Page 26 of Artemysia

“We all save dreams in a jar and count them before we go to sleep.” - Delphine

I awake in a groggy state of bliss. Based on the fire dwindling in the hearth, I’ve probably been out for an hour.

Riev’s heavy arms are wrapped around me, but he’s breathing deep. I ease out of his embrace and button up my flannel shirt to search for my underwear.

Oh gods, my underwear.

Exposed for a moment as I rummage around, I find he’s folded the garment neatly at the foot of the bed. I slip it on and scold myself for letting things get so far. I don’t lose control and fall into lust. I am good at saying no.

Except I didn’t want to say no and, despite all the reasons I listed in my head not to do anything, I allowed him to give me the most intense orgasm I’ve ever had. Was it one long one? Two?

My breathing comes faster even as I recall it.

He’s confident. And excellent with his mouth.

Perhaps being there only for the other person had taught him things.

I don’t question his reason for holding back on sex—or what he chooses to do in the bedroom.

But I’m curious why he binds himself to such rules.

Especially when he seems to despise being limited by laws and regulations, and skirts around society breaking as many as possible.

I creak open the bedroom door and sneak into the unlit kitchen. Outpost Olivier promised all the food we could eat, and I’m starving. Throg says I have the metabolism of a river shrew, a rodent that clears the riverbanks of insects and snails day and night.

He says they starve to death after going a few hours without eating.

“Psst. Captain,” a voice rasps in the dark and giggles.

Ivy has beaten me to the kitchen and is delving deep into the pantry. I see her backside.

She’s naked, except for the band around her ankle that holsters her dagger.

“Oh, sorry,” I whisper, embarrassed, even though Ivy clearly is not.

She whirls around with a preserved goose leg in one hand and a wedge of cheese in the other and makes no attempt at hiding her nakedness.

“Don’t be. The boys are asleep. Join me for a midnight snack? The pantry list says there’s pie, but I can’t find it. I get hungry after all the sex. I mean, that second time was wild even for me—”

I cut her off. “ Sounded like fun.”

“You want in? I can wake them up.”

I laugh, but she fixes me with a look that says she isn’t joking.

“Gods no,” I say quickly.

“Why not?”

I try to answer honestly, to gain her trust rather than push her away for her curiosity.

“First, it would be weird with Throg, who is like a brother, and second, I have to have feelings for someone to sleep with them.” I pause, catching myself because I was just intimate with Riev, but I don’t want to step into that pile of elk turd of conflicting feelings.

“Right now, I don’t want to get attached and then be hurt. ”

“You can be in love and have fun. You and Riev?”

“We’re too different. A dangerous mission isn’t a good time to start anything. ”

“D-e-n-i-a-l.” She laughs, her heavy breasts moving with her. “The fiery way you look at each other even when you’re arguing—there’s no mistaking that for anything else.”

“Pfft.” I don’t have a reply to that, and I’m not sure if it’s true.

My discomfort over discussing my love life with a naked subordinate has grown to unbearable levels, so I duck into the pantry.

I slide aside a loaf of bread and reach for a scalloped ceramic dish deep in the cabinet.

I’m hit by a wave of hope. Lifting the lid, I discover the flaky crust of a pie.

“Yes! Outpost boy was holding out on us.” I inhale deeply, sniffing warm brown spices and a buttery, caramelized top.

“Meat pie or a fruit pie?” Ivy asks. “I guess there’s only one way to tell…”

She bends a knee and plants a foot on a chair to slide out her ankle dagger, while I avert my eyes from all the exposed body parts that accompany that action. She carves a triangular slice and scoops it out in one hand, holding it up to the dim light of the moons through the window.

“Meat pie!” she practically yells.

“Yes! Cut me one, please,” I say, flicking a wrist to hurry her. “Riev would cry his eyes out seeing us eating like this, our heads stuck halfway in a pantry.”

“You’ve noticed his quirk. He likes things clean and orderly. He polishes his boots and saddle daily—and he folds everything, always leaving things neater than before.”

My books in the clock tower. Cleaning up after dinner. My folded underwear.

“Why does he do that?”

“Maybe because he was raised by an Academy cleaning lady? Why do we do anything we do? Fear. Hope. And feeling like we’re in control of our fates—making the best of what we’re given, I guess.” Ivy shrugs and hands me another wedge of pie, which I eagerly take.

“Insightful. Should I eat a slice of pie in bed and see what happens?”

“Do it. He’ll have a stroke.”

I muffle my laughter.

“Morrigan? Ivy Morrigan, love, where are you?” Throg’s deep, rumbling voice calls from the bedroom. “Come feed me a bit of whatever you’re having.”

