Irei is still lying on the couch. He claims I've sucked his soul from his body, but I reassure him that he probably didn't have one in the first place. I collect my discarded tunic, now rumpled and dusted with specks of dirt from the torasanthi it happened to land on, and pull it back over my head. The wrinkles will definitely give us away, and I sigh inwardly anticipating Tyro's knowing smile.

Despite not being able to keep our hands off of each other, we haven't had sex yet. I think Irei is worried he'll go too far too fast and I'll run back to the familiar shelter of my Shikkan modesty. Or maybe he still worries that my affection is driven at least in part by a desire to escape my past, a need to cling onto the first solid thing I found when my life turned into a roiling sea.

He wouldn't be entirely wrong. When he's touching me, the past seems to retreat like darkness when a match is struck. That initial blinding spark, that cascade of light that glazes everything a soft gold, pushes the shadows back a comfortable distance. It becomes easier to breathe, to laugh. His arms are the only home I haven't lost. But that has nothing to do with how I feel about him, merely how bold I am in expressing it. If I had no past to run from, I'm certain I would still want him.

"Shit," I say when I notice the time. "We got carried away, didn't we? I told Avamir I'd meet her fifteen minutes ago. She sent me to the market to buy seeds earlier."

"Go then, etan namori," Irei says. When he remembers I don't speak Kamai, he translates. "It means my little botanist." His breathing has finally returned to normal, but his cheeks are still slightly flushed. "I could make a joke about seed, but it'd be beneath me."

"And then I'd make a joke along the lines of 'nothing should be beneath you but me,' but I have more dignity than that. I'm a fucking prince."

"And I'd finish with a quip about fucking a prince, namely you, and that wouldn't be at all respectable. I'm so glad we've agreed to forgo the lot of it," Irei says with his signature crooked smile. He has the hint of a dimple on his right cheek. It's only visible when he holds his mouth a very specific way, but it's there. I resist the urge to lean in and trace it with my finger and instead head to the door, stretching my tunic as I go to minimize the wrinkles.

I'm so busy trying to render my appearance less incriminating that I don't notice Irei stand up and cross the room towards me. As I turn the doorknob, revealing a sliver of the warmly lit hallway beyond, he reaches over my shoulder and slams it shut again.

"Rei, I'm already late..."

"This will only take a moment," he breathes, his lips barely a whisper from my ear. He turns me towards him and before I can protest or prepare his body is crashing into mine, forcing me back against the shut door with an audible thud. His hands turn into fists in my hair, utterly destroying any hope I had of hiding the fact that I've spent the past hour in his arms. Tyro will make fun of us eternally, but in this moment, I don't give a damn. I don't care about anything as Irei deepens the kiss. My mouth opens as softly as a sigh and he takes full advantage, pressing deeper, taking more, but nothing I wouldn't give him willingly. He has to know by now that I'd give him anything, everything, if he just asked.

I squeak as he grabs my slender wrists and pins them above my head. Soon I'm so breathless I'm dizzy, but I can't stand the thought of ending the kiss, so I wait until his lips regretfully pull away from mine before sucking in a ragged breath. As he releases me I stumble forward, suddenly unstable without the pressure of his body against mine. He laughs and helps me steady myself, looking entirely too pleased with himself. It would bother me if I wasn't damned pleased with him, too.

"Come back later," he says softly, kissing me one more time for good measure. This one is brief, though, a parting peck that contrasts almost comically with our passionate embrace the moment before. "I'll be waiting for you, h'yonmi, and you know I'm not a particularly patient man."

"Maybe not," I reply, trying to sound coy but only managing breathless, "but you'll wait for me."

"Don't take too long, though, or I might turn my affections elsewhere. Seek the warmth and comfort of one closer at hand."

"Closer at hand?" I snort. "Who would that be, then, Avamir, Tyro, or Lyu? If you touch Avi Tyro will sever your head from your body, Tyro's straight, and Esato is soon to be a married man. Take your pick, Irei, of these astonishing prospects. And then ask yourself if it isn't worth waiting a little bit longer for me."

"Avamir and Tyro belong to each other, so I won't interfere there. And Lyu and I are never sleeping together again, so I suppose I'm shit out of luck. I'll just have to sit around here and pine for you in your long absence. Do write me letters, Amshira, and include a lock of your hair or some other such sentimental trinket. Or lewd pictures, maybe, that could work splendidly."

"Again."

"What?"

