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Bodies shifting in the dark. Chest to chest, mouth on neck, hands on thighs. She knows this body. Knows these hands. They’re the hands that ripped her birthright away from her, the hands that raised her to the rank of cavalier primary. The Reverend Daughter’s hands, gentle and long-fingered and…cold.
The Reverend Daughter’s hands aren’t cold. They’re hot, always hot, as if the blazing perfection of her can’t be wholly contained by her skin. But the hands on Harrow’s thighs are cold, and they’re the Reverend Daughter’s hands. The body spread over hers is the Reverend Daughter’s body. She would know it anywhere, has known it, many times, writhing under the thin blanket on her cot. This is the Reverend Daughter’s hair, silken between her fingers. This is the Reverend Daughter’s mouth, sucking a bruise into her neck. The mouth is cold too. Ice chip against warm skin.
“What,” Harrow breathes, then loses the thought, feels the Reverend Daughter’s hands sliding under her nightshirt. Goosebumps erupt on her stomach, nipples hardening at the brush of cold fingers. The mouth detaches and the Reverend Daughter’s tongue licks a stripe up to her ear.
Light, suddenly. Soft green light, like in the Drearburh chapel. But they’re not in the chapel, are they? No. Harrow can feel her cot underneath her, its rough weave against her back. She sees the Reverend Daughter’s face, hovering above her like a pale green star. Crooked smile, hair disheveled and overlong. Hands, Harrow’s hands, cup the loathed, cherished face, and her mouth caresses the cold mouth. The fingers under her nightshirt close over her nipples and pull. She grunts, high-pitched, into the Reverend Daughter’s mouth, and it echoes back as a chuckle.
Now the Reverend Daughter’s mouth is at her ear, and she’s sighing, “Harrow, Harrow,” almost reverent, as though Harrow, not her, is the object of worship. There’s no breath in the word. No flutter against her ear.
“Who are you?” Harrow asks.
Another chuckle, soft. “I’m your Reverend Daughter,” in the Reverend Daughter’s voice, thigh pressed between Harrow’s.
“No.”
“No?” The thigh lifts slightly, the fingers hesitating on her breasts.
They’re still the Reverend Daughter’s fingers and thigh. “No, you’re not,” hips rolling up into the pressure, clit rubbing through underwear. Pleasure burns inside her, she’s hot enough for the both of them.
“No, I’m not,” the Reverend Daughter’s body agrees, “but I’m as close as you’re going to get. You’ve never touched her awake, have you?”
“I’ve fought her,” Harrow grits out, hips still working. You have to touch to fight.
“Fighting doesn’t cut it, though.” The woman on top of her picks her head up, grins, her eyes like something gilded, iron coated thinly in gold. “You can admit it, you’re in good company.”
Harrow huffs. “Are you going to fuck me, or do you expect me to get off on the sound of your voice?”
“Whatever you want.”
The cot is gone, were they ever on a cot? They’re on the floor, or Harrow is, with the woman in the Reverend Daughter’s body sitting up between her legs. Like this Harrow can see her better. She’s wearing white clothes—clothes the Reverend Daughter would never wear—trousers and jacket, undone. There’s a hole the size of Harrow’s fist in the middle of her chest, and another in her neck. They don’t bleed, don’t seem to bother her, only gape, like empty, expectant mouths.
“What happened to you?” Harrow asks, catching horror between her back teeth so it doesn’t come out in her voice. This isn’t her Reverend Daughter, she hasn’t failed her, not yet.
The woman grins again, that familiar tilting mouth. “You did, honey.”
She’s lying, Harrow doesn’t know her, even as she knows her so well. Even as her body aches for her touch. The stranger who’s fucked her a hundred times fucks her again, for the first time, turning Harrow on her side and pulling her leg up onto her shoulder, pushing aside her damp underwear. Two fingers plunge into her and she gasps at the sudden fullness, the sudden cold. The fingers warm to her body temperature as they move, fast deep strokes, and it’s almost like normal, it could almost be her Reverend Daughter purifying her.
Until she speaks. “So she made you her cav, huh?” Harrow opens her eyes, she didn’t realize she had shut them, but now they’re open, fastened on the dead woman. She’s resting her cheek against Harrow’s calf, looking down at her with naked want on her face. A look like she would be breathing hard if she could breathe. “You’re going to fight for her. Die for her, if it comes to that.”
Thumb on her clit, circling firmly. Harrow nearly screams. “If I die,” she pants instead, “I’ll die for the Ninth.”
Pity, now, on the woman’s face. “She is the Ninth.”
Harrow hates to be pitied. She hates the woman, wants to bite her, scratch her, something. But she’s out of reach, and it’s too late. Harrow is coming, cunt clenching around the woman’s fingers, leg trembling on her shoulder. Warm fluid rush, eyes tearing, and she’s crying, “My lady, my lady,” the way she always does in her dreams.
—
Body shifting under the blanket. Just the one now, she’s alone. That’s how she knows she’s awake. She scrambles out of her cot, not checking her clockwork, not bothering to change her underwear, which is usually the first thing she does. She shoves her feet into shoes and bundles her body in a cloak and feels her way through the dark to the Reverend Daughter’s cell.
“Nova?” She answers after five knocks, bleary-eyed, tousle-haired, face unpainted. Harrow has only ever seen her face unpainted in dreams. It’s exactly as her mind constructed it. “It’s the middle of the night. What’s up?”
“I…”
I saw a portent, is what she came to say. A warning. We must not go to the First House. But the words wither and die on her tongue. Why should the Reverend Daughter believe them? Harrow has no aptitude, no ears with which to hear the warnings of spirits. She’s only a cavalier. Cavalier primary, now, but even cavaliers primary don’t give their necromancers orders.
“You…?” the Reverend Daughter prompts.
“I…wanted to check on you. To see you were all right.”
“Okay,” the Reverend Daughter says. “I’m fine.” Her lips twitch, and Harrow is terrified they’ll split into the dead grin, hollow as the wound below. But there is no wound, and the Reverend Daughter only smiles, gently. “Thanks.”
“It’s my duty,” Harrow says.
“Right. Of course.” The Reverend Daughter rubs the back of her neck. “Well, the shuttle will be here in six hours. We should probably get some more sleep.”
Back in her cell, Harrow lies on her cot in silence. The specter of the Reverend Daughter’s death lingers. In the cold fingerprints on her skin, in the wet heat between her thighs, in her heart, where she’s always been, long before she took the form she wore tonight. Harrow’s dearest wish and deepest fear. If the Reverend Daughter were to die, Harrow could get back what she took. If the Reverend Daughter were to die, Harrow would be alone.
Gleam of gold behind closed eyelids. The light blanket heavier suddenly, like the embrace of dead arms. “You won’t be alone,” comes the whisper without breath. “You’ll have me.”