starved
Buri and Raoul have beautiful babies. Kel's used to playing with babies – New Hope has plenty and Kel's family isn't far behind in number. The little one in her arms seems too tiny to be real. Sapphire blue eyes that will darken to deep brown blink up at her sleepily. Tiny little fingers are butterfly wings against her roughened skin, and plump strawberry lips curl wide in a yawn.
"I'd better put her down," Buri says, holding her arms out for her child.
Kel hands the babe over reluctantly, surprised by the fierceness for the little one burning inside. She watches as Buri – someone she never saw as a mother – coos and cuddles the little bundle, leaving the room with a soft swish of satin and a lingering fragrance of light perfume. Kel wonders when Buri stopped being a warrior and turned into a woman.
"I'm very lucky," Raoul says.
She looks at him; his large frame sprawled across a seat and legs stretch in front of him. Yes, she thinks, he is lucky. "You have a lovely family," Kel says politely, a smile touching her lips.
"What about you, Keladry of Mindelan?"
A blush stains her cheek. "I haven't got time for a family. New Hope keeps me busy."
Raoul nods as though he accepts what she's saying, but she served him for long years and recognises the look in his eye – he's not done with his prying yet. Keladry sighs to herself and wonders if she could possibly find some excuse to leave, but she knows it's already too late. She's a guest at Goldenlake, and it would be rude to just leave.
Kel prays for bandits or immortals or some kind of trouble.
Raoul smiles. "Wipe that look off your face Keladry, and stop trying to find a way to get out of the ball. No matter how hard you pray, the gods will laugh in your face and refuse to send a catastrophe for you to attend." He pauses, and looks at her, before his lips break into a broad grin. "Mithros knows, I prayed often enough with no results!"
Kel still doesn't believe that Raoul and Buri of Goldenlake are hosting a ball in their home. But they have a darling new baby to show off, she remembers belatedly, and babies turn the most sensible people into murmuring dolts.
---
Kel doesn't know how it's possible to be so alone in a room filled with people. The constant murmur of their conversation and laughter washes over her in a dull wave, but she can't seem to make out the individual voices or words. She's being silly, she thinks, staring at her grape juice, but there's something gnawing inside her and she's scared it might be eating away her soul.
"You're awfully quiet tonight."
When the Lioness stands she's only just taller than Kel who is seated. "I have nothing to say."
Alanna's lips quirk into a smile. "Move over," she orders.
Kel obeys – she's had too many years following orders without question to put up a fight, and anyway, one doesn't argue with the King's Champion. The older woman sits with a sigh of relief, massaging a thigh with a sun-stained hand. Kel tries not to stare at the woman sitting next to her. For so long this short, sharp, jaded woman was a hero to Kel's imagination. There was nothing the Lioness could not do, and because the Lioness could do it, Kel could do it too.
Now the Lioness is old, her joints creaking with pain and her skin leathered with age.
Is this what Kel wants when she's too old to change?
But Kel is already too old to change.
"It's hard, isn't it?" Alanna says suddenly.
"I'm sorry?"
"Wondering if you made the right decision to be a knight."
Kel smiles. "I don't regret it."
"But you're wondering if there is something more," Alanna says sagely. "I was lucky. I got my shield and disappeared into the wilderness. I wasn't the talk of the court during my training – well, not because I was a girl anyway," Alanna amends.
"None of that matters," Kel says.
"Doesn't it?" Alanna asks quietly. "For years after people found out the truth I wasn't Alanna anymore; I was 'that strange woman who's pretending to be a knight'."
"How did you change it?" Kel asks curiously.
Alanna laughs. "I never said I'm not still 'the strange woman who's pretending to be a knight'. There will always be people who won't accept you, Kel. You have to learn to accept that they don't matter."
"They don't matter," Kel says blandly. "They never did."
Alanna has been the King's Champion for years, she is not stupid. "Whatever you're worried about, Kel, you have friends you can talk to," Alanna says quietly. In an uncharacteristic display of affection, the Lioness squeezes Kel's shoulder before she stands up and walks away.
Kel watches her go, hiding a sigh as the Lioness' husband smiles at his wife and slips an arm around her waist.
She still feels empty inside.
---
The emptiness yawns inside her, hungry, consuming. She eats candied jellies and creamed tarts. The main course is heavy and solid in her gut but she eats small mints and crisp apples and tiny sugar creations spun so they sparkle like diamonds. Warm crusty bread rolls and rich thick soup, and she drinks silken red wine until she feels like she's floating on an empty ocean.