"You said Lyu and I are never sleeping together again. You- Irei'kionaxi Nara, my Irei, are you telling me you and Esato Lyu were-"

"Young, horny, and completely comfortable using one another? He was wilder back then, and I was madly in love with a straight man, and fucking awful at relationships. We became friends and it all ended, bless us."

"You had the audacity to call me slutty!" I sputter. "Have you slept with any other of our intimates? Do I have to worry about you going for a ride with Revika Héon in the stables, or making eyes at Eadas Sev across the xalzan table? Will you and Galia be rolling around in a bed she's just made? Are you and Mirsi engaging in more than espionage?"

"Are you done?"

"I suppose," I reply with a grin. "But only because you don't have a larger set of friends."

"Funny."

"I thought so," I quip. "But really, you and Esato? You're not jesting?"

"I had to find some way to shut him up," Irei sighs. "That mouth runs on and on and on ad infinitum if you don't find another way to occupy it."

"Irei Nara," I laugh, eyebrows arched, positively scandalized. "I can't believe you just said that. No, wait, yes I can. If you've slept with Lyu, I can believe you capable of anything. Have you also robbed banks? Stolen ships? Are you even an ambassador, or is that an elaborate front to-"

"Seems like Lyu isn't the only one who goes on and on," Irei says with a sly smile, the tip of his index finger resting on my bottom lip. "I can think of far better ways to occupy yourself and your wagging tongue, my prince. Come, I'll tell you all about my lifetime of sin while we commit another."

"We just finished."

"I'm never done with you," he purrs, brushing his stubble against the side of my cheek in a way that makes my throat tighten. "Now either go find Avamir or shut the door and lock it, Shira. Don't tease me."

"But it's so gratifying," I reply with an innocent smile, blinking my wide eyes at him like I haven't the slightest idea what he means. "And I'm so good at it, too."

He laughs despite himself. "Go play flowers with Avamir, Shira, and let me get some work done. Then come back here and play with me. You're good at that, too," he murmurs, leaning forward so our foreheads touch. "Almost upsettingly so."

"Do you want me to feel sorry for you?" I taunt as I turn to leave. "If I'm sorry for anything, it's for keeping Avamir waiting half an hour. No, wait. I take that back. If I'm sorry for anything, it's knowing that you slept with Esato Lyu." I start to walk away and then turn back as soon as I cross the threshold, grabbing Irei by his cravat and pulling his lips to mine one last time.

"I'll be back soon."

I'm still a little unsteady when I meet Avamir at her cottage. She's around the side, watering pots of jemsi and halobrush so fragrant that I can already smell their delicate, orange-and-vanilla sweetness several yards away. The harsh afternoon sun has given way to a gold-tinted dusk, and in the warm light her unusual auburn hair shines like burnished copper. Her olive skin seems to glow from within, as if a candle has been lit somewhere inside of her and the light is radiating outwards. She's silhouetted by the setting sun, the outline of her delicate figure softened by its last long rays of light. It's easy to understand why Tyro loves her to distraction; she's by far the most beautiful part of these gardens.

She looks me over, from my crumpled tunic to my flushed skin and my abominably tangled hair, and smiles knowingly. Thankfully Avamir is more tactful than Tyro, and she doesn't say anything about my unkempt appearance, but her eyes tell me she knows exactly what I've been doing.

"I'm sorry I'm late," I say, holding out the seed packets I bought at the market to her like a peace offering, all the while blushing brilliantly. So much for discretion.

She waves her hand. "Nothing to be sorry for. Now come with me, I want to show you something." She leads me into the cottage where a row of seedlings are cuddled against the window, drinking in the last of the day's light. Their slender necks, weighed down by floppy veridian leaves, are adorned with pearl-like buds. A few of their sepals are unfurled, revealing ruffled, impossibly purple petals.

"What are they?"

"What do you think they are?" Avamir parries with a small smile.

I reach forward and finger one of the delicate leaves, examining the pattern of their venation. After crushing one bud between my thumb and forefinger I smell the sticky sap that leaks from the newly inflicted wound, expecting the distinctive citric tang of Besthane but smelling instead something deeper, woodier. Almost like trefalia, but the jagged edges of the leaves and the dark coloration of the stem shoot down that hypothesis before it ever takes flight.

"It's like nothing I've ever seen before," I tell her honestly. "And I'm going to guess it's like nothing anyone has ever seen before. The desert lily wasn't the only hybrid you created, was it?"

