“Are you protecting me from something?” he asked, incredulously.
“Shut up!”
He pulled her into the room, shut the door, and put his arms around her.
“What are you doing?” she cried, startled.
“I’m hugging you!” he said. “You’re scaring me!”
“Are you seducing me? For sex?”
“Oh, for the love of the Keeper, Lovisa,” he said, beginning to laugh. “No. I’m hugging you for comfort. Only you would ask that.”
“Why shouldn’t I ask about it directly?” she said. “Would it be so terrible for everyone to say what they mean when they do things, and what they want, and why? Wouldn’t it make things simpler, and create fewer disasters?”
“Lovisa,” he said, “now what’s going on?”
“I hate everyone who’s normal,” she said, humiliated by the tears that were soaking into his shirt.
Mari began to rock her back and forth with his hug. She buried her face in his chest, heard his heart beating. When was the last time anyone had hugged her? When did anyone ever hug anybody? Her arms reached up to hug him back and his grip on her tightened.
“What a relief I’m not normal,” he said, which made her snort with sudden laughter. No one was more normal than Mari, but it was true that she didn’t hate him. And she told herself it was a friendly hug, fond, not sexual. But her body was telling her something else too, wanting to press against him, wanting to make his body respond, because that would feel different.
“Mari?” she said.
“Yes?”
She lifted her face to his, her mouth very close. “What if we reconsidered?”
He hesitated, understanding. Then he kissed her, once, tentatively. Yes, that was better. She kissed him back.
He pulled away. “Wait. We’ve talked about this. We’re not thinking.”
But Lovisa was thinking. “I know you’re not in love with me,” she said. “You know I’m not in love with you. We’ve been through it a hundred times. There’s no confusion here. And I’m dying for a distraction.”
He let out a big sigh. “Okay.”
She took him to his bed.
* * *
—
It was nice. Interesting. Not tantalizing, but she liked being close to Mari, she liked burying her face in his neck, she liked moving with him and filling her mind with him. She trusted him. And he was attentive and patient, but also wanted her. It made her feel . . . important. It was such a strange feeling.
“It’s fine,” she told him, when he worried about her. “I’m not going to finish. It’s okay.”
Then, right about the time he was finishing, her body started wanting it. He gasped out his joy, then dropped into sleep, like someone had put a sheet over a birdcage.
“Hey,” she said, poking his shoulder, frustrated.
“What?” he said, waking up with a start, looking around in blurry confusion.
“I didn’t finish.”
“I thought you weren’t going to.”
“Well. I was indifferent at first. Now I want to.”
“Okay,” he said. And to her vast surprise, he disappeared under the covers, positioned her legs just so, and began to apply his tongue to her, so gently that her body sang out in wonderment. Wow. When did Mari get so good at these things? Who knew?
The pleasure rose slowly, became almost overwhelming, then became shattering. When it was over, she started to cry again. She hid the tears from him, confused about whether she was happy or sad.
Mari fell asleep with his face buried in her neck. Lovisa lay awake for a while, sniffling quietly, thinking, released from the grip of worry about the queen, if briefly. She wondered if they’d do it again tomorrow.
* * *
—
In the early morning, she woke to him murmuring happily and planting tiny kisses behind her ear. When she turned to him, she saw starlight in his eyes.
“Wait,” she said, immediately alarmed. “Why did you change your mind?”
“What?”
“About sex.”
“I guess because I trust you.”
“But you’re not in love with me?”
“I’ve known you all my life,” he said. “We’re still friends, right?”
“Yes,” she said carefully. “But maybe we shouldn’t do that again.”
“Didn’t you like it?”
“It was very, very nice,” she said. “But now I’m afraid of you falling in love with me.”
“Because I was kissing you just now?”
“Yes.”
“Maybe I just want to have more sex with you.”
“Oh,” said Lovisa, who hadn’t thought of that. “Okay. But listen, Mari, will you promise me that you’ll be honest with me, about all your feelings about this?”
He considered the question, with that sleepy morning dopiness that made her remember that she’d known him when he was five. “Would that be a one-way promise,” he said, “or are you going to be honest with me too?”
“About my feelings about sex, yes,” she said. “Not about the stuff I can’t tell you.”
“Okay. I promise.”
“Also, when we stop having sex, promise you won’t try to isolate me socially.”
He propped himself up on his elbow and stared at her, hard. “What kind of question is that?”
“Like you did with Nev,” she said, shrugging.
“I did not!” he said. “I never did any such thing!”
“Okay, but everyone else isolated her, as a matter of course.”
“But I didn’t tell them to do that!”
“You didn’t tell them not to do it either. You saw it happening, and you could’ve stopped it with a word, but you didn’t. I need a promise you won’t do that to me. You know I’d have to retaliate, right? It would make a huge mess of everything.”
Mari was staring mulishly at the bedsheets, thinking. Lovisa knew how slow he was to offense, how hard he considered everything, sometimes tortuously, before deciding what he thought. Unlike her. She was a little ashamed of herself.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I mean, I’ve isolated her too.”