Archive of Our Own

The Jay household is always busy. Sofia had thought, at first, that it would feel just like home: her father greeting business partners in the parlor, her siblings rushing in with urgent letters and missives that need to be addressed immediately.

But this… this isn’t the business kind of busy. This is young children running down the hall and shouting, a mother calling for one child or another to assist in the household chores, a shrieking kettle somewhere else in the house.

It’s almost a relief when Mayanesh rushes into the room with a tray of tea in her hands, a stack of paper tucked under her arm. She smiles at Sofia, bright and charming like everyone else in the family.

“Ms. Cooper! Thank you for coming. I hope you haven’t been kept waiting long?”

“Not at all,” Sofia says. It’s mostly true. “Might I help with anything?”

Mayanesh shakes her head. The pile of curls atop her head bobs with the motion, but by some magic, not one strand falls out of place. With a huff, she drops the pile of papers and the tray onto the table in front of them, then falls into the sofa beside Sofia. Her skirt, a woven blend of fine wool dyed a deep green, settles around her like a blanket. She offers Sofia a tea cup with an apologetic smile.

“A word of warning: we only had my mother’s preferred blend on hand. It’s… an acquired taste.”

Sofia takes the cup and waves her free hand. “I’m well accustomed to unusual flavors. Remind me to bring my family’s moonwater for you to sample sometime.”

“I’d rather you bring the wine, if I’m honest with you,” Mayanesh says. She wrinkles her nose as she brings the tea to her lips, swallows it down with something that is not quite a frown. “Ugh. The first sip is the worst.”

Sofia squints at Mayanesh. She isn’t sure if this is a test, an honest warning, or some kind of ritual she’s never heard of. Either way, Sofia knows how to handle a drink. She brings the cup close to her mouth and breathes in deep through her nose, exhales through her mouth. It smells earthy, nearly herbal; Sofia catches a faint hit of something like citrus in the steam that hits the roof of her mouth.

When she takes her first sip, the warmth almost masks the delicate flavors. She lets it settle against her tongue and appreciates the burn, the slow-growing flavors of root and earth. Sofia swallows and takes a small breath in, letting the breath aerate the lingering flavors, letting it bloom.

It isn’t altogether unpleasant. Sofia isn’t exactly known for having a sweet tooth, much more likely to reach for a dark red wine or a liquor than a flute of champagne. Given time, she could grow to appreciate this, too; a sip of tea that tastes like the earth, that grounds her.

She can get used to a lot of things, Sofia thinks, as she opens her eyes.

“Wow,” Mayanesh offers. “I’ve never seen someone focus that much on a cup of tea before.”

It catches Sofia off-guard. She’d nearly forgotten someone else was in the room with her, so caught up was she in the experience of something new to drink.

She covers her surprise with a laugh and shakes the fog out of her head. Already, the knots she’d felt in her stomach as she made her way to the Jay household this morning are untying themselves and coming to rest in the pit of her stomach.

“It’s well worth it to learn to appreciate something, even if it’s simple,” Sofia says. It’s something her mother had said to her thousands of times as a child; it seems fitting to repeat it now. “Thank you for sharing this with me. I’ll have to ask your mother where to buy some for myself.”

“Give it a few weeks and you won’t have to.”

Sofia hums against the lip of her cup. “I suppose not.”

The wedding, then. It sits in the room like a specter, eyeing them both. Sofia doesn’t let it cow her; she straightens her shoulders and nods, sure of herself if nothing else.

“Right, then. Shall we?”

“Of course. And… please forgive my brother for not joining us today,” Mayanesh says. “He is, as you know, an extremely busy man.”

From the hitch of her eyebrow, the purse of her lips, she seems to be hinting at a shared joke between the two of them. Sofia has yet to learn it; she doesn’t mind nodding anyway.

“The Head of the House has many responsibilities,” Sofia offers. “I’d have to imagine that a wedding, however important in the long term, must occasionally fall second to the drama of the day-to-day.”

“What a relief to hear you say so!” Maya exclaims. “Not that I expected anything less, of course. It’s only that I know Matti would be here, if he were able.”

“And I know what it is I signed up for, Ms. Jay. A marriage for the sake of business hardly warrants tantrums over neglect, at least this early on.”

