”

“I don’t care what it’s for,” she cut in, almost pleasantly, then laughed softly and dropped the key into his hand. The look in her eyes suggested she had already guessed the reason. “But you should know, Oorlon checks the safe every few days.”

Njall closed his fingers around the cold iron. The contact prickled against his skin, uncomfortable but not painful enough to drive him to release it. Astriyed studied him then with an expression no painter could hope to capture. Cleverness. Fondness. Boredom. Watchfulness passed through her eyes with striking intensity, in quick succession.

“What is it?” Njall asked.

“I have enjoyed our time together,” she said, her voice flat with finality. She straightened and looked down at him with the chill of midwinter. “But it ends here.”

Njall stilled, taking in the hurt like a spear through the heart.

He reached for her, the instinct useless. “Astriyed—”

“You should know,” she continued, pulling back, “I do not, and never have, loved you.”

The chamber seemed to tilt. “What was this to you then?”

Astriyed smiled. “What is the most transgressive thing a High Priestess might do?”

“Lie with a human,” Njall said. The answer came immediately.

“Fair,” she reflected, somewhat surprised, though also faintly irritated she had not arrived at the thought herself. “Even a High Priestess might lose her life for that.” Her eyes darkened as the flicker passed. “But entangling myself with thoroughly tainted blood like yours comes close.”

An incredulous laugh broke from Njall. He sank back against the floor and threw a forearm over his eyes. “So I was an act of rebellion.” Gavriel had been right.

Astriyed hesitated before answering. “Yes.”

Ice crystals followed her steps as she passed through the door and vanished.

Njall shifted his arm to his forehead and stared at the runed ceiling, the patterns blurring as everything he thought he understood twisted out of alignment. He lay there for hours, turning the key between his fingers. Its cold edges pressed into his skin in welcome pain.

It hurt, and he knew it would go on hurting.

But he had expected devastation.

Instead, he felt other currents moving beneath the ache.

He had loved Astriyed. Or believed he had. What he had loved, he now understood, was a threshold he could never cross: she could never be his, not in the way he yearned for, nor could he contend for a place in a world that would always see him as lesser. Their affair had bound him to that impossible horizon, and in striving toward it, he had turned the blade inward—the life denied to him had become the measure by which he diminished and despised himself.