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Prior to kissing Gideon Nav, the only kissing Harrow had ever dared to contemplate was the touch of her lips to the girl locked below. She imagined kissing the girl’s hand with deference. She imagined kissing the girl’s forehead with reverence.
She kissed Gideon’s broken graceless mouth instead and it tasted of defiance. It tasted like the pull of metal and snap of bone.
When she planned this out--because Harrowhark Nonagesimus planned for everything and always had--she expected Gideon to fight her off, to snarl and bite, to bash her forehead against Harrow’s face and leave her bleeding on the ground in payback. Harrow set this up so Gideon could try. She sent Crux and Aiglamene away with Nav’s beloved sword and a promise that she could handle Nav alone, with instructions to go straight to the muster and wait for her there.
Griddle listened to all of this, her brow furrowed, those electric yellow eyes rolling in her head as she tried to decide whether to focus on Harrow, on her retreating sword, or on the pain of her defeat. Harrow gave Griddle plenty of time to come up with a plan, to ready her fists for a second bout and a run toward the shuttle. Instead Gideon lay there, stunned, staring up at Harrow with bright bloodshot sclera, with a bruised face and bloody lips.
Harrow had choreographed the fight well. It ended exactly where she’d intended it to, behind a low ridge of grit that hid them from the shuttle’s view once they were down on the ground. Gideon fell right on her intended mark, and as soon as Aiglamene and Crux disappeared, Harrow planted her feet on either side of Gideon and crouched down onto the other girl’s chest. Harrow was hot, sweating from the fight, but Griddle was hotter. Harrow could feel the heat of her against the insides of her thighs, through the fabric of her trousers, and she settled in and checked the grip of her constructs on Griddle’s arms. Nice and tight. And then, before she could second guess herself, she leaned down and kissed Gideon Nav.
Griddle pulled away from Harrow’s kiss with wide eyes and a furrowed brow. She looked toward the edge of the tier, toward the stairs where Crux and Aiglamene had disappeared with the only thing Gideon ever truly loved. She turned the other way toward the shuttle, patient and waiting. And then Griddle looked up at Harrow and there was a flash in those eyes, like the swing of her blade. She said, “oh, what the hell,” and she pushed up toward Harrow and kissed her again.
There was blood on Gideon’s tongue, but it wasn’t the first time Harrow had Gideon’s blood on her skin. It wasn’t the first time she’d tasted it during a fight.
The hum of the shuttle was loud, but no doors opened and no one emerged. Aiglamene had given the pilot his instructions. He was to sit there and wait until after the muster. If he was smart, he was already settling in for a nap. The shuttle would sit idle until the Ninth punched in the code; an identification code that Harrow changed in the system three days earlier, just in case Griddle somehow outmatched her.
“My sword,” Gideon said, unable to put it out of her head, even with Harrow’s mouth insistent on her lips. It had to feel like such a betrayal to watch Aiglamene go, to watch her disappear down the stairs with Gideon’s beloved blade, leaving her student lying broken before the Reverend Daughter of the Ninth House, defeated in a field strewn with easily accessible bone.
“You’ll get it back,” Harrow promised. She kissed the broken skin of Gideon’s lower lip, sucked it between her teeth.
“What is this?” Gideon asked, but she kept kissing Harrow while she said it. She’d settled back into Harrow’s offer as soon as she knew the sword was safe.
“A parting gift.” Gideon smiled, crooked, a little crazy, a little unhinged. She was missing a tooth, and the teeth that remained were stained red. She smiled as though she’d seen this before.
Harrow knew what she thought: another trick.
As though Harrow had the time. She was up all night in preparation for the fight.
She’d chipped away at the floor of the drillshaft with her pick. She’d pried the loosened soil from the hole with her bare fingers, having discarded her gloves early on, cursing at her clumsiness through the thick layer of leather. Her fingers stung when they weren’t numb and her blood mixed in with the black grit. Once a hole was ready, she placed half an ulna or a bit of phalanx into the space and began pushing the grit back over it, planting the bone like snow leek seeds in the planting fields. She stomped over each spot to really pack it down, to hide that she’d been there at all. The field was covered in the prints of Ninth boots and her bone garden was easily obscured.