Sofia’s father and mother, Maha bless them, were much the same. Sofia ate many a meal with Cee as her only company. It was, all things considered, not the worst way to find oneself. Her sister was far more liberal in allowing Sofia to sample the company wares over roast beef, for one thing.

“Well, if you’re sure about it,” Mayanesh offers. Her tone indicates, quite clearly, that she plans to throw her own sort of tantrum with Matti later.

“I am.” Sofia nods firmly. “Besides, I’m sure we’re quite capable of crafting invitations without his input. How hard could it be?”

Mayanesh arches an eyebrow, pointedly glancing down at the pile of papers spread across the table. If asked, Sofia is sure the merchant would list all the different qualities of each one: threaded with linen, pure parchment, pulp from a specific wood.

It hardly matters. There are many things people are likely to remember about the wedding of a Cooper and a Jay, and ample gossip already staining the city like wine over a white gown. The paper used for the invitations is, frankly, of minimal concern.

So Sofia collects all the papers between her fingers and fans them out like a deck of cards. She holds the mess out toward Mayanesh, head tilted to one side expectantly. “Pick one.”

“Pardon?”

“Pick one. Any of them. Whichever one speaks to you right now, that’s the one we’ll use.”

Mayanesh grins. Two dimples show, just faintly, at the corners of her mouth. “That’s one way to go about it, I suppose.”

Sofia shakes the papers. “Go on, then. We haven’t got all day. Plenty of other decisions to make before Matti berates us for our whims of fancy.”

“He would never,” Mayanesh insists, a laugh threaded through her words like gold in a stone. “Berating anyone isn’t like him.”

Even so, she reaches out her long fingers – the nails are trimmed short, not quite the fashion but a sensible choice that fits right alongside everything else Sofia knows about her. She runs a fingertip over the papers and, after a moment of consideration, plucks a cream-colored sample from the pack. She waves it in the air like a flag, a great victory.

“Well now, Mayanesh. I think that’s simply perfect.”

“Oh, please,” Mayanesh says. “Call me Maya. We’re practically family.”

Something like a flame alights in the center of Sofia’s chest, spreading down to warm her limbs like the first sip of mulled wine. She feels it tingle in her fingers, her toes.

“Maya,” she repeats.

It feels odd in her mouth, missing the hiss of that final syllable, the clasp on a coat. It’s one of many things, she supposes, that she’ll have to get used to.

--

“Have you decided where to host the ceremony?” Nessa Jay asks. “Somewhere beautiful, I trust.”

Sofia hums. “I’d suggested my family’s country house. Matti seemed amenable to the idea.”

“A proper country wedding.” Nessa nods an affirmative.

Sofia’s future mother-in-law holds herself very well, considering two five-year-old children are tangled in her skirts beneath the table. Sofia can hear them giggling every now and then, the murmurs of a musical language she doesn’t recognize. They’ve lost interest in Sofia already; her fault for not bringing any treats.

“We will, of course, furnish a new room for you and Matti,” Nessa says. “I would not want anyone to have to share a room as small as his now. That one, we will make a new office or something.”

“You’re very kind,” Sofia says.

She knows Nessanesh Jay relatively well, but not as well as Tomas. Tomas had been a regular occurrence at their front door even before he became Guildmaster, back when he and Sofia’s mother were just old friends wanting to catch up. Nessa, when she tagged along, was often too busy herding the children around to make much of an impression on Sofia or her siblings.

Even so, she does feel welcomed. Nessa has been nothing but kind since Sofia first stepped foot into the home as her eldest’s bride-to-be, buttering her up with compliments and food whenever possible. She’d started today by complimenting the shawl Sofia had grabbed as she walked out the door – an old thing, nearly worn through at the shoulders, but the best option for the chilly air of a spring morning.

“We will have Maya draw up a new pattern for your bedspread,” Nessa continues, “seeing as she is so involved in the planning already. I hope it does not bother you, seeing Matti so infrequently. He is a good boy, he’s just… distracted.”

The Jays’ finances would do that to a man, based on what Sofia knows. She can hardly hold it against any of them if they’re thinking about other things when she comes over. Sofia’s value to them is measured in dollar signs; to assume anything else would be foolish.

“I understand. My sister is often the same way,” she says, instead of any of that. It’s true, anyway.

