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  “Justo.”

  “Ah! Good afternoon, KarRylan. Hello. Say, I was just closing up today. Marta needs me inside for some…”

  “Justo.” Her voice chided. {Where} Her hands demanded.

  He turned his face over his shoulder and called, “Coming, wife of my heart!”

  “Her name is Vili, Bim isn’t looking for her, and they’re somewhere in K. I know everything but the location, and you don’t want me to go to Bowk with all my snatches from now on.” She eased her hand in her pants and let a bit of the lace peek over the top of her pants.

  Justo sighed a deep sigh, but his eye shone with excitement. He was only a few years older than she, but he looked ancient. His face had been caved in with a club in a riot last year and he was missing one eye. He gave all his food to his skinlicker to keep her with him and was thin as a skeleton.

  “Bowk wouldn’t know what to do with a lovely like that. KarRa, are you sure you want this information?”

  What was with all the concerned advice today!? {Where}

  He sighed again, studying her with that one bloodshot brown eye. She saw him fingering his quick-release rope that would slam down his awning and close his shop.

  {Stop} {Calm} “After I prove the snatch to my Clan, the lace is yours.”

  Then he told her.

  * * * *

  It was dusk by the time KarRa tromped up the stairs to a second floor room. Rylan had claimed a shak for this woman. All the fear and confusion that had been building the last three nights swelled high. My life is going to change this night. I know it, she thought.

  It was she who had discovered bedplay first. Perhaps two years after her skinmarking, when she was just eighteen, she'd come across a man and a woman fucking on one of her snatches. Not that that was the first time, but it was the first time she stayed to watch. The first time she found it compelling. She'd begun to watch for people fucking, not as an opportunity to snatch food or loot to trade, but to learn. To feel.

  Shortly afterward, she began to explore herself. Of course, Rylan was next to her. He was never far. His face would tighten as he watched her hands dip between her legs, her fingers tracking wet designs over hips and thighs. The soft sounds of her wetness or his shafting fist were the only noises they made. Aside from limbs brushing in proximity on the small pallet, they never touched the other, never spoke. What they shared was somehow too secret to risk in the Dark’s dark, and a strange invisible wall of taboo kept them apart. She would watch him watching her, they would open their magepath, and the rich scent of their skin could sometimes make her dizzy faster than graperot.

  Sometimes they would touch themselves at the same time, mirroring the other, watching as their skin turned slippery beneath their hands. Hands pressed firmly, fingers trailed goosebumps, nails rasped faint tracks. There were nights when their hands traveled their bodies in privacy, their eyes never leaving the others’. The depth of his tawny eyes as she rose into them was burned into her mind. Usually he’d wait to spend his cream, always onto his stomach or into a cloth, until after her body relaxed after release. Other nights she’d be aggressive, daring him with her frantic panting, upright upon spread knees, pinning her women’s lips back with the magelight set before her, pulling and twisting her clit to its furthest, her huge nipples teased to a bruising red, until he’d arch first, writhing. Some nights it was only one of them taking pleasure, gently, while the other watched sleepily.

  Always, after the cream and sweat were wiped away, they settled into their sleep sprawl, entwined like kittens, or lovers. Rylan was the first to seek out another for pleasure. Lying in bed one night, he had told her hesitantly that he had fucked a girl in a tavern over in a distant wedge. She hadn't been mad at all, and he'd been grateful, his body sprawling in relief. He'd been so beautiful, his muscles just starting to thicken. She saw now she should have been afraid. Afraid of the fact none of his girls were really skinlickers desperate for anybody. They’d all been a step up. Afraid of how often he visited Clan who had children. Afraid of how he’d stopped touching himself as much when she shared her night pleasures with him.

  She pounded the weathered planks with her fist and her brain, feeling his presence inside. Somewhere up above two male voices shouted at each other. She was scanned, a buzz of magic, then a woman opened the door. Alarm flashed over the young, pretty face, framed by long, black curls. KarRa didn't register much more than that before the girl called over her shoulder.

  “Rylan, KarRa is here.”