One hole done and Harrow moved five feet down the line and began the process again. Over and over, she checked her watch and then cursed at the time. It took her all night. She had just enough time to re-apply her paint, change her clothes and return to the tier.
Gideon was right though.
“A little kindness could go a long way,” Aiglamene once suggested. “If you really intend for her stay.” Aiglamene had a soft spot for Griddle. Aiglamene didn’t understand that it was too late for that. They were locked in this. Gideon showed kindness with muscle and sword, with her boot on Harrow’s chest. Harrow showed kindness with the crack of bone on Griddle’s blade and a skeletal fist to the face.
Without that, what was left? There was no one else whose eyes reflected the truth quite like Griddle’s. There was no one else who looked at Harrow with all the loathing she deserved. Occasionally Harrow caught those eyes start to soften, but it was easy enough to freeze them up again, nice and hard, sharp and shocking. Harrow couldn’t spare a little kindness, but something else might work. There were other ways to soothe bruised flesh.
The blood made this feel familiar, no different from any other fight, and Harrow leaned into its metallic bite, her hands on either side of Gideon’s face, her thumbs pressing into bruises and the tips of her fingers against Gideon’s scalp. Gideon’s eyes were closed now and Harrow stared down at her, studied the set of Gideon’s eyebrows as she kissed into her mouth. Harrow found the spot where Gideon’s tooth was dislodged and she pressed the tip of her tongue into the hole. She swallowed the shocked sound Gideon made in response.
Gideon’s eyes shot open, surprised by the pain, rings of yellow and pits of black. She tipped her head back and twisted her face in an attempt to test her jaw. Harrow had kicked her very hard.
After a moment Gideon said: “Digging all night really did get you hot and bothered.”
Harrow didn’t think that deserved a response. That had been a deflection, and she hated that Gideon remembered it, that she caught on Harrow’s words and held them in her teeth.
When Harrow planned this, there was much less talking involved.
Maybe she was hot and bothered.
The thing was, Harrow hated looking at Gideon’s sword. She hated that sword. So when they clashed--and they clashed often--she always found herself looking at Gideon instead of the steel. And when they hadn’t clashed yet, in those pregnant moments before one of them picked a fight, Harrow looked at Gideon then too.
Gideon in motion was a downright monster, but Gideon at rest, with still arms and sword in hand, with closed eyes--that was something else. It wasn’t a common sight, and on the rare occasions that Harrow caught her in repose, she fell right back into the Tomb, to a time when she was ten years old, to the moment she sat in the cold beside the chained body of her beloved. It sent her back to the year when the Body walked beside her, guided Harrow through the very worst of it; through the most private funeral for her parents and the more public one for Mortus, through the long nights of study as Harrow learned to animate her parents for the sake of herself and her House.
An entire year Harrow slept with the Body by her side. She begged the Body to hold her hand, and when the Body left her and didn’t return, Harrow cried more at that loss than she had for her own parents. In the years that followed, as her body became pubescent, she somehow got them tangled together: the Body and Gideon Nav. The Body was gone and wouldn’t return, but Gideon was still there, and Gideon carried a sword much like the sword in the Tomb, and Gideon worked herself until she was taut and toned, until each arm was a carved representation of a perfect arm. Until Harrow looked at the firm musculature of Gideon Nav’s forearms and she recalled her fingers tracing another arm, hard and cold and nearly lifeless, just as perfectly formed.
But each time Harrow saw those eyes it was an electric shock, a jolt that coursed through her. The Body’s eyes were black like her own, like her parents and like their parents before them. Gideon’s eyes were singular, unmistakably Nav’s. They could never be tangled with anyone else. Harrow had seen those eyes glaring at her with absolute hatred more times than she could count. She’d felt Gideon’s fingers tighten around her neck, tight, unyielding, and she knew that Gideon could actually end her, often hoped that Gideon would. She’d felt the tip of Gideon’s awful sword against her chest, the edge of it pushed up against her shoulders and neck.
