“Thank you,” she said, doing her best to smile, “for bringing me here, and for waiting while I said farewell.”
“I told you, did I not,” said Emory, his hand on Ama’s elbow as he guided her back to the carriage, “that wild beasts do not make for good pets?”
“You did,” Ama answered. She allowed Emory to help her into the carriage and settled back onto the seat. “You did.”
Emory seated himself next to Ama, and the carriage master, who was as silent as a ghost and nearly as invisible, shut the carriage door. The horses were whipped into motion, and, as Emory pulled the furs back over their laps, the carriage took them back toward the castle.
Under the blanket, Emory’s hands found Ama’s. “You are half frozen,” he said, and he rubbed her fingers vigorously between his palms, bringing them back to life with painful, needlelike tingling.
Ama did not cry out, not at the pain of her skin reawakening, and not at the pressure against her burned palm, either. She sat, stoic, and allowed the ministrations. The carriage jostled them back and forth as it rolled through the snow-soft town, the air heavy with the smoke of so many combined fires.
Emory rubbed and rubbed until Ama’s hands were near as warm as his. And then he stopped, though he did not release her. Ama sat still, wanting nothing, wishing nothing. For all she had wanted and wished, what had it brought her?
“You know,” Emory said, his voice quiet with secret, “you need not have thrown away that Eye.”
Ama stiffened, and her heart seized. “My king?” she asked.
“Oh, don’t be silly,” Emory said, his mouth widening in a liquid grin. “Of course I know you took an Eye that day. Do you not think I know everything that happens in my kingdom?”
“You . . . saw me take it?” Ama did not bother with a lie.
“Well, no. But Pawlin saw the gap, of course, and he pointed it out to me. And why else would you have gone beyond the wall?” Emory did not wait for Ama’s answer. “It matters not. You could have kept the Eye, if it gave you pleasure. You are to be my queen in three days’ time, after all. No one would dare to punish you for such an infraction, not while you are under my protection.”
“I see,” Ama said. Emory’s hands still trapped hers, and he held them in his lap, and she felt beneath the tangle of their hands the rising of the king’s yard.
Ama tried to pull away, but Emory’s grip remained firm. Indeed, he pressed her hands down upon the growing, hardening lump at the center of him.
“We are but three days from our wedding, Ama,” Emory murmured. “I am your secret-keeper, and soon to be your husband. Surely you would not deny me a taste of your sweetness, now, this day, after the favors I have given you?”
He did not wait for an answer, and still he did not free Ama’s hands. Holding them both in one of his, he managed to twist free the buttons of his trousers, and then he guided Ama’s fingers to the shaft of him.
A noise like a hiss escaped from Emory as he used his hand to wrap Ama’s fingers around his yard. It was hot and hard, with a dew-wet drip at its tip. Emory moved Ama’s hands within his grip, up and down, up and down, slowly at first and then faster, until, with a grunt and a groan and a spasm so tight that the knuckles of Ama’s fingers cracked, a jet of warmth spilled out of him and trickled down Ama’s hands, still encased in Emory’s.
A moment passed, during which the only sounds were Emory’s labored gasps and the intermittent squeaking of carriage wheels. When Emory’s breath had quieted, he cleared his throat and released Ama’s hands, which were still wrapped around the king’s yard, now softening and shrinking.
Her fingers were coated with the sticky mess of him. Ama pulled her hands away from Emory, still under the furs. Quietly, she rubbed away the wetness on the carriage’s seat cushion as Emory adjusted himself and refastened his trousers.
Then she tucked her hands back into her lap and sat as still as she could. The carriage made its way back to the castle. Her face was blank, and her hands were still, but in her mind, Ama was imagining the lynx bounding across the unmarked snow, wild and free, farther away from the castle with every moment that passed.
The Queen Mother’s Truth
Without the lynx, Ama’s room felt even larger and colder than it had before. Emory had returned her to it, and at her door, he took her hand—the right hand, without the scar—and kissed it.
“I will not see you again until the wedding,” he said. “It is our tradition for the groom to leave the bride in the three days before the ceremony.”
“Is it?” Ama asked.
“To build an appetite,” Emory answered, and he grinned.
“Ah,” Ama answered.
“In the meanwhile,” he continued, “since you have been obedient, and since you will no doubt be lonely without your pet, you can return with my blessing to the glassblower’s fire, as long as you promise not to endanger yourself. Leave the glassblowing to the man, Ama.”
“That I promise.”
“Then until we meet at the altar,” Emory said, and bowed, and then he left.
Ama went into her room. Tillie was there, waiting for her beside the fire. Ama could feel Tillie wanting to reach out to her. To comfort her. But the lynx was gone, and there would be no comfort for that. Only the knowledge that gone was better than here.
“I should like to go to the glassblower’s room,” Ama said. And then, “The king has given his permission.”
“Oh, that is good, lady! The heat down there will do you such good after traveling out of doors into such cold air. Only . . . Lady, well, the queen mother has sent for you once again, you see. She said you are to go to her rooms as soon as you are returned and dry, she did.”
A visit with the queen mother. Ama could think of few things more distasteful, in her current mood, in her desire to return to the fires of the glassblower. But this was her lot, it seemed. To do what others wished of her. To hope to carve out only stolen moments for her own desires.
“Very well,” she said. “Put me in a fresh gown, then, Tillie, and let’s have it over with.”
Again—or, perhaps, still—the queen mother was abed, propped up by bolsters, wrapped around in layers of fur and blanket.
Ama hesitated in the doorway, wondering if maybe she could sneak away without being seen.
But then the queen mother called, “Well, do not lurk in the door, girl, letting all the warm air out!”
And so Ama went inside and closed fast the door behind.
She approached the bed, and the half-dozen cats perched upon it fixed her in their glowing green stares. Three cats piled at the queen mother’s feet; a fourth curled in her lap; another pressed tight against her left hip; and a sixth, the ginger male whom Ama had held when first she visited the queen mother’s chambers, nestled in the queen mother’s cradling arms, like a suckling babe.
“You wished to see me, Queen Mother?”
“Come closer,” the queen mother said.
Ama did. She walked all the way across the room and up to the bottom of the queen mother’s bed.
“Closer,” the queen mother said, and Ama walked from the foot of the queen mother’s bed to the head of it. Around the queen mother’s shoulders draped a familiar fur—buff-colored, richly dappled. It was the lynx mother’s pelt, made into a wrap for the queen mother. Ama looked down into the queen mother’s near-black eyes, and the queen mother looked up into hers.