  Rylan came to the door. His blank face looked down at her, his fighting face. It made her hands go numb with terror.

  “What?” his voice was belligerent, but quiet.

  “What yourself!” Heat flashed through her body. “Why have you not sent word?”

  “Isn’t it obvious? I’ve moved out. I'm staying with Vili from now on.”

  KarRa stood in the dusty hallway, gaping at him with her mouth open. He stood stiff and tense, ready for battle. The statement was so bizarre to her experience, her brain struggled to process it. For an instant, his tall, familiar, golden-haired presence seemed to shimmer in front of her, then everything went white, tinged with red.

  “Staying … with…?!”

  She leaped at him. It involved no decision. She just did it. A wildling fight was not a fist to the face or a flashing exchange of silver blades as it was in the Guild songs. It was two nearly wild animals falling tooth and nail upon the other, trying for gut, neck, or face damage. It was only the third fight they'd ever had. She'd won the first two. The first was a distant memory of pre-Scuffle. Rylan said it was when he tried to eat some of her food. The second was shortly after being taken into Scuffle's labyrinthine rooms, before they’d joined his Clan. Rylan had not wanted to sleep inside the shak and KarRa had. He was scared, and distrustful. She'd insisted, physically.

  This fight was entirely different—KarRa experienced, furious, and afraid, Rylan defiant and a warrior in his prime. In the end, he was seven heads heavier, over a head taller, and as always now that he'd come into his strength, just a little more wild than she. In moments, he leaned gasping against the thin doorframe; face and arms clawed bloody, eyes full of pain as he stared at her.

  She was in a heap in the hall where he'd thrown her, arm twisted, ribs bruised, skin ripped and oozing at her neck from a bite, the worst kind of wound. She looked up at him, and knew in her bones her life was forever changed. She curled up in surrender, and he closed the door.

  * * * *

  The next three nights were the worst of her life. Worse than losing Trakk and Shui to sickness. Worse than the days of Far's capture and retaking and all the tense Clan meetings afterward. Worse than the nightmare memories of hunger and fear before Scuffle. Her understanding of her world, and her place in that world, was shattered into tiny bits of glass that ground inside her with every breath she took. The strong, solid companion she’d meant to go to the end of the world with was gone. She looked at her future and knew a Truth: KarRa was Alone. Her anger was completely gone, but so was her sense of self.

  She looked at her forearm's skin design and wondered at how she had felt when Scuffle was pressing it into her. It was one perfect dark blue feather. Scuffle had given it to her on her adult making day when she was sixteen, just three years ago. She had wanted a physical symbol of Rylan's soul marked into her flesh. How had she been so wrong? How had nineteen years of absolute trust, unheard of in the Dark, been abandoned for a skinlicker?

  She went out the second night and spent all her rainy day loot, except for the lace, to fuck a boy at the smoothskin house. Since he was doing it, she would too. Maybe she’d missed something last time. It didn't help. In fact, the brief and weak pleasure of the flesh left her even more confused at Rylan's betrayal.

  On the third night without him, she was still having trouble breathing, wondering why she should even bother to fight for survival in this vicious world. She lay in the sultry darkness on her roof pallet, where she liked to sleep in
the sun season. The open space spooked her without Rylan's strong presence in it, but she forced herself to stay, lying in the middle of the open roof, trusting her traps down below. Get used to it, echoed a cruel inner voice. She was dozing, tears drying on her face as they had for days, when heat woke her.

  Rylan lay at her side, his head on her shoulder, his hand across her chest and curving over her far shoulder. His other hand was tucked down between them, fingers laced with hers at her hip. She was instantly swamped with happiness and relief. Her heart pounded in time with the throbbing pain in her neck, He came back! He came back! But she knew better than to think they could go back to the way things were. Everything had changed. The Truth still sat in her throat like acid.

