Stars

Nira had always loved stars. Most people she’d known were never awake to see the ones at midnight, the ones that had watched her since before she left her home. She didn’t blame those poor souls; sleeplessness was one of the many things that plagued her.

Now, she sat on the roof of the eastern guard tower, knees pulled to her chest and arms wrapped around them. She leaned against the greened metal statue of the bull that watched out into the surrounding plains. For once, she didn’t have her dark hair in a braid, instead allowing the breeze to move her hair as it wished. She smiled when she could smell snow coming on the wind. Nothing reminded her so much of home than stars and snow.

Her smile faded and she rested her chin on her knee, fighting off a sigh. Home was a long way away, a different place and a different time, one she wasn’t sure she’d ever get back, even if her plan worked out. It was an insane plan under the soft cover of starlight but impossible during the harsh light of day.

“Copper bit for your thoughts?” Lom shouted up at her.

She carefully slid down just enough to peer over the edge to look at him and he offered a small smile, leaning against the tower she sat on. Nira waved her hand, levitating him up to join her. It wasn’t enough to drop him on his feet but it was enough to let her watch him pull himself up and onto the roof as well. “Were you sparring?” she asked, nodding to the training leathers he wore, still inscribed with the bull of their school but worn, beaten, familiar. She’d shed hers much earlier but the shirt she was wearing still bore that emblem, clumsily stitched on the back in her own hand. She moved further up the roof and returned to her former position, still just as tense, still just as worried.

Lom followed her. “Working with a couple of the pups. You’re avoiding my question.” He settled against her, one leg slipped between her foot and her thigh. He must have just finished, skin not yet cooled and damp against hers though she could still feel the roughness of his loose breeches against the back of her thigh and part of her calf.

Nira eyed him, watching him for a moment and feeling the shiver that went through him and against her. “Do you need some warmth?”

“Nira.” He nudged her with his shoulder, eyebrow raised.

The sigh that came out of the back of her throat rumbled lightly. “Home.”

“Nira…”

“I know. I know,” she repeated more firmly, seeing the look on his face in her mind a moment before it was reality. She sighed again. Part of her was actually annoyed that he always managed to pull the truth out of her, even when she wasn’t entirely sure what the truth was. The rest of her was, begrudgingly, grateful that he could. “The anniversary is next week.”

Lom wrapped his arm around her and pulled her against him. “I hadn’t realized it was so soon.”

“It comes every year.” She tried to joke but even without being able to see her, she knew he would know. He always knew. She switched topics. “Why were you working so late?”

Lom gave her a raised eyebrow but answered anyway. “Crys and Irito asked me. They’re leaving on their trip in a couple of days.”

“Hopefully theirs is less eventful than mine and Cerresse’s.” Even as she said it, she felt heat rise up her cheeks at the reminder of how badly the last one had gone. A cow had gone missing and she and Cerresse had ended up being forced to participate in some sort of pageant in order to win the cow back.

Lom made a soft sound that quickly morphed into a cleared throat.

Nira grumbled.

The laughter was evident in his voice as he said, “Nira, you’re just a trouble magnet. You can’t go anywhere without chaos erupting around you.”

She pulled away just far enough to be able to glare at him but there was absolutely no heat to it. “You say that as though it is my fault.”

Lom smiled. “Only sometimes,” he said, pulling her back into him and pressing a kiss to the tip of her nose.

“Manipulator.”

“Imp.”

She sniffed audibly, wrinkling her nose in faux haughtiness. “I resent that. I am a Child of the Shield. We are not ‘imps.’ ”

Using the arm wrapped around her, he spun a curly lock of her dark hair around his forefinger. “Your mother wasn’t. And children who are not of the shield do not have steel in their veins. We are warm and human, and we are most certainly imps.” He curled his wrist around her arm to poke her in the side, laughing at the squeak she made and the way she jerked away from his finger and into her own body.

“That would make you more of an imp than I am.” Now she was smiling and even though it hurt her cheeks a little from the unfamiliarity of it, something in her chest softened at the answering grin on his face.

“I never said I wasn’t. Why are you out here anyway? It’s getting cold.”

“You are lucky not to be from the true south. You would be insufferable.” Still, she shifted closer, turning her hip to be able to tuck her foot under his other calf and allowing her considerable body heat to help him out as she wrapped around him.

“You didn’t need to do that.”

Warmth pressed into her chest and she shifted her weight, just a little, from the uncomfortableness of the emotion. “The stars,” she said instead of responding to him.

“Hmmm?”

She turned into his chest, nose brushing against the bare hollow at the base of his throat. Her eyes closed and she began to stroke the bull emblem on his chest. “I’m out here because of the stars.”

He made a noise low in his throat. It rumbled against her head. “Question, then.”

“Always.”

“Why aren’t you sleeping? It’s late.”

“Piron wants me to take another job. I have never,” she hesitated, and he waited, fingers lightly brushing up and down her bare arm. “I avoid the high class jobs. For obvious reasons.”

“Can it be a problem for tomorrow?”

Again, she was quiet. Then the tension left her body everywhere but in the tight curl of her bare toes. “Only for you.”

He smiled, pressing a kiss to her temple. “Liar. But I’ll take it.”

They remained sitting there on the roof of the guard tower, watching the stars and breathing each other in.