Star's Crossing

32: Unrequited

Lilith could remember only two other occasions in her young life when she'd had quite so much to drink.

It was not that she was too prude for the starry daze of champagne or the low sweet warmth of wine; she, like most, enjoyed a stroll through the delicate groves of spirit.

It was her father who painted her cautious. No, worse—wary. She nearly feared the power of alcohol, particularly in the hands of men. She knew it had the power to alter even the kind and wise and clever into beasts of violence, cruelty, and wrath.

It did not transmute Lilith so, and she was, as of now, quite aware of that. As she strolled through the great Watt gardens in search of her carriage, she realized liquor turned her molten: warm, glossy, melted. Malleable. She could pour and meld into any shape. She was not a doll. She was not even a girl. In her hot blood she was a crown and scepter, a dagger, a bullet. She was a glass of gilt wine. She wanted to be pressed to lips.

The cold had crept through her shawl, and in her absentmindedness she'd lost a shoe somewhere back near the drive. She'd peeled off the other and carried it with deft fingers, trailing between the hedges. She smelled a rose somewhere and wanted to find it. She wanted to remember the night she'd donned one for Mare. The carriage ride afterward. The forging of friendship in fire.

"There you are!"

Lilith turned in time to see Alison ducking beneath a willow, Lilith's shoe in hand. Alison hastened to Lilith's side, her face in shadow, a lit sconce at her back limning her in tongues of flame.

"Darling, dear," whispered Alison, "you're all a mess. Shall we take you up and get you cleaned before I see you home? I'd hate for you to receive grief for my folly."

"Mine," Lilith said. Her tongue was cotton and thorns. She swayed, grateful when Alison grasped her arms to keep her steady. "What is the answer to unrequited love? Did Shakespeare ever write anything to that affect?"

Alison's lovely face took form in the gloom, her eyes bright as banked coals. "I don't think men know much in the way of unrequited. It seems a phrase made for women, for whom the word no is not intended."

Lilith startled. Alison's words sobered her, though in the balmy breeze of the garden, the world seemed it could be all a dream and nothing more. "I should go."

Alison straightened. "Yes. I suppose you should. Come, the carriage is just out front." She reached for Lilith's hand, then, upon spotting the shoe in her own, laughed. "I nearly forgot. Here. We can't have you padding around barefoot as the animals, can we?"

Alison knelt, slipping Lilith's foot, with irreverent care, into her shoe. She pulled the other from Lilith's fingers and did the same. When Lilith swayed she placed her hand on Alison's shoulder, and marveled at the thought of a person providing balance for another. It seemed a cosmic thing to do, and when Alison rose, Lilith did not pull away.

Alison searched Lilith's eyes, unblinking, her brow furrowed. She was otherworldly lovely in the darkness and light; bright eyes and pert nose and curious mouth. Her hair was a tangle, and she was, ironically, barefoot.

Lilith did not enjoy speaking her mind when it did not serve her. She'd been met with palms, fists, and worse for such follies over the years. Though her cold face did not betray them, her heart was scarred as her body.

But in the garden, in the dark, in the drink, she confided. Alison was warm as a flame, and she did not look away, did not step away, did not blink or bat a lash. She remained steady, a moor and berth. Safe harbor for Lilith after far too long at sea. Her hand on Alison's shoulder drifted, cautious, until it found her neck, smooth and alabaster, warm as midday sun.

Still Alison did not blink. She did move, however, gravitating an inch that felt a mile. In her shoes Lilith and Alison were eye to eye, nose to nose. Mouth to mouth.

"Have you a beau?" Lilith whispered, and Alison shook her head. "Have...you ever been kissed?"

Alison's lips parted, but she produced no answer.

Lilith knew her cheeks were ablaze, but the sensation of fear felt far away, chased and at its heels, desperation. Lilith lifted her hand. She'd wanted for months now to give it a go, this wonderful act of love praised for millennia by all those who practiced it.

Lilith wanted a kiss. Until this moment, she'd not sought it from this girl.

But now, looking at Alison Watt, it seemed utterly, erringly blind to have desired it from another. Not when Alison lived and breathed. Not when she was here, balance and moor, ballast point.

Lilith closed that last gasping breath of distance between them and tilted Alison's jaw, smooth and strong beneath her fingers, upward. Lilith bowed her head. She felt the girl's breath first, a flutter and then a gasp, sharp and small as a blade but not wielded as such. Lilith's heart thundered. She felt her free hand tremble as it rose to rest on Alison's waist.

Then, there, at last; Lilith pressed her lips to Alison's, and at once, understood. No letter or word, no book could distill it. No song, lament or praise, could make it heard. There was but one method of delivery, and it was this.

Alison did not bend to Lilith's will and did not cower, but rose on her arches and returned Lilith's gesture with the tenderest warmth and gradual desperation. It felt as though a flint had been struck, a cinder caught; Lilith moved without thinking, pushing Alison from the path until the girl's back met the low-sweeping willow and the pair, doused in moonlight, were swathed in its conspiratorial boughs.

Alison's hands rose to Lilith's face, and she threaded one through Lilith's hair, angling the girl's mouth more effectively toward her own. It was such bliss Lilith nearly forgot Mare, forgot Teddy, forgot her father and her future and her world; but only nearly.

Like a riptide reality returned, its cold black swell enough to sober Lilith and pull her from the hands of her conspirator.

Apologies sprang to her tongue and fear engulfed her, rising quick above her head. She could not manage to utter her regrets, even fabricated as they were, and simply fled, pressing past Alison and free of the willow's sanctuary. She shot one glance over her shoulder, panicked tears flaring to the backs of her eyes, and saw Alison braced against the great tree with one hand, the other clasped tightly over her mouth.

A thousand notions battled violently in Lilith's fractured, drunken mind. Somehow, as she stumbled onto the drive and toward the waiting carriage, it was this that won, and stood bloody among the fallen.

Unrequited meant nothing, when there were other lips to kiss.