“Sometimes, I miss living somewhere that did not have your Houses and your heirs,” Nessa sighs. She winks at Sofia, though, a clear indication that the statement isn’t meant to cause offense. “Things weren’t any simpler, but they made more sense.”

“I’d imagine so.”

Nessa waves a hand as if to banish the thoughts around her head. “In any case, Maya will help you. She has the time and she is a very smart girl. Between the two of you, I am sure we can create a wedding the town will talk about for some time.”

Unbidden, Sofia thinks of Adrean Vane. The wedding will generate gossip no matter what; it would be nice if it was because of something she wanted, though.

“I should hope so.”

Finally over the fuss of the children underfoot, Nessa stands and claps her hands together. “I am glad to hear that. Marko, Merri, I’m going to fetch your sister. Please be kind to our guest.”

Markonesh pokes his head out from beneath Nessa’s skirts. “Gnyet.”

Unthinking, Sofia mimics the word on a breath. It’s a satisfying declaration, whatever it means; the letters roll over her tongue and stick to the roof of her mouth.

Marko and Merri, left out in the open by their mother, stare at Sofia with their wide, dark eyes. They take after her; all of the Jay children do. It’s a lucky thing, too. Tomas is kind and smart, and he has never been anything but friendly to Sofia and her family, but he is not what most would consider to be beautiful. And yet all of his kids could break hearts with just a look, if they wanted to.

Sofia smiles at them both. “Hello, Marko. Merri.”

“Hullo,” Merri says.

“Hallo,” Marko repeats.

Sofia suspects her accent is being mocked. She squints, leaning in closer to them both. “What does it mean, the word you said to your mother a moment ago? Would you tell me?”

Merri grins around her thumb. “Gnyet,” she says.

“Yes, that’s the one. What is it?” Sofia asks.

Marko shoots off a series of quick-tongued syllables, all but gibberish to Sofia. He seems less inclined to speak directly to her. Instead, his focus is on communicating some great lecture to his sister.

“Gnyet,” Sofia repeats. Or she tries to, anyway. Somehow, the emphasis sounds wrong in her mouth. “G-nee-it?”

“Try softening the ‘g’ and carrying it in the back of your throat.”

Sofia jumps and turns to the door. Maya is leaning against the doorframe, grinning shamelessly at her. She’s got one leg crossed over the other and a pair of modified trousers – likely Matti’s, at some point – tied around her waist and a loose linen shirt tucked into an embroidered vest. And, much like Sofia, she’s got a scarf draped asymmetrically over her shoulders. Hers is a vibrant orange that offsets the darkness of her skin, her hair.

She follows Sofia’s gaze, plucking at the scarf with her fingers. “I told you, you’re going to make this a trend.”

“You wear it well,” Sofia offers. “The scarf is lovely.”

Maya’s fingers trace the delicate diamonds woven into the fabric. “Isn’t it? It’s Harte, obviously. I asked them to send over some samples of patterns they’ve been working on. I think we might be able to work up something similar, if they’ll allow it.” She looks back at Sofia again and grins. “It means ‘will not,’ by the way. Gnyet. It’s Marko’s favorite word.”

“Oh! Do you speak it? The language they’re using, I’ve never heard it before.”

“You wouldn’t have. It’s from my mother’s people, near Manisi.” Maya drops down into the chair beside Sofia. From the pile of papers and letters in front of them, she produces a sketchbook and pencil. “Anyway. I hear you want a custom pattern for the new bedroom?”

Sofia can’t help blushing. The last thing she wants is to be seen as a demanding bride, someone throwing her weight around. “Well, I—your mother suggested it, she said it would be no trouble.”

“And it isn’t,” Maya says. “I’d do this kind of thing a lot more if Papa and Matti had the time for it. Really, you’re giving me an excuse to have fun with something.”

“Well. I suppose if it’s—”

Merri screams. Sofia jumps again, turning to look at the twins where they’re on the floor. Marko has a ribbon held tight in his tiny fist, and Merri is staring at him with a red face that clearly indicates an oncoming tantrum.

“Hold that thought,” Maya says.

She swoops off her seat and makes her way to Merri’s side, brushing at her hair with her fingers. She whispers something to her, too low and quiet for Sofia to hear, and then turns to Marko to do the same.

