I would never see him again, because we must go our separate ways. There could be no consequences for one impulsive act. And I had to admit the truth, because truth is the kernel of everything: I was curious to know what his lips tasted of. I was hungry.
So I took a step forward, I raised my face to his, and I kissed him.
It is hard to imagine that cold mages might have heat. In the instant of my lips touching his, he was ice, and in that instant I thought he was offended or aghast and in the next I realized he had simply been startled. Because he grasped my left arm with his right hand and cast his left arm around my back and drew me against him. And he kissed me back.
A kiss can be like the world turning over. It can be like the tide of a dragon’s dream washing through the unseen world that is hidden to mortal eyes but that nevertheless permeates our being. It can be hot and cold together, as vast as the heavens and yet specific to the pressure of hands and the parting of lips. It raised more intense feelings than I had expected, like being engulfed in a storm of lightning. And in being more, I felt lessened when clumsily we broke apart and each stepped back in confusion. My face was in flames. He looked so rigidly and overbearingly imperious that I knew he must have been powerfully affected.
“Catherine!” he said. “Surely you see—”
“Andevai, you are a cold mage of rare and unexpected potency, as you told me often enough. I do understand why you feel you need to return to Four Moons House. You’ve opened the mansa’s eyes to your worth. But I would never be content or welcome there. Nor do we know each other, or owe each other anything except what was forced on us. So why be burdened with me? You didn’t try to kill me. You changed your mind. You did what was right.”
The moment stretched into a while. Cold fire gleamed softly over the threshold of a house no longer spelled to keep out intruders, because the Hassi Barahals had abandoned it. As they had abandoned me. Then he shook his head as if shaking off an irritation.
“To have done what was right must be enough.” His tone was formal, even harsh. “Peace upon you, Catherine, and in all your undertakings.”
“Peace upon you and in all your undertakings,” I echoed stupidly.
He went to the door, and I grasped the railing and retreated two steps up the stairs toward the first-floor landing. Then I turned back.
“Andevai.”
He had the door open already, but he halted at once and turned. To kiss a man, and enjoy it, is not to love him. I did not love him. How could I? I barely knew him. But I was stunned by what I saw in his face: hope; shame; that thrice-cursed pride that, after all, was part of what drew the eye to him; hurt; humility; even, maybe, a measure of peace—a very human and appealing mix of emotions. It was as if I were seeing him for the first time.
“There is one thing that still puzzles me,” I said, but the thought of going on was overwhelming, and I hesitated.
“Do not think that after all this, I am afraid to hear anything you may be afraid to say,” he said, a bit irritably.
I lifted my chin. “All right, then. You are always very precise when it comes to magic. So I’ve observed. And you really, really don’t like to get things wrong. So when you saw there were two young women, that day you came to this house, why did you not even ask about my cousin?”
His crooked smile made my heart turn over. “All right, then. I’ll tell you.” He paused, as if gathering courage, before he forged on. “When I saw you coming down the stairs that evening, it was as if I were seeing the other half of my soul descending to greet me.”
I stared at him, but he was perfectly serious. The words set off an avalanche in my head: memories, flashes of things he had done and not done, said and not said.
“No going back from that, is there?” he added, as if to himself. Somehow he had relaxed, because a certain calm permeated him, like the calm that comes over the sailor when she has cast off from shore and the tide is bearing her out come what may. “So if you tell me now, Catherine, right now, that you never again wish to see me in any capacity, under any circumstances, I will never approach you again.”
Unfortunately, I could not speak. I simply could not say one word. Any word.
“Ah,” he said softly, which was not really a word but a reaction. And the cursed magister smiled coolly in a way I would have told him was very irritating indeed, if I could have talked. “I’ll have to come back, then, when you’ve recovered enough to tell me what you really think.”
He turned and walked out, taking the light with him, and my voice, and all my capacity for thought or movement.