They were nothing alike, the Body and Gideon Nav, except in the ways that they were, except in the ways that meant Harrow could never look at Gideon without thinking of the girl she loved wildly, the girl to whom she’d sworn to dedicate her entire life.
Now Harrow kissed Gideon and it felt all wrong without the bite of steel, without Gideon’s hands tight around her neck. She had Gideon down on the ground, bone around her wrists, bone around her feet, bone around her neck, and Harrow on her chest. And absolutely no idea what to do with her next. Whatever it was would have to hurt. It couldn’t be too kind, not now that Gideon understood it was planned.
The tooth she’d dislodged from Gideon’s mouth was lying in the grit beside them and in a burst of inspiration, Harrow reached for it and plucked it up with her fingers.
“Yes,” Harrow agreed. “Hot and bothered. It’s so irresistible watching you spit out your teeth.”
She still had a hand on Gideon’s face, one thumb pressed to the bruise on her cheek. Now she pressed her other thumb against Gideon’s mouth. Gideon tried to turn her head away, but Harrow wasn’t having that. She tightened her thighs against Gideon’s sides, then pried Gideon’s mouth open and pushed her thumb inside. She used it to pull down Gideon’s jaw, to get a good look at the spot where the eye tooth had come free, the space on the upper right side.
“Bite me and I’ll knock out more,” she threatened. “Now hold still.”
Harrow was not an expert in teeth, nor did she excel when it came to manipulation of fleshy gums. She started it anyway and knew that it would be done as well as it could be by any nun of the Ninth. The tooth had just come out; the alveolus was open and hadn’t had more than a moment to heal. Harrow wiped grit from the tooth, stuck it in her mouth and sucked it clean, and then she pressed it back into the mouth of Gideon Nav.
Gideon shouted around Harrow’s hands and writhed beneath Harrow’s legs, and the shift of her torso against Harrow’s sex triggered a curl of pleasure that unfurled low in Harrow’s gut. Harrow tightened her thighs and bore down. She narrowed her focus and pulled back the gingival tissue. She pushed, forced the tooth back up into its process. Between the teeth and the gums, Nav’s bone and the constructs that held her in place, Harrow felt herself fray. Blood dripped from her nose and splattered on Gideon’s face.
Harrow was drained before this started. She’d pushed herself hard during the fight. She’d raised an entire army without even an hour of sleep. There was dried blood crusted around her nostrils, in her hair and around her ears. She could feel it tight against her skin and each time she spoke, it felt like her skin might crack and break.
And beneath her Gideon bucked and wriggled. The undulation of her torso was tantalizing and Harrow ignored the fray and the threatening lightness in her head. She shifted her hips against it, even as she swayed, concerned she might faint.
She wouldn’t faint; she couldn’t fall.
Harrow rode Gideon’s struggling body, focused on the task at hand, the careful shift of flesh and bone. A slight expansion of the maxilla around the alveolar process, reconstruction of the periodontal ligament, another shift of the gums.
The corners of Gideon’s eyes were wet, but she’d settled some. She no longer bellowed and screamed around Harrow’s hands, and when Harrow was finished and she stopped to take stock, she realized that Gideon wasn’t focused on her tooth at all. She was moving with another purpose now. Gideon had noticed Harrow’s gasps and the rocking shift of Harrow’s hips. She’d noticed that Harrow was getting pleasure from this and the movement of her body became deliberate, aimed to drive Harrow toward that precise place Harrow intended to go. Harrow kept her thumb hooked in Griddle’s mouth as she rode herself to climax. Gideon watched, rapt, as Harrow fell. She watched, greedy, as the shock of pleasure rolled through Harrow, heaved through her chest and emerged from her throat in a dry strangled cry.
That was all it took for Harrow to lose her hold on the theorems. Just a few short seconds as the orgasm rolled through her, and the bones that held Gideon down crumbled and fell in pieces.