  He spoke softly into the green mist flowing overhead, nightly overspill from the massive City wall. “Why do you think I went to Vili? Why do you think I closed the door on you?” Her breath stuttered, but she could not answer. “I am so afraid you're never going to start surviving for yourself, KarRa.” His voice was low and passionate. “I had to bring you to your first fuck, and even then it was too late, your first time ruined by that dungscum walkingskull. You forge no future for yourself outside of me! I cannot be your sole focus anymore, KarRa. If I had not split us up on jobs over a year ago, you would never have found your strengths that make you one of the best snatchers in the Clan. Like the lace you just grabbed a few days ago. But still, even though we work apart now, you are content to just take each day as it is and turn to me in the night! You have to let go of me KarRa. I could disappear any day. You have to find the life you could have without me.”

  A small piece of the rage bubbled up, the wild rage that had driven her to attack him when he had refused to come home with her. “Ah, you are so wise to do this thing for me. I'm so impressed by how you just pulled this decision out of your ass without talking to me! It is clear now that I am so much better off without you. So much stronger, safer, more complete. Magic has come bubbling up in me. Food rains from the clouds and I no longer have to waste it on you!” She twisted her hand out of his to wrap it around her middle, to hold the pieces together.

  He sat up, dragged his hands through his thick mop of hair and ground his teeth. “I know I handled it badly. I was scared to tell you. If I had to explain it, I was afraid I’d never do it. KarRa, don't you see, I'll still be with you whenever you need me. Sleeping without you makes me ache, and I will always be yours at the core. But I need space. And I want you to have that space too.”

  KarRa sat up as well, scooting away so they were no longer touching. “No, you want me to want that space so you don't feel bad about yours. Space! We have a three room shak! Bring the fuckbitch here and you can go from her bed to mine—have us both! I've never cared who you fuck.”

  “Oh, charming. You are so charming. And you know what kind of space I mean.” His voice was bitterly cold. “Don't you know we are so much stronger working in tandem while apart? And there are things I need … that I would never ask of you. That you wouldn’t want to be part of.”

  KarRa was stupefied by his comments. His words were so unfair. He'd left because he couldn’t ask her for things? “I have always backed you in anything you needed. I have never made you think I would not help provide for us. How will having that woman do it for you instead of me make you happier, or me better?”

  Rylan stood up and paced over to the low wall that ran around the rooftop. His voice was low. “KarRa, I want children. It’s more than a dream now. I need them. I ache. I feel like small ghosts of possibility follow me everywhere.” His voice was flat, hollow.

  Shocked, she wrapped her arms tighter around her middle. To dare to plan for children in the Dark meant you had to have a lot of power. Yet she knew Rylan had enough. They had had this conversation in a “what if” sort of way for a few years. She just could not imagine wanting to bring a child into this wild, angry, violent life. Street riots were a weekly affair in one wedge or another. It took a successful, dangerous snatch from a more powerful Clan to afford a week's water. Meals were never regular. Besides, the few children she had met, true kept children and not feral discards like they had been, made her feel both itchy and stiff at the thought of being responsible for such a helpless soft creature.

  He understood how she felt. He had often talked of planning to tend children's innocence and the desire to help guide a new generation. She just couldn't do it. She couldn't bear children into this wretched struggle of a life, even with Rylan by her side. It was one of the few things they truly disagreed on. He knew it, and he wouldn't ask it of her. Not that they were fucking anyway. That he would want a child more than he wanted to be with her drained her fingers of warmth. He was right. She couldn’t face that need.

  Rylan paced along the wall, his muscular legs taking him smoothly around the nearly dry rain barrels. Leaning against the low adobe wall, staring at his feet, he asked softly, “Why do you think we've never been lovers?”

  Her bones ached with sadness when she considered his question. “Why do we never make love? We do. I thought we did. I thought watching each other take pleasure was showing our love, trusting each other at that moment.”

  “Oh KarRa, you know what I mean.”

  No, she thought, It's you who doesn’t understand.

  “Why did we never fuck?” he insisted.

  Because you never reached for me, she thought to herself, and I didn't know how to reach for you.

  “I suppose fucking you would be like fucking myself.” She gave him a half answer, as Scuffle would say, not adding the rest. And it would have been the most beautiful thing in my world.

  She remembered her first fuck in the aftermath of the rape.