At once, what looked like an imminent fight dissipates. Marko holds out his hand obligingly. Maya takes the ribbon from him and ties Merri’s hair back into its knots with nimble, practiced fingers.  Then she produces two wrapped sweets from her pockets. After distributing them both, she comes back to Sofia’s side and turns to face her, still holding the same pleasant, polite smile.

“So. Colors?” she prompts.

Sofia huffs a laugh. “You’re very good at that, Maya.”

“What?”

“The…” Sofia motions to Marko and Merri, happily sucking away on their sugar. “Mediating, I suppose.”

“Oh! Somebody in this house has to do it. We all know it won’t be Matti.” She twists her lips to one side, rueful but not angry. “My father says I’m like rose oil. I soothe the kinks in the fibers away so that the wool comes together, or something.”

“That sounds difficult. If I tried to mediate between Tino and Cee, I’d end up dead by morning.”

Maya arches an eyebrow. “Hm. Well, maybe sometime in all of this, I’ll be able to give it a try.” She pulls her sketchbook closer. “What colors would you like, Sofia? For the bed?”

“I—well, now that you mention it,” Sofia offers, “I suppose I like orange?”

--

Sofia is going to lose her mind. She may, as it happens, commit a murder – assuming she doesn’t die of embarrassment or fury before she can get around to it.

“I can’t believe your family is committing you to this fate!” Adrean insists, trailing after her as she marches down the street. “Do they not realize the burden, the terrible inequity of it all? Of forcing you to marry a man you do not love, who does not love you?”

It’s funny when Cee does it. When Adrean does it, though, Sofia feels something clenching at her stomach, her heart. She turns on one heel to stare at Adrean incredulously, and finds a sickening kind of joy in the way he trips over himself at the sudden stop.

“Why do you insist on involving yourself in this?” Sofia demands. “Surely there are other women you can follow along on the way home. Some who might enjoy it, even, and who are not otherwise spoken for.”

Her knuckles have gone white around the handle of her basket, full to bursting with cherries. She’d been meaning to bring them over to the Jay house this morning for a surprise; now, though, she wants only to hide in her room for the rest of her days. Adrean Vane has that effect on her.

He swoops his hair out of his face with a dramatic flick of his wrist. “But there are no women in this city as beautiful as you, my lovely Sofia! And none condemned to such misfortune!”

Sofia almost wants to agree with him, if not for the reason he thinks. She sighs and straightens her spine, lifts her chin in what she hopes comes across as a defiant gesture.

“And what makes you think that you might save me from this?” Sofia asks. “Who, pray tell, has nominated you as my one and only savior?”

Adrean puffs out his chest. “I need no nomination! No permission! I am free with my will, and I long to bring you the same satisfaction. Please, dear Sofia, give up this foolish farce of a marriage. Mattinesh Jay cannot offer you the love you deserve.”

“What I deserve is none of your concern, Adrean,” Sofia insists. “Please. Go home. Find someone else to torment. Leave me be. I’ve made my choices.”

Whether any of his comments are true, Sofia can’t allow herself to dwell on. Adrean is a fool, and inconsiderate besides. Regardless of how love and affection might play into it, Sofia is confident that a marriage to Matti is better than anything he might have to offer her.

She starts walking again, stalking toward the Jay House despite her foul mood. Adrean still follows, though in a more subdued fashion; he hums that awful tune of his as they go and even waves at passers-by in a pointed way that makes Sofia want to scream.

But, as their destination becomes evident, Adrean falters. His feet still on the sidewalk even as Sofia continues onward. And, at long last, she arrives at the door of the Jay House, cherries safely in her hands.

She knocks once, then twice. A glance over her shoulder reveals Adrean’s retreating form, hurrying off to cause trouble somewhere else. The fist over Sofia’s heart loosens, one centimeter at a time, as the door to the Jays and their familiar home, their strange teas and wool blankets, swings open.

“Sofia!”

The speeding body of a toddler slams into Sofia’s legs, knocking her back until she nearly falls off the step. The only thing that saves her is a hand on her upper arm, pulling her back from the edge.

“Oh, I—Thank you, Matti,” Sofia stammers, looking up at him in surprise. “And good morning, Marko. Don’t tell your brother, but I brought you and Merri a surprise.”

“Did you, now?” Matti arches an eyebrow.

