Apulli Wine and Orange Flowers

Kiernan is a creature of the night. Sitting alone on the edge of the meadow, alert and scanning

the dimly-lit forests for any hint of trouble - here is where she feels most comfortable. Watching, but

not watched. That is, as far as she knows. I almost don’t want to disturb her. Contentment is a rare

expression to cross Kiernan’s face, yet there it is, illuminated by the glitter of the stars. She blinks, long

and slow, savoring the peaceful darkness and the chirruping of insects from within the recesses of the

trees.

“Elara.” Not a question, and not a request, but something in between. An acknowledgement

and an invitation. Framed by the glow of many bioluminescent plants, the hair waterfalling to her

shoulder blades turns to flame, unwavering and still. She doesn’t turn to see if I’m approaching.

I shift on my toes and sit beside her, sweeping a loose golden-blonde strand away from my face.

“Cold?” The nip of the air burns against my dry, pinkened skin. “You don’t have your traveling cloak

or anything.”

She shakes her head. “This doesn’t bother me. It was like this all the time, up in Kaiastia.

They’d have us do snow runs sometimes.”

“I’ve heard about those,” I murmur, and the thought of it makes me shiver. “Hey, I brought

some apulli wine. Thought it’d be nice to share.”

Kiernan shuffles closer, her breath puffing out of her mouth, undulating frozen clouds

dissipating before my eyes. Her lips look chapped, and in the strange blue lighting of the plants her

knuckles seem swollen with frostbite, but her fingers clasp around the canteen nimbly as always. “You

know what this reminds me of?” she asks, taking a swig and handing it back to me.
 I trace the patterns in the stars with my gaze. “What?”

“It’s exactly like the night we met.”

“I think the night we met was a bit warmer,” I joke, unfazed by her seriousness. Kiernan’s

penchant for trouble may have been hardened into an astute sense of duty in Kaiastia, but she’d already

acquired her tough nature from the streets. As such, her laughter is hard to come by. I lean closer,

sipping delicately on the wine and letting it pool warmth into my belly, spreading to the tips of my

toes. “Wasn’t it in the middle of Arius?”

“It must’ve been,” she replies, “because everything was just starting to bloom.” She stares

ahead, unblinking. Something in the stiff angles of her face leads me to believe it’s not wistfulness in

that stare. The pause stretches a moment too far before she adds, with the slightest quirk of a smile on

her lips, “There were orange flowers in your windows.”

I inhale. Orange flowers. A detail I’d missed myself, though I thought I’d burned every moment

of that night into my head. The sweet-scented air drifting in through my skylights, the gentle candles

flickering from a thousand points around my room. Florentina’s soft aprinsi ballads accompanied by

the rippling of my bathwater, silky with celosia oil. The jarring knock at my door, of course, and the

rough scratching that came next, the Captain of the Kazaeran informing me that an intruder was

found near my quarters, but not to be alarmed; she was in custody. They would, however, require my

presence immediately.

Nor did I fail to memorize the look of shock, and something a little deeper, when I opened the

door with stringy wet hair and a bathrobe tied haphazardly about my waist. Contemptment, I thought
at the time. Loathing for my royal lifestyle and the luxuries I took for granted, still radiating the

perfume of celosia. Now…

I tip my head back, trying to recover exactly how her chin had tilted, how fists had slackened

into loose balls. Had it been the reflection of the candles that lit her wary glances from me to the

guards, or a flash of intrigue?

I let myself flop backwards, watching the stars. Even inebriated, I know them like the back of

my hand, and I tug Kiernan down and point out the constellation directly above us. “Maiara,” I tell

her. Hope. The stars that led our ancestors to the Akaaria that we know, and the one that I like to think

guided Kiernan to me. I feel around on the grass before my fingers graze her wrist and I clasp on tightly

to her hand.

I don’t look over, but the tenderness of lying beside her and the way that she nudges closer tell

me all I need to know.

