Vow of Thieves (Dance of Thieves 2) - Page 115

I rolled to the side so that now she was lying beneath me. “You’re here in the vault, with me, in my arms. We’re together, and we will stay together, no matter what.”

Her eyes glistened in the candlelight, fixed on mine as if she were afraid to look away.

“Kiss me, Jase. Hold me. Whisper to me. Touch me.”

She tugged part of my shirt free from my trousers, and I sat back, my knees straddling her hips. I pulled my shirt over my head. Her shirt came next. I kissed her. I held her. I whispered to her. I touched her.

I understood her fear.

We held on to each other like it was the first time.

My lips grazed her skin, tracing her shoulders, the hollow of her neck, the small dip between her ribs, savoring every part of her, the warmth of her touch, her whispers, and the shiver of her breaths. And then my lips traveled up again to meet hers. I pulled her close, my breath shuddering in my chest, the scent of her skin reaching deep inside me, her breaths beating at my temple, and then, when my lips trembled against hers, she pulled me impossibly closer and whispered against them, “I love you, Jase Ballenger, and I will for all of my days.”

* * *

We lay next to each other, our energy spent. Her head nestled in the crook of my shoulder, and her fingers skimmed circles on my chest. We didn’t talk about the last few days, but recounted our days in the wilderness when we first met instead. I sensed she needed memories that would fill her up instead of drain her. Maybe I did too. A reminder of what I was fighting for, a normalcy I hadn’t felt since a skeleton bird fell from the sky. We talked. We disagreed. We remembered. We laughed. It was the first time I had laughed since we’d been separated.

And then, after a long silence, she said, “I failed miserably last night, didn’t I? I don’t know how to be a daughter or a sister in a family like yours, Jase. I never know what to say or do.”

“No one expects you to be anyone but who you are, and right now everyone thinks you’re a hero. I’d run with that if I were you.”

She sighed. “It was awkward around the table. You’re all a finely tuned machine, and I’m the oddly shaped cog that doesn’t fit.”

“You think we’re all alike? I’m as different from Gunner as he is from Priya as she is from Mason. We’re a family, that’s all, Kazi, one that has grown together. You may not see all the seams or gaps, but they’re there, just like with you, Wren, and Synové. There are just more of us. It tends to camouflage a lot.”

“But you have all that history together.”

“That doesn’t erase who we are individually, or how you fit in. A family’s not a puzzle with a set number of pieces. It’s more like a well—the fuller, the better.”

“Unless someone steals a bucket or two. You told them, didn’t you?”

That she was a thief.

How she knew I didn’t know, but Kazi could interpret even the smallest glance.

I sighed. “I wasn’t keeping it from you, Kazi. I swear. There’s just been so much going on that—”

“I know, Jase. I know. We still have a lot to catch up on.”

“They hardly flinched when I told them.”

I winced. Hardly flinched was not the most bolstering of word choices. “I haven’t told them you’re ambassador yet. There’s still that?”

A smirk pulled at the corner of her mouth. “Thank goodness for small surprises.”

* * *

It was later than I thought when we finally emerged from our small enclave. With no windows in the vault, it was hard to tell day from night, which was why everyone spent at least part of the day in the greenhouse. The small circle of cave-top light infused some sense of order and sanity into the days.

Kazi sat with Wren and Synové in a corner of the kitchen in deep conversation, eating a late breakfast, which was, no surprise, venison and leek soup. The gamey smell clung to the air, the walls, to everyone’s clothing. We sweated venison and leek soup.

Mason had sent me a quiet signal as soon as I emerged with Kazi. We needed to talk. Privately. I joined him, Priya, and Gunner in the storeroom.

Priya lifted up a burlap sack. It sagged at the bottom with only a few handfuls of grain. “This is all that’s left.”

Worse, the three of them had gone out to hunt this morning, and they had to quickly retreat back behind the falls—the mountain was crawling with soldiers.

“If the patrols don’t back off soon, next up is the goat. It only produces a few cups of milk a day, but it’s something for the children,” Mason said.

Tags: Mary E. Pearson Dance of Thieves Fantasy
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