Sofia arches one back, lifting the linen cloth on her basket to reveal the fruits buried inside. Matti’s face transforms, then, moving through a series of complicated emotions Sofia doesn’t even bother trying to translate. She has a few guesses at what they might be: wounded pride, guilt, maybe even some gratitude.

It doesn’t matter. What matters is Marko’s delighted shriek as he pulls the basket from Sofia’s hands. He turns to sprint down the hall, arms full and face split into the trademark Jay grin.

“Marko, say thank you,” Matti calls after him, more than a little exasperated.

Marko shouts something that might well be exactly that, but it’s drowned out by the matching shouts of Merri and their mother, maybe even Joselyn, as he barrels into the sitting room.

“Please make sure they save some of those for Maya,” Sofia says.

Matti meets her eyes and nods. He seems – if not fond, then at least friendly. Something positive, she hopes. “I will. Come in, then, we’re just sitting down for breakfast. Certain members of the house had a late start this morning.”

“And you?”

“I can’t count myself among them,” Matti admits. The dark circles under his eyes confirm it. “But we all have our schedules to keep. Thank you for making room in yours for this.”

Adrean is right about a few things. Mattinesh doesn’t love her, and he doesn’t want this marriage for anything more than the financial benefits it brings. But, as Sofia leans up on her toes to press a kiss to his cheek, she finds it hard to see this as a condemnation.

“As if I’d miss any chance to see you, dear,” she says, a lie that they both recognize.

Matti laughs. It’s a ridiculous, absurd thing; it’s not a sound she’s ever heard him make. And what a shame that is. She hopes that, if nothing else, their marriage can give him a few more things to laugh about.

“Come on. Maya and the rest are in the sitting room,” Matti says. He offers an arm for her, and she slips her hand through it readily. “I’m sure it’s no secret that they’d all love to see you.”

“And you?”

“Meetings,” he says.

A constant refrain. Sofia didn’t spend much time with Matti growing up, in part because he was his father’s right hand from the time he could count to ten. It shouldn’t sting all that much; it nearly does.

“Well,” Sofia sighs. “When Maya and I dress you as a jester for the ceremony, you’ll have no one to blame but yourself.”

“Not true. I’m always perfectly happy to blame Maya.”

Another lie. Sofia tucks her laughter into the palm of her hand. Matti glances down at her, almost daring her to say the quiet part out loud. You would do anything for her, that’s what the whole godsdamned wedding is for.

Sofia raises an eyebrow at him. She says nothing at all.

--

“Matti kissed me today.”

Cee nearly chokes on her drink, barely managing to sputter into a napkin instead of on the table. “Pardon?”

Sofia nods. “Before dinner. We were on the porch, and he just leaned in and kissed me.”

“But I thought…?”

“That he wasn’t interested?” Sofia finishes. “Well, I think it’s safe to assume that’s still the case. I think he was testing whether he could do it at all.”

“Oh, Fee,” Cee sighs. She places a hand on Sofia’s knee, her thumb running circles over the soft fabric of her robe. “Was it awful? At least tell me it was awful.”

“It was…”

Fine. Ordinary. An expectation, a hurdle between themselves and a union that will make both of their families very happy. It was a kiss, and it was clear that Matti didn’t mind, and Sofia didn’t either. It wasn’t quite enough.

Sofia swallows. “It was kind, I suppose. Something both of us will need to get comfortable doing.”

Around her parents, and even her brother, Sofia would never say as much. Her job, the expectation, is that she pack whatever feelings she may have into a box somewhere deep inside her heart and lock it tight. This has never been a particular issue for Sofia; she knew her lot in life well before the paperwork was signed. Accepting it had been second nature.

But Cee understands, to some extent. Cee was the one who played officiant in the weddings Sofia and her friends had played at as children, the one who had heard Sofia swear that she would have some great magnificent love affair that put the entire city to shame. Cee had heard the things Sofia could never tell anyone else, tucked together under the blankets when storms raged outside and the windows shook, when her father’s face was stormy in the face of a poor sales quarter.

“You,” Cee intones, “are the most pathetic creature in Maha’s flock. Did you know that?”

Sofia snorts. “I am not.”

“Oh, woe! Woe is me!” Cee crows, leaning back with one hand draped over her forehead. “I am to marry a kind man, a man who loves his family and carries himself honorably, and I will only have five or perhaps ten gorgeous dresses for the endeavor!”