She's eaten and eaten and filled herself up but the emptiness is still there and it just won't go away. The world spins and she rocks on her lonely boat in the vastness, trying to find something. Anyone.
Raoul's hands are on her arms, his face swimming before her. She tries to tell him she's hungry so hungry. She tastes the salt of the ocean on her lips and realises the salt is her tears.
The food inside her roils and churns; Raoul steadies her outside as she empties herself and her soul and her heart onto a dusty dry earth under a cloudless summer sky.
"Gods, Mindelan," he says gently, wiping her tears, "if you keep everything inside it just eats you up. Don't you know that by now?"
She thinks she kept too much inside and it ate everything she was. It's hungry now because she has nothing left to feed it.
He hugs her, big hands rubbing her back and heart thumping against her ear. She could stay here forever, she thinks, closing her eyes, but she can smell Buri's perfume and the soft baby scent and knows she has to let him go.
Raoul has a family, and Kel has a posting.
She can't walk a straight line or make her lips work. She can't even stand or her keep her head in one place. Raoul leaves her propped against a stone wall, the stench of her retching souring the air.
"Come on, Kel," someone calls.
For one dizzying, heartbreaking second she sees Neal, and he's disappointed in her. But the wine is playing tricks on her mind and it's only Dom with sorrowed blue eyes.
"It's okay, sir, I'll see her to her room by the back way."
"Thank you, Dom," Raoul says, helping Dom to drag her to her feet. The world tilts and sways and Keladry wonders if this is what it feels like when you're about to die.
---
She feels better when Dom pushes the door to the guest room open. He has one of her arms slung around his shoulder, and one of his slung around her waist. Her feet scrabble and scrape for purchase on a floor that won't stay still.
"Easy, Kel," he says, dragging her toward her bed. "Almost there."
For one second the world spins and sways in a dizzying whirl, and Kel finds herself flat on her back on her bed. Dom's looking down at her, but the room is dark and she can't see his eyes. She's scared the darkness is coming from her and will eat him up too.
The darkness is a ravaged, starved beast; she gropes blindly for something to chase it away.
"Shh," Dom murmurs, catching her hand with his and holding it still. "Just breathe, Kel." He sits holding her hand in the dark until someone arrives.
"Let me have a look at her," Alanna says. She sounds far away, her voice tinny and pulled by time and by drink. Rough fingers touch her temples; Kel feels cool and floats on a breeze of purple sky.
---
When she opens her eyes Alanna is gone. A single candle on the mantel chases away the dark. Dom sits by her side, still holding her hand.
"You're drunk," he tells her, fingers kneading her palm.
"My head hurts," she whispers.
"Alanna magicked you. Said she couldn't change how drunk you were already, but she stopped it from getting worse."
Kel closes her eyes; shamed. She fights her tears, but they're not as easy to tame as they once were.
"Why didn't you say anything, Kel?" Dom asks quietly.
"About what?"
He barks a sharp bitter laugh she's never heard from him before. "About what, the girl says," he mimics. "About what's going on in here." He taps her forehead with his fingers, but the gentleness in his touch doesn't fit the anger in his voice. "We're your friends, Kel. We care about you. You need to talk to people if you hurt."
She doesn't hurt; she's empty inside. Starved.
His fingers are still tangled with hers. She grips them tightly, trying to find something inside him to help her fight the tears. She fails, and they slip from her lashes like hot drops of blood.
"Oh, Kel," he murmurs.
The feel of his lips against her skin is a butterfly kiss, his tongue licking away the salt. She reaches for him blindly, searching, and knots her fingers in his hair, holding his cheek against her own. His warm breath brushes moistly against her skin, the stubble on his cheeks rough against the smoothness of her own.
She lies still as he moves his head away and traces her lips with his fingers. The callused tips wander from her lips to her chin, the curve of her jaw and the sensitive skin behind her ear. She swallows; he presses his fingers against the whisper of her heartbeat.
The bed dips beneath his weight as he moves from the chair to sit beside her, still running his fingers over the smoothness of her skin. She's silent when eh pulls his fingers away and draws his tunic from his body. By the light of a single candle his skin as golden and smooth as she remembered it.
She touches him with her hands and he shudders beneath her lips.
---
Afterwards, he blows out the candle. She lies in the dark with his arm around her waist, lips bruised and skin stained with salt. She still feels empty inside, but the hunger has faded, and the darkness as turned to a dark silver grey.