Thieves fall.
They fall when they reach too high, when they think that banners of clouds wave strong enough to cling to. They fall when they mistake the distance between one high place and another.
Thieves fall: it is in their nature.
Eugenides jumps.
.
When he has her there, in his arms—
When he beats the odds of cruel destiny and crueler practicality almost as well with one hand as he did with two—
Then it is not hard, not hard at all to remember why. Irene is why. Irene, with high points of fury in her pale cheeks. Irene, who never forgets to angle the blade of her fear outward, instead of in.
Irene, who has long held his life in her hand.
Always, it comes down to a hand.
He holds his out, an offering to his great goddess.
She stares down at the hairpins and sets her jaw in the disdain he knows she needs.
.
Since it is his heart that loves her, he can force body and mind to rule beside her. He will die this way, maybe. Choked by closed doors. Maybe poison; maybe a knife in the back.
Attolia will kill anyone who touches him. She has promised this as they lay side by side, and he held her almost as well with one hand as with two, and begged her to wait a little longer.
He is used to begging. Perhaps it is the nature of kings.
.
He is lonely.
She is lonelier.
He would bleed for her, and he did, and he does. She does not thank him because that is Irene, white-lipped even when she stands as executioner. Her head is heavy with the crown.
He thought he could help her bear it, and on some days she believes that he can, and it is enough.
.
"I can tell your mood from your kisses," he tells her, in soft moonlight. When night falls, he cannot see the mountains from behind the window-panes. When night falls, they are alone.
"Really." She barely poses it as a question. Her hair splays behind her on the pillow like the rays of a dark sun.
He crosses the room, silent steps because he can. He can always be silent. "Yes," he tells her, sinking down on his elbows, so that his face hovers inches from hers. "Your lips are cold when you are angry."
And when you are afraid, he could add, but he does not. Because there are lies they tell the world, and truths they do not speak to each other.
"And when I am happy?" she whispers, and the sand on his tongue and the pains of his phantom hand and the soul-ache of exile fades away.
(He can always be silent.)
"When you are happy," he answers, leaning down—a kiss between each word—"You are on fire."
"Fire burns out," she answers, but she is happy enough. "I do not."
And thieves fall.
(But he is no longer a thief.)