She couldn’t speak; she nodded, and he wound his hands into her hair, lifted a handful of strands to his face, and kissed them. “Lady of Roses,” he whispered. “Your hair, like black roses. I have been wanting you.”

Want me, then. Kiss me. Everything. Everything, Mark. Her thoughts dissolved as he leaned into her; when she murmured against his mouth, it was in Spanish. “Bésame, Mark.”

They sank backward into the sand, entwined, his hands running through her hair. His mouth was warm on hers and then hot, and the gentleness was gone, replaced by a fierce intensity. It was gorgeously like falling; he drew her under him, the sand cradling her body, and her hands ran over him, touching all the places she’d ached to touch: his hair, the arch of his back, the wings of his shoulder blades.

He was already so much more present than he had been when he’d first come to the Institute, when he’d looked as if a high wind might blow him away. He’d gained weight, put on muscle, and she enjoyed the solidity of him, the long elegant muscles that curved along his spine, the breadth and warmth of his shoulders. She ran her hands up under his shirt where his skin was smooth and burning hot, and he gasped into her mouth.

“Te adoro,” he whispered, and she giggled.

“Where did you learn that?”

“I looked it up,” he said, cupping the back of her neck, brushing kisses along her cheek, her jaw. “It’s true. I adore you, Cristina Mendoza Rosales, daughter of mountains and roses.”

“I adore you, too,” she whispered. “Even though your accent is terrible, I adore you, Mark Blackthorn, son of thorns.” She smoothed her hand along his face and smiled. “Though you are not so prickly.”

“Would you rather I had a beard?” Mark teased, rubbing his cheek against hers, and she giggled and whispered to him that his shirt was buttoned wrong.

“I can fix that,” he said, and pulled it off; she heard some of the buttons pop and hoped it hadn’t been a favorite shirt. She marveled at his lovely bare skin, flecked with scars. His eyes deepened in color; they were black as the depths of the ocean now, both the blue and the gold.

“I love the way you look at me,” he said.

Both of them had stopped giggling; she ran the flat of her palms down his bare chest, his stomach, to the belt of his jeans, and he half-closed his eyes. His own hands went to the buttons that ran down the front of her dress. She continued to touch him as he undid them, neck to hem, until the dress fell away and she was lying on it in only her bra and underwear.

She would have expected to feel self-conscious. She always had with Diego. But Mark was looking at her as if he were stunned, as if he had unwrapped a present and found it to be the one thing he’d always wanted.

“May I touch you?” he said, and when she said yes, he exhaled a shaky breath. He lowered himself slowly over her, kissing her mouth, and she wrapped her legs around his hips, the desert air on her bare skin like silk.

He trailed a path of kisses down her throat; he kissed her where the wind touched her skin, on her belly and breasts, the peaks of her hips. By the time he slid back up her body to her mouth she was shaking. I want to touch him, I have to, she thought hazily; she slipped her hand down his body and under the waistband of his jeans. He inhaled sharply, murmuring between kisses for her not to stop. His body kept time with the movement of her hand, his hips pressing harder and harder against her. Until he pulled away, sitting up, his breath coming in harsh gasps.

“We have to stop—or it’ll be over now,” he said, sounding more human and less faerie than she remembered him ever sounding before.

“You told me not to stop,” she pointed out, smiling at him.

“Did I?” he said, looking surprised. “I want it to be good for you, too, Cristina,” he said. “I don’t know what you and Diego—”

“We didn’t,” she interrupted. “I’m a virgin.”

“You are?” He looked absolutely shocked.

“I wasn’t ready,” she said. “Now, I’m ready.”

“I just thought—you’d been dating a long time—”

“Not all relationships are about sex,” she said, and then wondered if making that statement while lying half-naked on a hill made it slightly more unconvincing. “People should only have sex if they want to, and I do want to, with you.”

“And I want to with you,” he said, his eyes softening. “But do you have the rune?”

The rune.

The birth control rune. Cristina had never put it on; she’d never thought she was that close to needing it. “Oh, no,” she said. “My stele is down in the Institute.”

“Mine as well,” he said. Cristina almost giggled at the disappointed look on his face, though she felt the same. “Still,” he said, brightening. “There is much else I can do to make you feel good. Allow me?”

Cristina settled back into the sand, feeling as if she might die from blushing. “All right.”

He came back into her arms, and they held each other and kissed through the night, and he touched her and showed her he did indeed know how to make her feel good—so good she shook in his arms and muffled her cries against his shoulder. And she did the same for him, and this time he didn’t ask her to stop, but arched his back and cried out her name, whispering afterward that he adored her, that she made him feel whole.

They decided to return to the Institute when dawn began to turn the sky rose-colored, and fingers of light illuminated their hilltop mesa. They wandered back down the path holding hands, and only unlinked their fingers when they reached the back door of the Institute. It stuck when Mark pushed on it, and he took his stele out to scrawl a quick Open rune on the wood.

It popped open, and he held it for Cristina, who slipped past him into the entryway. She felt incredibly disheveled, with sand stuck to half her body, and her hair a tangled mess. Mark didn’t look much better, especially considering that most of the buttons had been ripped off his shirt.

He smiled at her, a heart-meltingly sweet smile. “Tomorrow night—”

“You have your stele,” Cristina said.

He blinked. “What?”

“You have your stele. You told me that you didn’t, when I needed to make the birth control rune. But you just used it to open the door.”

He glanced away from her, and any hope Cristina had that he’d simply forgotten or been wrong vanished. “Cristina, I—”

“I just don’t know why you lied to me,” she said.

She turned away from him and walked up the stairs that led to her room. Her body had been humming with happiness; now she felt dazed and sticky and in need of

a shower. She heard Mark call after her, but she didn’t turn around.

* * *

Diego was asleep and dreaming restlessly about pools of blue water in which a dead woman floated. So he was only a little bit upset to be woken by the impact of a flying boot.

He sat up, reaching automatically for the ax propped next to his bed. The next thing that hit him was a ball of socks, which didn’t hurt but was annoying. “What?” he sputtered. “What’s going on?”

“Wake up,” said Divya. “By the Angel, you snore like an outboard motor.” She gestured at him. “Put your clothes on.”

“Why?” said Diego, in what he felt was a very reasonable manner.

“They took Kieran,” Divya said.

“Who took Kieran?” Diego was up, grabbing a sweater and jamming his feet into socks and boots.

“The Cohort,” Divya said. She looked as if she’d just woken up herself; her thick dark hair was tangled, and she wore a gear jacket unbuttoned over her uniform. “They burst into my room and grabbed him. We tried to fight them off, but there were too many.”

Diego’s heart raced: Kieran had been under his protection. If he was harmed, Diego would have failed, not just Cristina but himself. He grabbed for his ax.

“Diego, stop,” Divya said. “You can’t ax Manuel to death. He’s still a student.”

“Fine. I’ll take a shorter blade.” Diego shoved the ax back against the wall with a clang and reached for a dagger. “Where did they take Kieran?”

“The Place of Reflection, or at least that’s what they said,” said Divya. “Rayan’s out looking for them. Come on.”

Diego shook the last cobwebs of sleep from his head and bolted after Divya. They jogged down the corridors, calling for Rayan.

“The Place of Reflection,” said Diego. “That doesn’t sound so bad. Is this a room for quiet meditation, or—?”

“No. You don’t understand. It’s called the Place of Reflection because there’s a reflecting pool in it, but it isn’t a regular reflecting pool. Some people call it the Hollow Place.”

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