Page 159 of Trick

I felt each long sweep, each heated flick, each way the jester kissed me.

And I loved it.

I loved him.

Seasons save me, I did. I loved this devilish man so much it hurt. He was everything that enflamed and emboldened me. He was my craving and my comfort, my abandon and my bedrock, utterly out of control yet safely rooted to the ground.

The emotion spun my body off its axis. It stripped me bare yet covered me in armor. It was all-consuming, feverish, and mine.

I loved Poet. I loved him desperately.

My panting lips untangled from his. I opened my mouth to say the words, to bare myself fully, but he pressed a finger to my lips and guided me onto the rushes.

We lay there, reaching between the bars. I traced his bruised jaw and lacerated throat with my fingertips, while he traced my mouth with words.

“Steadfast lady, sweet royal thorn,

how lovely-cruel you are.

My body’s taut, my soul is worn,

from the lovely-cruel you are.

The highborn chose the lowest born,

’tis the lovely-cruel you are.

This trick unseen, this fated scorn,

of the lovely-cruel you are.

So, when you leave, I shall us mourn,

the lovely-cruel we are.”

36

Briar

I awoke, bleary-eyed. Poet slept facing me, emitting the cutest snore. Over the bars, our manacled hands were clasped between us.

I stared, daring to wish for more than this, a morning folded beside him, quiet and still, as if it was an everyday occurrence. So simple a luxury.

This place should have stunk, but the traces of Spring and Autumn overpowered the tower’s putridness. Notes of amber, vetiver, and green apples mingled. My lungs drew in his essence—and the fragrance of someone else. The perfume of cardamom drifted from beyond our huddle.

With his eyes still closed, Poet mumbled, “We have a guest.”

I twisted. Mother stood outside my cell, her curvaceous figure wrapped in a pewter satin gown, with her hands folded over her navel—a pose I’d learned from her. The bars divided my mother’s rigid face into sections as she stared at us.

I staggered to my feet. I heard Poet do the same.

Mother lifted one arm. In response, a reed-thin guard with an angry scar digging into his jawline materialized behind her. He wrestled with the keys and unlocked the door.

“Come, Daughter,” my mother said.

I flinched to hear her address me formally. She gazed at me as she would a stranger, for which I couldn’t blame her. Not after seeing my wrists bound.

I retreated a step. My shoulder knocked into the rails, prompting Poet to set his hands there. The picture we made did nothing to move Mother.

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