“Cee!” Sofia cries. She whacks her sister on the leg, briefly considers throwing a pillow at her head. “Other people in this house are sleeping, you know.”

“And yet who on earth could ever sleep while we are here, bemoaning the loss of our girlhood dreams!” Cee presses on.

Sofia sets her tea down on the side table before she seeks her vengeance. Once it’s firmly out of harm’s way, she dives, tackling Cee back onto the cushions and wrestling her down. It’s a hopeless effort; Cee is stronger, leaner, meaner. She flips Sofia and pins her arms to her sides within moments, within breaths.

Cecilia Cooper laughs like the horses, braying as she shakes out her tangled mane. Sofia is happy, so incandescently proud to be the one who walks the line of a bride, of a well-mannered girl, so that her sister can romp around in the weeds and learn the trades of the family without burdening herself with it.

“Admit it. You’ll be fine,” Cee insists, fingers coming to poke and prod at Sofia’s sensitive sides. “It’s not like there’s anyone else you’d rather be with instead.”

Sofia squeals and half-heartedly does her best to wriggle free, although she knows she can’t. “I’ll be fine! I will. I know I will.”

“And if you ever find Mattinesh Jay to be boring, or tiresome, or you just hate it there so much, what will you do?”

“Visit you?” Sofia wheezes.

Cee laughs. “I was going to say sleep with the nearest member of the Harte House. But sure, that works too.”

She rolls off of Sofia, settling again on her corner of the couch. With a huff, Sofia kicks her feet into her sister’s lap and reclines, resting her head against the arm of the couch.

“I just wish my choices weren’t a man so deluded by romantic notions that he refuses to listen to me,” Sofia starts, “and a man so burdened by his family business that I’m hardly more than an item on his to-do list.”

Cee’s fingers circle Sofia’s ankle, gentle and grounding. “If you could choose anyone, who would you pick? Hypothetically.”

Sofia knows the answer. It hovers on the tip of her tongue, so close to leaving her mouth that it takes actual effort to swallow it back down. She won’t give voice to that part of herself, not even here, not even with Cee. Better to squash it with silence, to never give it the room to grow into a want she knows she won’t have.

“I don’t know,” she mutters. “Matti’s best man is rather dashing. And a foreigner, besides. Mysterious, you know?”

Cee pretends to gag past her laughter. “Absolutely not. Have you seen that jacket of his? I doubt it’s even seen a washbin.”

“Well, what about you, then?”

“I think Adrean could find himself another muse. His next song can be, ‘A Second Wildflower, Under Even More Glass.’”

Now it’s Sofia’s turn to cackle. She throws her arm over her eyes, kicking at Cee’s leg as the laughter takes over, as her ribs shake. Cecilia joins in, and Sofia thinks, damn the rest of the house. She’s done enough for them as it is. They can tolerate her laughter for one night.

--

Maya, much like her brother, has been a fixture in the background compositions of Sofia’s memories for the vast majority of her life, a sight so familiar that to be without it would leave Sofia feeling something close to unmoored, out of sorts.

That Maya, the one who paraded out into society for parties and weddings, the one who smiled as often as a candle flickered, had always seemed ephemeral. A learned state of composure, much like Sofia’s own steady hands as she poured expensive vintages into crystal glasses. Like Matti’s cool, undisturbed focus, his carefully neutral expressions.

Sofia doesn’t remember the first time she ever met Maya. She’d been just a few years old herself, for one thing, and. Well, for another, she hadn’t felt the need to preserve any particular memories of the Jay family in the years between. They were there; that was unlikely to change, and so she didn’t worry over it.

Now, though, she wishes she had. She sits on the sofa next to Maya in her own home, her bare feet tucked up under her skirt, and she imagines what it might have been like to grow up alongside her. To have this shining, open presence at her side, filling the empty corners of her life with the warmth and love of a well-worn coat.

“I remember you, though,” Maya says. She grins, somewhat mischievous, into the rosy tea between her hands. “You have a way about you. Memorable.”

Sofia rolls her eyes. “Believe me, I know. It’s given me plenty of trouble. If I’m honest, I envy the way you go about things. I wish I could blend in half as easily.”

“Rose-oiling.”

“Yes, yes, I know.”

