herself with her head in his lap, and that her body was tired to the
bone. She felt as if she'd swum for a day. She found Cehmai's hand and
laced her fingers with his, wondering where dawn was. It seemed the
night had already lasted for years. Surely there would be light soon.
"You feel better?" he asked, and she nodded her reply, trusting him to
feel the movement against his flesh.
"Do you want to tell me what it is?" he asked.
Idaan felt her throat go tighter for a moment. He must have felt some
change in her body, because he raised her hand to his lips. His mouth
was so soft and so warm.
"I do," she said. "I want to. But I'm afraid."
"Of me?"
"Of what I would say."
There was something in his expression. Not a hardening, not a pulling
away, but a change. It was as if she'd confirmed something.
"There's nothing you can say that will hurt me," Cehmai said. "Not if
it's true. It's the Vaunyogi, isn't it? It's Adrah."
"I can't, love. Please don't talk about it."
But he only ran his free hand over her arm, the sound of skin against
skin loud in the night's silence. When he spoke again, Cehmai's voice
was gentle, but urgent.
"It's about your father and your brothers, isn't it?"
Idaan swallowed, trying to loosen her throat. She didn't answer, not
even with a movement, but Cehmai's soft, beautiful voice pressed on.
"Otah Machi didn't kill them, did he?"
The air went thin as a mountaintop's. Idaan couldn't catch her breath.
Cehmai's fingers pressed hers gently. He leaned forward and kissed her
temple.
"It's all right," he said. "Tell me."
"I can't," she said.
"I love you, Idaan-kya. And I will protect you, whatever happens."
Idaan closed her eyes, even in the darkness. Her heart seemed on the
edge of bursting she wanted it so badly to he true. She wanted so badly
to lay her sins before him and be forgiven. And he knew already. He knew
the truth or else guessed it, and he hadn't denounced her.
"I love you," he repeated, his voice softer than the sound of his hand
stroking her skin. "How did it start?"
"I don't know," she said. And then, a moment later, "When I was young, I
think."
Quietly, she told him everything, even the things she had never told
Adrah. Seeing her brothers sent to the school and being told that she
could not go herself because of her sex. Watching her mother brood and
suffer and know that one day she would be sent away or else die there,
in the women's quarters and be remembered only as something that had
borne a Khai's babies.
She told him about listening to songs about the sons of the Khaiem
battling for the succession and how, as a girl, she'd pretend to be one
of them and force her playmates to take on the roles of her rivals. And
the sense of injustice that her older brothers would pick their own