Gideon knew it would happen. Gideon was ready. She surged forward and had Harrow on her back in the grit before Harrow realized what happened, the echoes of her release barely subsided before Gideon was on her and the tables were turned.
“I hate it when you fuck with my bones,” Gideon grunted. She stretched her jaw and gnashed her teeth. Her hands she pressed into the grit at either side of Harrow’s head, her knees and legs beside Harrow’s thighs, caging her in. Harrow’s heart was a thunderstorm in her chest. It rumbled and cracked at the turn of the tide, at this plunge and dive into the unplanned, the unknown.
Gideon didn’t come at her, not right away. For the moment, Griddle seemed content to savor the moment, to revel in her position above Harrow and the cage she’d created with her big strong limbs. That was okay, Harrow realized. She could work with that.
She took a deep breath. She gathered herself, grounded herself, and she retrained her focus. She caught the lost curve of her favorite theorem and she pulled it back into place, used it to drive new hands up from the grit. They grabbed for Gideon’s wrists and ankles, determined to put Griddle back in her place. The bone caught Gideon’s left hand first, and when Gideon knocked away the constructs to her right, Harrow was ready with more. These caught Griddle as soon as she set down a hand to steady herself. Bone and more bone until Gideon was tethered to the grit again, shackles around her ankles and up her calves, bone chains around her wrists and over her hands.
Harrow could extract herself from beneath Gideon now if she chose to, but Harrow intended to stay. It was easier like this, she’d decided. It was easier surrounded by Gideon, shielded from what she knew must come next. The grit was pulling the heat from Harrow, but Gideon was warm above her and Harrow reached up to get her hands on all of that skin. Gideon pulled at the restraints with a curse that caught in her throat when Harrow’s hands slipped under the hem of her gaping shirt and pressed tight to her stomach. There was always so much of Gideon, so much meat and muscle and bone. It felt awful under her hands and she scratched at it with her fingernails, claws in Gideon’s sides, across her back and low on her belly.
Gideon cursed again and then bent at the elbows to fight mouth to mouth, swearing and biting, groaning around the retaliating press of Harrow’s tongue.
Despite the safety of the cage, Harrow’s hands were shaking as she opened the button on Gideon’s trousers, as she yanked at the zipper. She had to pull three times before it opened, and then she didn’t think twice before she shoved her hand inside. Above her Gideon made a sound like she was choking. When Harrow’s fingers dug in between Gideon’s legs and found her slick and wet, she pulled her hand away as though burned and looked at the way Gideon had made her filthy fingertips shine.
Gideon yanked against her restraints. Harrow felt one of the arms to the right pull up slightly in the grit. The constructs all ended at the humerus, stakes that went deep but could be uprooted easily enough with the right force and correct angle. She saw that Gideon felt it. Gideon figured it out, and she stopped pulling as hard.
“Seems you liked it a bit more than you’re willing to admit. Don’t lie to me, Griddle,” Harrow said. She was surprised by the steadiness in her voice. “You always give yourself away in the end.” Harrow wiped her wet finger against Gideon’s cheek. Gideon snarled and heaved carefully against Harrow’s restraints in response, probably trying to convince herself she could not break free. She had to endure it.
Harrow refused to smile at that. She worked hard to keep her face a painted mask as she reached into the pocket of her trousers and pulled out a thin pair of gloves. She began to pull them on and then stopped and reconsidered. She was being very considerate, though she suspected Gideon was too deep in it now to protest either way. She thought she’d want the gloves, but having touched Gideon once, she was surprised to find she wanted to feel that wetness and that heat on her skin again.
She’d never touched herself like this. Harrow found her release the same way she had moments ago, with pressure applied just right, the clench of her hand and the press of her fingers over the layers of her clothes. She rocked against her hand in the dark of her room and shuddered out release after release, her mind a mess of the girl, the Body, the sword and the chains. And if she thought of anything else, if her thoughts ever strayed to a different girl, to different arms and different lips, to a different set of chains--that didn’t mean a thing. Everyone had intrusive thoughts occasionally.
