Chapter IV

The Locked Floor

The candles burned lower. The rose on the mantel opened, petal by dark petal, as if time were a courtesy the flowers had not been asked to observe.

Cassian

He found the locked floor before he found her mouth.

Third staircase. A landing that should have been linen cupboards. A door with no handle, only a seam in the black wood and a cold that came through it like breath. Behind it, faintly, the sound of a clock with numbers. Many clocks. None of them agreeing.

He set his palm to the seam. The house pushed back, gentle as a host removing a guest’s hat.

“Not yet,” Seraphine said behind him. She had not been there. She was there now. “You bargained for dawn. This is still the night you agreed to.”

He turned. The lace at her throat caught the light like a net. He was angry, and the anger made him honest.

“If I kiss you, is it so I forget the door?”

“Yes.” She did not decorate it. “And because I have wanted the map on your skin since you failed the road the first time. Want and strategy can share a mouth. I will not insult you by calling it only one of them.”

That was the first time he believed her completely.

She kissed him as if she had all the time in the world — because she did. He kissed her as if he had none left, which was still true, and which she was in the business of ruining. The tattoos across his chest rose and fell under her cool palms. The black lace of her gown whispered against his warmth like a second weather.

Outside, the fog sealed the road, the cliffs, the sky. Time hesitated, then politely stepped aside. He felt it go. He filed the locked floor away behind his teeth, a secret the kiss was not allowed to eat.

By the hour that should have been a later hour, they were no longer hunter and guest. They were not safe either.

They were willing. Willing was the more dangerous word. Willing could be taken from you if you stopped repeating it.