“It’s not such a bad thing, you know,” Maya offers. “Being memorable. It means I got to learn all about you, while you were busy ignoring Matti’s clumsy, awkward younger sister.”

“I struggle to see you as awkward at all,” Sofia says. And then the rest of what Maya said catches up to her and she pauses, eyes narrowing. “What, pray tell, were you ‘learning?’”

Maya shrugs. She’s still grinning, lips pursed together. The lights of the sitting room have painted her eyes a deep mahogany, glittering with specks of gold and black. Her hair shines, too, and the embroidery of her vest carves an endless path from her shoulders to her waist.

Sofia struggles to understand how she could have ever managed not to see her, to catalogue the details of her like an inventory of priceless wines.

“Please,” Sofia says, fluttering her eyelashes.

Maya sighs. “Hm. Well, do you remember, oh, it must have been… three, four years ago now? When your brother came to us to order a new tapestry for the country estate? You’d come with him to the house, mostly because you’d been ill the week before and were dying to get out of the house.”

“Ugh.” Sofia wrinkles her nose. “I remember that, at least. It had taken me a full hour to brush my hair that morning; I kept getting too tired to continue.”

“Yes, well. You looked very nice, all things considered,” Maya offers, which is a very polite way of saying that Sofia looked like the wrong end of a horse. “Anyway, the twins were still babies at the time. I’d been helping out around the house while Mama was caring for them, and you were the first people I’d had the chance to talk to in what felt like years.”

An image flashes through Sofia’s mind. A lanky, gangly girl, hair a cloud of frizz barely contained by a scarf. A pair of trousers covered in stains and a weary smile, a tray of tea in her hands.

“Oh, Maha,” Sofia groans. “Please tell me I didn’t mistake you for the help. Please.”

Maya throws her head back and laughs, a ridiculous guffaw that makes Sofia smile despite the embarrassment flooding through her.

“No, no. Not at all,” Maya insists. “Although I would have understood, if you did. No, you just… really wanted to see Merri and Marko. You said you’d never seen anyone that young before.”

“Well, that would have been mostly true. At the time, anyway, the Coopers hadn’t had new babies around since I was born, I think.”

“I could tell, actually,” Maya says, still grinning. “When I handed you Merri, you looked like you were ready to have a heart attack. I had to help you hold her. You were very sweet about it, though.”

Sofia does remember, now that it’s been brought up. Merri had been smaller than Sofia’s forearm at the time, and her head had fit in the palm of Sofia’s hand. She’d felt like she was handling glass, like holding Merri was the most important thing she’d ever done.

And Maya had been there, voice soft and gentle, guiding Sofia’s fingers to the right places. It had been so quiet; Sofia had been afraid to breathe too loud, to wake the twins and disturb the house. But Maya spoke softly and guided her, had smoothed the way just as she does so often now.

“You were very kind,” Sofia says eventually. “I can’t believe I’d forgotten about that. Merri is so much bigger now. Even you, you’re…”

“Well, I finally grew into my eyebrows,” Maya finishes. “And my feet. That time of my life, I could never seem to stop tripping over myself. It’s lucky for both of us that you didn’t catch any of that.”

Sofia’s brow furrows. “No, I don’t think so. I think… I think I ought to have tried harder. To get to know you, and Matti, and the rest of your family.”

“You’ve got plenty of time to do that now, you know,” Maya tells her. “Believe me, within a few years, you’ll be begging Matti to marry me off and send me away so that you can get some peace.”

Sofia swats Maya on the knee. It’s gentle, but it serves its point. She winces just slightly and shrugs, not quite an apology but an acknowledgement.

“Never,” Sofia insists. “I can’t imagine trying to navigate your family without you there. I’d go mad. I have half a mind to marry you instead of Matti.”

The joke, if that’s even what it was, falls heavy in the air between them. Sofia may as well have dropped an anchor on her own foot, smashed a priceless artifact on the floor. But Maya, ever the savior, swoops in to collect the pieces, to put it all together again. If she’s blushing, well, Sofia wouldn’t call it out if she were threatened with trial by fire.

“They aren’t so bad, once you get to know them,” Maya says. “Give it time.”

Sofia sips her tea instead of answering, swallowing down all the words she might have said instead. She leans forward, plucks a fabric sample at random from the table, and holds it up to the light for closer inspection.