“I definitely have something you can eat.”

“Woman, you’re insatiable. I smell meat pie. But maybe after? Outpost boy is dead to the world, so it’ll be all about you .”

She gasps with delight and flashes me a smile that could outshine all the gas lamps in Stargazer. She takes the pie with her. “Gotta go. Nice chat, Captain.”

As I chew my savory pastry, I mull over whether we’re all acting on the assumption that we may not make it back alive—if our impending deaths make us depraved and irrational—but I come to the conclusion that it’s only me acting out of the ordinary.

Everyone else seems to be themselves.

When I return to the bedroom, Riev is on his knees by the fireplace, feeding logs into the fire until it blazes again.

His dark hair falls in soft, loose waves around his jawbone, the strands freed from his usual knot thanks to me.

I’d threaded my fingers through them while his head was between my legs.

My stomach takes a deep dive.

He sinks back into bed and rolls under the covers.

I shake the crumbs off my shirt before edging back onto the quilt, prepared to defend my midnight snacking. Surprisingly, he refrains from any sort of snide comment.

Instead, propped on his side, he asks, “If there were no Syf to fight, what would you be doing instead?”

I search his face, in case he’s mocking me. But his face is earnest as he waits for my answer, and I wonder what made him suddenly imagine a world without Syf.

“I’d raise elk on the farm we used to have. Read. Snack on candy all day long. You?”

“Huh,” he grunts, frowning. The flames of the hearth flicker strange shadows on his face.

He doesn’t have a reply to his own question. Has he never considered this? He must have. We all have .

“We all save dreams in a jar and count them before we go to sleep,” I say. It’s what Academy soldiers do in the cold, quiet hours of the night. We imagine a different world. It’s what gets us to sleep.

“I just close my eyes and go right to sleep.”

“Pssh. You must have dreams. Tell me,” I prompt.

“Dreams are for better men,” he mutters.

“See, this is why Ivy calls you a crotchety grandpa—that’s exactly what a grumpy old man would say. You’re only proving her right.”

“Alright, fine. I’d like to…” He hesitates, fixing me with a vulnerable look that liquefies my insides, as if asking me not to make fun of his response. “I’d like to do all of that too. What you said.”

“You can’t steal my answer.”

His solemn restraint collapses, and he laughs so hard that the edges of his wintry eyes crinkle, the tension of his honesty breaking apart.

“Can you imagine me being a bartender or doctor? With my social skills? I don’t have the patience to be a tailor or baker.

I can read, but I can’t write, and that’s most city jobs.

Being an assassin is all I know how to do.

It’s how I’ve survived. I don’t fit in anywhere else. ”

“I can imagine you doing something else. You sewed me up just fine.”

The crackling fire launches tiny red sparks into the air as he considers this.

“I meant…I’d like land of my own. I’d build a cottage. Farmhouse and field, all my own stuff. Ride into the city on weekends to buy suits. Go to summer fairs and shit.”

“You’re going to farm in a suit?” I slip back in next to him and tuck my legs under the quilt but sit upright.

He moves his calf against my cold feet to warm them. The sparse hairs of his leg tickle me.

“I can be a hot farmer. You’re picturing it,” he insists.

I roll my eyes. “You’d have a life-size painting of yourself over your hearth.”

“No way. Only a pompous ass would—”

“It’d be a housewarming present from me.”

His laugh is rich and pleasant.

I go on. “We could have adjoining farms. I’ll raise elk you can ride, and you keep geese and milk cows. I’ll come over for eggs and cheese. ”

“Deal. Don’t eat my cows. I know how much you love steak.”

I snort, scrunching my nose. He flicks his wrist, indicating that I get into his arms, so I do just that. I lie on my belly, my cheek on his chest. He hooks a leg over mine, and we tangle in warmth and closeness.

“This is the best birthday I’ve ever had,” he murmurs, pulling the covers over me.

I grin, my face squished into his shoulder. “You deserve all the best birthdays.” At that, he clutches me closer, tucking his chin on my head

My eyelids are already half-closed. I listen as Riev’s breathing slows before his arm on me grows heavy.

He shields me from the cold and smells of that sweet, fresh woodsy note.

Juniper. Damn stupid tree scent I can’t get enough of.

With a bit of spice, too, drifting from the warmer parts of him. Why do some men smell so good?

All I know is that I don’t want to move an inch.

We all save dreams in a jar and count them before we go to sleep . For the first time in a long while, I allow myself to seriously consider if those dreams can survive outside our jars to become reality one day.

And for the first time, I let myself believe that if this mission is successful, maybe they can.