“I was mapping the stars that night,” I say, or perhaps slur; I’m not quite sure. “The palace

astronomers had gotten it all wrong.”

“Did you map Maiara?” Kiernan asks softly. Her fingers twitch, as if she’s itching to say more

but can’t spit out the words. There’s a warmth there that has nothing to do with the apulli wine lying

almost-forgotten beside her, the cork toppled sideways amongst the tall grass.

I nod, scattering the first few dewdrops collecting fat and heavy on the blades. Her eyes aren’t

on me but I still flush as if they are. “I did.” My voice is scarcely more than a whisper. It was so long

ago, in the early trials and errors of my days studying the night sky. “It was the first one I ever got

right.” Dozens of hours had gone into that map, twilight trips to the palace library and near-misses
with the guards when I was supposed to be confined to my quarters, checking and rechecking and

checking again between what was outlined in the books and what I could see, though distant and far

away and out of reach, through the polished lens of my telescope.

It was late when I’d finished illustrating the constellation’s true position and told Florentina to

draw that bath, and Florentina, kind and thoughtful and generous as she is, had added the oils without

instruction. To loosen the knots in your shoulders, she’d explained as she turned off the faucet and let the

too-hot water cool slightly, they’re always worse when you’re up working late. And before I even had to

ask, she’d pinned up my hair to rest in coils on the top of my head and set a small glass of wine on my

bathside table; wine from the same orchard as the apulli wine in the canteen on the ground. And then

quietly, quietly, she closed the door and situated herself in front of the grand aprinsi, letting the keys

sing like a chorus of early-morning birds.

Kiernan pushes herself up and rests on one arm, looking down at me with a new kind of

intensity. “You saved my life that night, you know.”

“You would’ve saved yourself if I hadn’t.” I tip my head at her, mind clouded just enough by

the wine to allow my gaze to trace the corners of her lips. Something I’d always been too shy to do in

the palace or at our camp, even if I indulged myself with the one-sided intimacy of watching Kiernan’s

shadow keep a vigilant watch outside the door flaps of my tent. “I doubt even my father would’ve been

able to keep you in custody.”

Kiernan blinks at me once with those mesmerizing eyes, and shakes her head. “No,” she says

softly, her brows knitting upwards in an expression I’ve never seen on her before. “I wouldn’t have even

tried.”
 I can’t think of anything to say in response, deeply confused by Kiernan’s words. “What… what

do you mean?” It doesn’t make sense, the notion of Kiernan being unable to escape. Of not even giving

it a shot. I squint at her, blurring my vision into a dizzying smear of light. “Of course you would’ve.”

But now I’m not so sure, and before I can rush into another perplexed few sentences, Kiernan

brings a finger to my mouth in a silent shushing gesture. In any other situation, a guard shushing her

monarch would’ve been deeply offensive, but I oblige and focus clumsily on slowing my heartbeat,

which, traitorously, had begun to drum an erratic dance against my ribs the second her finger made

contact with my cupid’s bow.

For a brief, time-frozen moment, all we do is stare at each other. I must look like I’m panicking,

because Kiernan moves her hand to clasp onto mine again, not breaking eye contact as she continues.

“Not a chance,” she tells me, struggling to squash down a smile that annihilates whatever efforts I’d

made to calm my racing heart.

“Why?” I whisper.

The smile wins out. “Because.” She shrugs, trying and failing to seem nonchalant, and settles

herself so close beside me that her breath stirs the grass by my ears and washes over my face, bringing

with it the faint aroma of the apulli wine. So close that I could count every freckle on her nose and

every eyelash if I had the time and so close that finally that closed-off, wary part of her doesn’t feel so

distant. She lets out a tiny wisp of a laugh and brings her hand to cup my cheek, rough from training in

the Kazaeran yet still molding perfectly to me, brushing her thumb along my cheekbone and

entangling her fingers in my egregiously knotted hair. “I couldn’t have brought myself to break out,

when I knew the second I saw you that I was meant to be yours.”