"Not even close," she laughs, pleased that I discovered her novelty. "I've been trying to create a cultivar of deltana that can survive in the Kamai climate for years. It's a fickle little flower, and practically unheard of beyond Suumaral, but I've loved it since I was a girl. You'll see why when the flowers open a little more; they're more ruffled than a gentlewoman's gowns, and such a vivid, unusual purple. I figured out a while ago that crossing it with Besthane produced a successful first generation, but the trouble was that none of those plants could produce offspring. Completely sterile. The key turned out to be adding a specific variant of greyling. These little ones here," she says, with almost maternal pride, "these are generation three. All fertile and just as healthy as they would be in Suumari soil."

"That's more than a little impressive."

"Oh!" Avamir exclaims, seeming to remember something. "Look, I stumbled across something in the process I think you'll like." She points to the other window, where another flower is growing. Its chartreuse tendrils climb up the side of a cabinet, reaching towards the sun, and each green finger ends in a brilliant blue bloom. The flowers are trumpet-shaped, and there's a shock of bright orange at their center. "That's some combination of deltana, acevar, greyling, asperia, and rashnari. I sort of lost the notes I was keeping and now I can't quite sort it out, let alone reproduce the results, so this little one is one of a kind. It's something new."

"What will you call it?"

"I'll let Tipari and Lyu choose. This plant is their wedding present." She beams up at me, the golden twilight leaking in through the cottage's large windows painting her face as warm as the unnamed flower's orange center. "I wanted to give them something special, and there's only one of these plants in existence. They'll name it and plant it in their garden, and for the rest of their lives it'll grow with them. Maybe they'll give clippings to their own children one day. Besides, it reminds me of them. Bright and flashy and a little clingy," she chuckles. "But unique, and strangely beautiful. Unlikely elements combining to form a harmonious whole."

"Unlikely elements indeed," I snort. "The biggest lecher in Kama and a grand counselor's daughter."

"I could say the same thing about the head ambassador of Kama and a Shikkan refugee sixteen years his junior," Avamir replies. "I remember when Irei got your mother's letter. He was fuming for days, going on and on about the weight of old debts and risk and the uncommon abuse of common decency. Now, if anything is being abused, it's you." She smiles knowingly at me and I blush. "Unlikely elements, but the result?" Her eyes are warm as she tells me "it's beautiful."

"I remember the first day we met," she says as she gently sprinkles water on the young seedlings, dipping her hand into a glass and letting the droplets slip from her fingertips like slow rain. "You were polite and gentle and kind to me, but you were bleeding. You were shattered, and not in a holy way."

"I know," I say softly, looking away from the sudden intensity and intimacy of her gaze. "I know I was."

"And now," she tells me, a little gentler "for the first time, your smiles reach your eyes. When you laugh, it sounds easy. Natural. And you can't tell me that's not beautiful."

"Where I'm from, it's ugly, Avi. It's a sin, the kind you can't scrub out once it becomes known. Even the rumors could've ruined me."

"There's a saying I like," she replies in her lilting Seramichen accent. "Agami y agami y agami, etu sam y agamana. It's Brekkan. Love is love is love, and love is all there is."

"I didn't- I never said anything about love," I mutter breathlessly, looking away again as a warmth creeps up my cheeks.

"I know," Avamir says with a small smile. "You didn't have to."

"It's only been two weeks," I mumble. "No one but you and Tyro even know about us. It can't be- I can't be- we can't be..."

"Don't you see the way he looks at you?" She presses, laying her hand gently on top of my own. "Don't you see how his whole face lights up like a room where a candle's been lit when he sees you? Irei Nara doesn't trust many people, and he loves fewer still. But when he loves, he loves relentlessly. He builds you a cottage in his gardens so you feel safe and he never touches you first, even after six years."

"He certainly touches me first, sometimes," I can't resist adding. Avamir laughs, and it's like music fills the small house.

"You frighten him," she tells me as the last waning light bleeds from the sky, leaving us in a garden of shadows. "That's what I see written across his face as clear as any book when he catches sight of you. Love and fear, both cutting deep. He'll never say that, of course he won't, but you should know it all the same."

"Why would he be afraid of me?"

"When Tyro and I first met, I hated him," she tells me. "Hated him first because he was lovely and then because he wouldn't leave me alone. He just kept coming into my locked places, cracking my life open like a ribcage to expose my still-beating heart. Here's everything you ever wanted, and everything you never thought you'd have, that heart whispered to me. If he gets any closer, he'll see too much and he'll leave, and you'll be lonely in a way you weren't before. His absence will be heavier than you can bear. And I hated him, Shira, hated him because he was a terrorist, and because I loved him so very much.