Now--now, with the drone of the shuttle, with Gideon willingly tied, Harrow found that she was uninterested in the barriers she’d always sought comfort in before. She touched Gideon once and wanted to feel the shock of that heat on her fingers again. She wanted to feel what it was like to have Griddle come against her skin.
Harrow reached for Gideon, took Gideon’s jaw in her hand and forced it down against the shell of her palm. Once Gideon was pried open once more, Harrow pressed two fingers into Gideon’s mouth. Gideon made a sound of protest and bit Harrow once, but not hard enough to break the skin. Harrow let her do it, accepted the pain and pushed her fingers deeper.
“Suck them clean for me,” Harrow instructed. And then: “Unless you’d rather I wear my gloves for this.”
Gideon paused with Harrow’s fingers in her teeth, considering. She looked a little stunned, as though she hadn’t actually known what would come next until Harrow spoke. All those years full of such prurient curiosity, surrounded by a pile of perverted publications, just to freeze when faced with the real thing at last.
Harrow sucked at her teeth in disappointment and began to pull her fingers back.
That got Gideon moving. She made a muffled sound, gross and pathetic, and sucked at Harrow’s fingers. She pressed the soft flat of her tongue along the length of Harrow’s digits, pushed it up and between them, then circled the tips.
Harrow was unable to stop the breathy little noise that slipped past her lips and hoped that Gideon didn’t notice. She slid her fingers partway from Gideon’s mouth and then pressed them in again. Gideon groaned at that, eyes closed and mouth eager. She sucked the remnants of the fight from Harrow’s fingers, greedy as she swallowed blood and grit, as she took it all on her tongue.
When Harrow released her, she tried to save face.
“Quit shoving things in my mouth,” she snapped, but it was unconvincing, an act, and when Harrow’s fingers slipped through Gideon’s arousal again, Gideon was the one shaking, her arms straining and her neck falling forward. She shuddered over Harrow, her breath hot on Harrow’s cheek.
Harrow had no idea how this was supposed to be done. She never did anything without researching it first, but this--this she hadn’t planned. In all her prior thoughts she’d never made it past that first kiss, and now she had her fingers slick with Gideon Nav and she worried she may have miscalculated. She worried she was unprepared. Harrow expected anger and teeth, but Gideon’s face had softened above her and Harrow was just thankful those eyes were now closed.
If what Harrow was doing was incorrect, Griddle did not rush to instruct. She made small surprised sounds with each slip of Harrow’s fingers, low exclamations that just sounded like oh again and again.
Oh.
Gideon felt like magic against Harrow’s fingertips, silky and soft in ways Harrow hadn’t thought possible.
Oh.
She slid her fingertips across that wet skin, back and forth, and when she brushed Gideon’s entrance and Gideon gasped--oh--Harrow lingered there for just a moment before she gathered her courage and she pushed one finger in.
“Oh, fuck,” Griddle said, and her arms were straining, each muscle spectacularly defined. She couldn’t move, not really, but she managed to shift just enough, just enough to push back onto Harrow’s hand, drawing her deeper inside.
Oh.
Gideon Nav around her finger was like nothing Harrow had ever imagined. It was the warmest that Harrow had ever felt, like the heat from Gideon’s insides was enough to cook Harrow entirely. Her whole body felt tight, like the dry blood on her skin, and at any moment she might crack and pop. She pulled back just enough to push a second finger in, and she groaned at how good it felt, that velvet slide.
Oh.
Harrow felt close to boiling over, her fingers buried in Gideon’s heat and Gideon grinding down against the palm of her hand. Gideon’s arms were shaking, and for a moment Harrow worried that they might give way, that Gideon would come crashing down, a painful crush of muscle and meat, but Gideon rallied and held fast. The press ups and pull ups and head stands were good for something other than driving everyone mad.
Harrow didn’t know how long it had been or how much longer they had before Crux came back to check, to make sure she hadn’t been bested by Nav.