  He walked her to a smoothskin house a few weeks afterward. A beautiful boy her size, with enormous blue eyes, all hair scraped off, and skin kept clean and soft, was waiting. She'd looked at him in wonder, then at Rylan.

  “I chose him for you. You don't have to stay if you don't want, but I wish you would. I want you to know what a real fuck is like, and not think about that fire-damned rape.” He held his body so rigid he almost quivered, and his voice shook with emotion she took to be irritation.

  She had been so touched. Confused—hadn’t their shared bedplay already wiped out the memory of that violence?—but touched. Accepting the luxury, she’d gone with the boy into a room with a wide, deep, comfortable pallet. She'd discovered fucking. She'd liked it fine, but had no intention of continuing the activity, as it was insanely expensive. Unlike Rylan, she couldn’t imagine fucking people she knew casually from the street. She certainly never had any urge to take a lover. Why would she share her body with someone who would no doubt slit her throat for a week’s water? All the satisfaction she needed was in rising for Rylan upon their shared pallet.

  Now, she knew she’d never share that with him again. Her pride wouldn’t let her. He was on a new path, and she wasn’t going to give herself over to him when he had ripped himself out of her life.

  He was quiet. She picked at a scab on her knee, feeling sick inside.

  “I used to dream about fucking you. One time when you were sleeping, I touched you like a lover. I felt full of shame. I ran to wash, and hated myself for breaking your trust like that. I was so scared at what I could have done to you. The next night I took my first woman.”

  KarRa nodded. That had been almost a year ago, shortly before her rape. She hadn’t cared about the woman, but now inside she screamed at him, Why didn't you just wake me up? If he had taken her, the rape wouldn’t have been her first experience. They sat on the roof thinking their own thoughts. Shouting erupted from the street below and died off. Crazy laughter echoed from the tavern a few shaks away.

  “KarRa, I will always care for you. I can't stand it that we fought. That I hurt you. That I pushed you to it—when all I’ve ever wanted is to protect you. The echo of your pain is driving me mad. I feel sick that I’ve left a mark of violence on your skin, that inside you're so … sad.” They
both knew it was an inadequate word for what she was feeling. “Just because we’ll sleep apart doesn’t mean I’m out of your life. We have a magepath and Vili can’t change that. I want you to meet her. I've wanted to for weeks. She will be a good mother.” He drew in a deep breath, his wide chest expanding to tighten the sleeveless leather shirt he wore, and seemed to hold it waiting for her response.

  “All right,” she said quietly. “I'll leave here.”

  He stood from the wall. “I’ve found a new shak, KarRa. You stay here.”

  “No. I cannot stop you, so let me be a part of this some way. This is a good shak. If you have children, it has room, and it's defensible.”

  He seemed stunned, slowly relaxing back against the wall. She felt relaxed now too. And far, far away.

  “What did he tell you about us when you were marked?” she asked idly.

  Rylan replied matter-of-factly, even though they had long avoided sharing the details of their private skinmarking ceremony. “Scuffle? He told me we were soulmates, literally, and that he had never seen two souls find each other so young.” She felt Rylan grin, even though his face was heavily shadowed. “He said you were my key to a new gate.” Her lips twitched too. A “key” was the Dark’s most common term for a man's cock. “And a mighty fine key you are for me, too,” Rylan added with a smooth chuckle. “Tell me what he said to you.”

  Tipping her head back, she let the pain swell and settle inside. She kept breathing through it as she watched the glowing green tendrils of magelight seep and swirl overhead into the night. Finally she said softly, “Scuffle told me you were of the Beasts. When you mature in their way, you will die if I do not get you to them.”

  Rylan froze, his hands dropping from across his wide chest to grip the ledge on either side of his hips. Throwing himself around, he braced his arms on the clay wall, back rigid. She noticed he was staring away from the City, toward the True Wild.

  “You know it's true. Your eyes, your nails, your voice when you fight. This past month you can no longer deny it and say you are caught in the heat of battleblood. You have greater strength, speed, and stamina than human men.” She touched the raw wound at the base of her neck, where the skin was punctured with the look of many tiny knives, not the ragged rips of dull human teeth.