Kushiel's Chosen

moon-and-flower finial. As young as I, and as experienced. He took a long time with the languisement, until I could not tell where my flesh ended and his mouth began.
    By the time he knelt over me, I was ready and more, and I cried out at the pleasure of it as he entered me, oil-slickened body sliding up the length of mine. There are those who think an anguissette knows pleasure only through pain, but it is not so. Though any one of my patrons would have seized his pleasure or forced mine, thrusting hard, Raphael Murain was an adept of the Night Court. He braced himself on his arms above me, smiling and moving in slow, languorous strokes, lowering his head to kiss me. Elua, it was sweet! His hair fell around my face in shining curtains, and I returned his kisses as only another of Naamah's Servants might, an intricate dance of tongues, slow and unhurried. His hard, slender chest brushed my breasts. I could hear my breathing, and his, and that of the young adept, who knelt watching.
    One surrenders, as a patron; I never understood that before. I surrendered that night, to Raphael and Gentian House, the fragrance of scented oil and the sweet blue opium smoke, letting pleasure mount in slow-building waves, while we rocked on it as on the breast of the sea. It seemed to come from a very great distance when it broke, moving in a great tidal surge, vaster and slower than any climax I had known. I closed my eyes, feeling it spiral outward from our conjoined bodies to the vast reaches of time, wave after wave breaking on the outermost shoals of my awareness, distant and ponderous.
    "May I?" Raphael Murain whispered when my eyes opened.
    I felt him still moving inside me, and whispered back, "Yes."
    It was his eyes that closed, then, long lashes curled like waves breaking; I gasped as he inhaled sharply, drawing in the very breath of our commingled pleasure. His body went rigid against me as he spent himself, a sweet, hot throbbing deep inside of me.
    Afterward, we slept, and I dreamed.
    Not since Joscelin had foresworn me had I spent a night's slumber with any other living soul; I could have grieved, to realize how much I had missed it. After all his careful grace, Raphael slept with a child's abandon, fine silken hair spilling across my face, limbs slack with spent pleasure. The lamps had burned low, the opium expired. The lyricist and the adept had discreetly withdrawn. Because I had given myself no choice, I welcomed Raphael's weight, his even breathing, and slept.
    Slept, and dreamed.
    I dreamed I was a child once more in Delaunay's household. Alcuin was there, and our old study, in Delaunay's home. We sat across a table from one another, he and I, poring over scrolls, pursuing the mystery of the Master of the Straits. I was near to grasping the key, when an adept of Cereus House wearing a snow-fox's mask poked his head in the door, and I bid him crossly to leave me. "You're late," the snow-fox said, voice muffled. " The joie has already been poured."
    With the shock of horror one feels only in dreams, I realized that I was not in Delaunay's home at all, but Cereus House; not a child, but an adept, late for the Midwinter Masque. My costume was unfinished, and I had no mask. Despairing, I hurried to join the fête, thinking I might find Favrielle nó Eglantine and beg her to loan me a mask.
    The Great Hall of Cereus House was filled with light and gaiety, and all the adepts of the Thirteen Houses in their finery, and I had come in time to see the Sun Prince revealed. I was laughing, then, thinking everything would be well, and wondering what foolishness had possessed me to imagine I should have been studying with Alcuin, when this, yes of course, this was my life, laughing and cheering as the Winter Queen was unmasked as the beautiful Suriah, who had always been kind to me.
    That was when I realized the Sun Prince was Waldemar Selig.
    No one else noticed, as he took off his mask, smiling, half a head taller than anyone there; no one noticed, as he ran Suriah through with the Sun Prince's gilded spear and she sank to the dais, mouth open and eyes blank, hands clutching around the haft as a dark stain spread across her breast. Waldemar Selig stepped down, wolfskin cloak swinging from his shoulders, and the D'Angeline revelers smiled and bowed and moved out of the way, while the musicians struck up a merry reel.
    My scream caught in my throat, struggling for air; dancers swept past me, bright and glittering-and Delaunay, my