It wasn’t going to take long, not by the look on Gideon’s face, not by the shake of her arms or the frantic press of her hips. Harrow’s fingers were soaked in Gideon, her palm was wet with Gideon, and she couldn’t believe that this was what it was like. If she touched herself like this, would it feel the same?
“Griddle,” Harrow said, desperate suddenly to finish this, to push them back to familiar territory, toward the punch of a fist and the ringing of steel. “Hurry, Griddle.”
Gideon grunted and then she heaved up and tore her right arm free of Harrow’s constructs, the bones clattering down into the grit. Harrow flinched, but Gideon didn’t come with a fist for her face or her chest. She didn’t wrap that hand around Harrow’s throat. Instead she clamped it between Harrow’s legs, working over Harrow through the fabric of her trousers, just as Harrow had done on so many awful doubting nights. Harrow cried out, surprised by the touch, surprised by how close she felt to spilling over again.
Gideon’s stance was precarious now, her upper body propped on one arm as she worked herself on Harrow, worked Harrow with the press of her fingers and the palm of her hand. Harrow now knew the answer to her earlier question. Even through layers of fabric she knew she was soaked, just as wet as Gideon. She imagined what it might be like, Gideon’s callused fingers sliding over her bare skin, finding her center and pressing inside.
She exploded against Gideon’s hand with a grunt and a cry and the shake of her body was enough to pull Gideon down with her. Gideon shouted, the same sort of shout she let out when they fought, a gutteral cry up the drillshaft. Her hand abandoned Harrow’s sex, came up to cover Harrow’s instead. She trapped Harrow’s fingers against her and rode through her release, until her left arm buckled and then Gideon lowered herself down to rest on Harrow’s chest, her heart beating fast and her face pressed close by Harrow’s neck.
“Fuck,” Gideon said, a puff of breath against the shell of Harrow’s ear. And then: “Harrow.” And: “Fuck.”
Harrow was silent and still, unsure what came next.
They stayed like that for several seconds, Harrow unmoving and Gideon heaving above her, and then Gideon pulled Harrow’s hand from her trousers, and she leaned in to press a kiss to Harrow’s cheek.
“Thanks,” Gideon said, and the soft edge to the word and the press of her cheek felt like a slap across Harrow’s face. Gideon broke free of the remaining constructs and rose to her feet.
Harrow lay in the grit. She didn’t know what to do with the mess of her hand. She didn’t want to wipe it on her clothes. She couldn’t press it into the dirt. Gideon saw her confusion and reached down for Harrow’s gloves. She tossed them toward Harrow’s hands.
“See you on the flip side, sugarlips.” Gideon winked and something lurched in Harrow’s chest--infuriating!--as Gideon started across the field toward the shuttle with big long strides.
“Griddle?” Harrow called after her. Her hands were shaking as she wiped her fingers and palm on her gloves, but her voice was steady, nice and calm. “Aren’t you forgetting something?”
They were back in familiar territory now, Griddle walking away from her, thinking freedom from the Ninth was within her grasp. There was no need for Harrow to rush. Gideon would not be granted entrance to the shuttle without a fight. Harrow stood slowly, her back stiff from lying on the hard ground. She turned the gloves inside out and stuffed them back into her pockets, and then she busied herself brushing dirt and bone from her shirt and trousers. She felt the cold now, wrapped her arms around herself and shifted on her feet.
She saw the moment Gideon remembered her sword. Gideon stopped short and turned back toward Harrow. Her hand held her trousers closed at the waist, and when Harrow started to turn toward the stairs, Gideon bent and bellowed down into the grit. She kicked at a hummock of dirt, stomped and ran a hand through her hair. Harrow watched as she turned back toward the shuttle and considered leaving her sword behind.
No chance.
It was only a second before Gideon shook her head and stalked back toward Harrow. Harrow turned her back to hide her smile.
“You’ll get your sword back,” Harrow promised. “After the muster. Now let’s go. We’re late.”