"Irei is like that, too. He has his secrets and he keeps his distance, and he doesn't show his hand very often because he doesn't want to lose control. He doesn't want to give anyone the power to break his heart, so he chooses impossible partners. Men that only have eyes for women, men that don't have a heart to give him. I'm sure he thought you fell into that category, at first. An illegal refugee from a country where men loving men is a crime, sixteen years younger than he, carrying the weight of a kingdom on your narrow shoulders." I've never told Avamir who I am, but she figured it out for herself a while ago. "But you wanted him, too. I'm sure he was more surprised than anyone when you reached for him. And now, for the first time in the six years I've known him, he isn't lonely. Oh, Shira," she says simply. "You have to know by now that he's yours, wholly and completely. But can you be his?"

"What do you mean?"

"I mean there'll come a day when you can't be Shira Katzuna anymore. A path back to that old country, that old life, will open, and your mother will expect you to take it without hesitation. When that time comes, I don't want to see Irei hurt, alright? I don't want you to break his heart."

"What are you really asking me, Avi?"

"I suppose I'm asking you where your loyalty lies," she confesses. "To the life you lost, or the man you found?"

"I belonged to the throne, once, but that was a lifetime ago. I don't think there'll ever be a path back, not really. No matter how hard my mother fights it, things have changed. Forever. I have, too. For the first time in my shattered life, I'm my own man. I can choose what I want without worrying about how it will affect my country. There aren't seventeen great aunts and uncles looking over my shoulder at all times, steering me, pushing and pulling at me like I'm on strings. I'm in love with him, Avi, but I'm also in love with my freedom. I'm not going back."

She sighs, relieved. "I was hoping you'd say that."

"I gave them the first twenty two years of my life," I tell her honestly. "I don't owe them a day more."
"Your mother won't be happy about it."

"I know that, too," I reply. "And I don't really care. My mother refused to let me act as her heir and instead hid me away on an island while she sailed east to bargain for our future. She left me here, and it's not my fault if I'm not the same when she comes back. Time passes. Things change. Children grow up."

Avamir smiles at me and presses something warm into my palm. "Honey cake with sugared almonds. I made it earlier. Don't show Irei or he'll eat it all though. The man has a weakness for Seramichen sweets. And Shikkan desserts, too, I suppose."

I use my empty hand to shove her playfully. "You're as bad as Tyro, with your jokes and raised eyebrows."

"Oh, Tyro'xiriomi will needle the ambassador until the end of time about this, don't get me wrong. But he's so happy for both of you, really. Ignore his jibes about Shikkan- Kamai relations," she laughs. "He's just an idiot. But he's my idiot, so I can say that."

"Well, I should be getting back to my own idiot," I say with a smile before taking a bite of the warm cake in my palm. "Wait. Did you know that he slept with Esato Lyu?"

Avamir shakes her head, laughing. "You're joking, right?"

"Not in the least."

"When was this?"

"Oh, years ago," I reply, still chuckling, eyebrows raised in shock and amusement. "It's just absurd enough to be true, and I'll be laughing over it for weeks. Feel free to tell Tyro if he doesn't already know. At least it would give him something new to mock Irei for. Something that doesn't involve me, that is."

"I'll be sure to mention it, then," she says with a grin, pressing another chunk of cake, this one wrapped in parchment, into my hand. "Give this to the ambassador. Tell him there's more if he wants it. And I'm fairly sure he'll want it."

"Generous."

"Oh, aren't I just?" she says magnanimously, laughing as she leans in to kiss both of my cheeks in quick succession. In Seramich the farewell is commonplace, but every touch from Avamir means something. At least it does to me.

"We're all hybrids, I suppose," I say, my eyes resting on the impossibly blue flower still sitting in the windowsill, waiting for an even more impossible wedding. "All transplants in one way or another, constantly losing and finding ourselves. Maybe you're right. Maybe that's beautiful instead of tragic. Hell, maybe it's both.

"Wherever you may find yourself, Shira," Avamir says, "I'm glad you've found yourself here."

_____

I promise that there is going to be more to the rest of this story than Shira and Irei making out. But this whole story started with them. They were minor characters in another project and I just couldn't get them or their relationship out of my head, so I wrote it down. O'otani showed up a little later, already kicking and screaming, and it became her story, too. But the truth is that this story about politics and loss and family secrets began as a love story. I hope I've done that justice. 

- S.