His brow creased.

“All right, yes, you, a little.” She gently thumped his chest, then rested her palm flat and wide against his heart. He went very still. “Why is it so hard for you to take care of yourself?”

He was silent. Her thumb rested in the hollow of his collar bone. She felt his pulse jolt, and her own answered. It sped, it felt like it was slipping from her grasp, and that she’d never catch her heart, never pin it down, never keep it safe.

She did not want to keep it safe.

She said, “Why can’t you see that people care for you?”

She said, “I care for you.”

“I know that you care. But . . .” He searched her face. “Anyone would, for a friend.”

“You’re more than a friend.”

“On the battlefield, you stayed—”

“Of course I did.”

“You have a strong sense of honor. You always have. I think you think you owe me something.”

“I stayed because I love you.”

He flinched and looked away. “You don’t mean that.”

“Yes, I do.”

The night outside seemed to swell against the tent. The lamp smelled like a hot stone. His face slowly opened. He touched her hand as it pressed against his heart. His caress was light, secret, almost unsure of her knuckles, the thin tendons as strong as bone. She felt him become sure.

There was no sound when he kissed her. None when she unthreaded the ties of his shirt and found his skin.

He grasped her dagger belt, flexed his fingers once around the leather, then simply held on. He whispered something into her mouth that was almost a word. It lost its shape, became something else.

He let go. She heard the brush of linen as he drew the shirt over his head, his fingertips grazing the tent’s sloped ceiling as if for balance. His ribs were bound with gauze, his body marked by scars. Old ones, badly healed and raised. Others, pink and fresh. His shoulders bore pale gouges; they looked like sets of claws, almost deliberate, like tattoos. Curious, she touched them.

He bit his lip.

“That hurts?”

“No.”

“What is this? What happened?”

“I’ll tell you,” he said. “Later.”

His hand strayed over her shirt, which was eastern, as Arin’s was, with no collar. Threadbare in places. Frayed at the neck. He worried the cloth there, rubbing it between fingers and thumb. Then he drew her shirt open, and she felt as if reality had grown larger and tremulous: a drop of water on the point of a pin.

“Kestrel . . . I’ve never—”

She whispered that this was new to her, too.

There was a long pause. “Are you certain you want—”

“Yes.”

“Because . . .”

“Arin.”

“Maybe you—”

“Arin.” She laughed, and then so did he, aware that they’d already found the bed. Words had fallen away. Maybe the words lay on the earth, nestled among clothes, curled into the undone dagger belt. Maybe later, language would be recovered and pieced together. Made to make sense. But not now. Now there was touch and taste and sound.

When he eased into her, she was glad for the burning lamp, the fuzzy glow of it on his skin. The way it showed the black fall of his wet hair, the flesh and scars that made him. She didn’t look away.

Later, when they were quiet, he looked down at her where she lay. Stretched out alongside her, Arin propped himself up on one elbow. “I think that I’m not awake.” His fingertips floated over her: nose, eyelashes, messy braid, shoulder. “Beautiful.”

She smiled. “Like you.”

Arin made a skeptical cough, scrunched his face. He found the end of her braid and paintbrushed it across her cheek.

“It’s true,” she told him. “You never believe me when I say it.”

The lamp’s wick fizzed and sparked in its oil. It would soon go out.

“I love your eyes,” she said. “I have from the first.”

“They’re common.”

“No, they’re not.” She traced his scarred face. “This.” He shivered. “I love this.” She bit him on the jaw. “And this.” She continued to touch him.

“Really?”

“Yes.”

“This, too.” Not quite a question.

“That, too.”

She felt laughter travel through him, and something else, quieter and more intense. “Your mouth,” she said, “is not bad.”

“Not bad?”