He hadn’t meant to kiss her. Nath’s first thought was the knife. Now that he knew Eva was one of them, he couldn’t let her keep it. Yet when he looked down at her tear-stained face, he couldn’t think of her as dangerous. All he saw there was a grief like his own. It drew him to her like the force that had pulled him to the pool.

When their lips met, it felt like lightning touching the earth. A sudden brightness flooded his thoughts, blinding him to reason. The feel of her lower lip sliding between his sent a shiver down his spine. He let the tip of his tongue brush against it.

Only after the initial shock wore off did he realize that she kissed him back.

Nath separated their mouths to catch his breath. Firelight dances across the surface of the crescent blades laid beside them, the whole one and her broken one. Nath ignored them both and leaned in to find her mouth again.

Once as a boy he’d jumped from a cliff into the ocean on Anryniel’s dare. Being kissed by Eva felt like those first moments falling through the air. Dimly, he felt her body shift beneath him. She fitted herself against the full length of his body with small, delicate movements. He felt his filthy tabard slide upward while her hand gathered it at his hip. Only when he felt the chill of the air on the skin of his lower back did he realize she meant to peel off all his clothes.

The woman who’d saved his life was there underneath him, undressing him. The realization sent a bolt of heat straight to his cock. He’d kissed a woman or two at festivals, but it had never been like this.

Because I was never a king before this. The thought hit Nath’s mind like a rock dropped into water. Her fingers were at the lip of his hose, tugging at the laces below his navel. He teetered at the edge of reason, wanting to let her continue, and realizing that he could not. Who he was and who she had been meant that this couldn’t go further.

Nath reached his hand between them and grasped hers. He firmly took it from between his legs and raised himself up off of her. Braced on his hands, he looked down at her face. Eva stared back up at him, her lips wet from his kisses. A line appeared between her curved eyebrows. He thought she might be angry, but her hand on his cheek was gentle, considerate.

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“Are you alright?”

“No.” Nath rolled onto his back. He pressed a hand to his head, feeling the world tilt behind his closed eyelids. He willed his desire away, drowning it with thoughts of guilt, honor, and duty. Thinking of his mother did the trick. What would Queen Neith-Anne say if she saw her son, her last surviving son, rolling in the dirt with a mage out in the woods? She’d have been less upset to see him kiss a prostitute in the street.

“Your fevers sneak up on you. They burn very low,” Eva said. Nath felt a cold place open up beside him when she got up.

If she left him there, he decided that he would not chase after her. He would lay there until she came back or until he died, whichever came first. Nath started to picture the deer again, gnawing on his corpse. I hope the fucker chokes. He drifted into a fraught half-sleep while the chill took him. He roused when Eva returned and slid her arm under his head.

“Drink.” She pressed her cupped hand to his face and he tasted something wet and bitter. Eva held his head while he sipped it from her palm. When she helped him lay back down, he stared up at her, struck again by the shine of the starlight in her hair.

“Come with me,” Nath said.

“You sound so sure. Are you asking or telling?” Eva wiped her hands tidily on the ground. After a moment, she started to gather the shards of her knife. Nath watched her tuck them back into the bag around her throat.

“Come with me,” he commanded. “Point out my traitor to me and I will find the man I’m going to kill for you. I will put a sword right through his belly and you won’t cry at night ever again, Eva.”

She went very still. Only her hands moved with a slight tremble while they squeezed the velvet bag between her hands. When she spoke, it was in her language, heavy with the weight of spell.

“Three times you’ve asked, Sir Nath. The answer you may have: I will go with you and find your murderer.”

A falling star swept across the sky overhead when she spoke. Nath felt it pass like a shiver through the earth beneath him. For a moment, it seemed as though she glowed with the light from the dying star. Then he blinked, and Eva was only a woman again.

She sighed, a long tired sound, and laid back down on top of the wolf pelt beside him. Nath almost thought that she fainted, but then he heard her voice, speaking sharply in Ammarish, “The next time you decide to kiss me, you shameless flirt, it had better be in a room with a bed.”