She clears her throat. “So, what do you think? Silk, or satin?”

Maya hums, leaning in to get a closer look. “Silk is easier to work with. If we need to make adjustments on the day of the wedding, I’d be comfortable with that.”

She smells like cherries and honey, like sugar spun out of air.

Sofia holds her breath.

--

The shopping district is alight with activity today. Sofia is unbearably lucky, though, in that she manages to spot Adrean Vane before he can see her. One of the benefits, she supposes, of her small stature.

“Oh, Maha’s arse,” she curses. “Can I have just one day out of the house without him popping out of the woodwork?”

Beside her, Tino stills. He follows her line of sight until his gaze lands on the head of dark hair straight ahead. In what is quickly becoming a family trait, Tino winces.

“Apparently not,” he answers, with all the enthusiasm of a wet sock.

The throbbing headache that was already building behind her eyes is threatening to incapacitate her, among other things. Sofia sighs heavily and pats her brother on the shoulder.

“Tino, I’m sorry to do this, but I’m going to be very dignified and proper and go hide in a shop,” she says. “Don’t try to dissuade me.”

Tino, bless him, doesn’t try. He waves her off with a groan and a promise to find each other later, likely at Erneska’s for lunch. Sofia is free, then, to sprint across the street and pick a store at random, hopefully one with fewer songwriters with delusions of grandeur.

She finds one – an old, unpolished antiques store, from the looks of it – and rushes to the entrance, hoping against hope that she’s still not been spotted. The door sticks, and for one panicked moment, Sofia thinks it might be locked. But it gives way with a little push, the hinges screaming with effort, and a bell overhead rings to announce her arrival. Once it goes quiet, though, the air stills.

“Hello?” Sofia calls.

Her voice nearly echoes back at her. No one answers – either to insist she leave or to make a sale – and Sofia’s shoulders relax by an inch or three. She leans against the nearest counter and breathes, thanking Maha and Huna and whoever else has eyes on her for the safety of an empty room.

Then, beneath her hands, something flickers in the low light of the shop.

Sofia turns to focus on it fully. What she’d thought was just an ordinary wooden countertop is, in fact, a display case. Beneath her hands is a pane of glass, protecting a spread of fine jewelry. Each piece glitters on velvet pillows and stands.

“Oh.” Sofia leans in close to inspect them. She runs a gentle finger over the wood protecting the case’s edges. “These are lovely.”

“Why thank you. We do our best.”

Sofia nearly screams. She jumps back from the case, hands held out in front of her. But it’s unnecessary; the shopkeeper, an elderly man with wisps of gray hair and heavy glasses on the bridge of his nose, smiles at her encouragingly from behind the counter, near a door she hadn’t noticed when she entered.

“I… Apologies, I didn’t realize anyone was in the room,” Sofia says. Her hands smooth down the fabric of her skirt, a nervous habit that does little to calm her nerves. “I— I’ve never seen this store before. Are you the proprietor?”

“In a way,” the man offers. He walks toward her and hops onto a stool. With his hands folded under his chin and his wide glasses, he looks nearly like something out of a storybook. “Oliver Hammond, antiques acquisition. And you are?”

“Sofia,” she answers. And then, “Sofia Cooper. I’m… Well, I suppose I’m looking for gifts for my wedding party, although that wasn’t on the list this morning. Do you happen to have anything in gold?”

“Ahh, Ms. Cooper.” Mr. Hammond nods in understanding. “To the eldest Jay child, yes? A good family. My husband worked for them for many years. Wait here, miss, I’ve got just the ticket.”

He hops off his stool and totters off to behind the door. The store fills with sounds as he searches: the tinkling of metal, the shift of boxes, the grunts of exertion. Sofia is nearly ready to offer a spare hand when he wanders back out, a black box held between his wrinkled hands.

The box, as it happens, is full of the most intricate metalwork Sofia has ever seen. She gasps when Mr. Hammond lifts the lid and hesitates to touch any of it at all until he nods at her and hums his consent.

She knows, instantly, which pieces she plans to purchase. The necklace for Cee, the locket for Anne. A gentle bracelet of hammered golden leaves for herself.

“All excellent choices,” Mr. Hammond says. “I should be able to box these and bring them to your house this afternoon. Would you be there to receive them, or might I ask for someone else?”

Sofia waves a hand, eyes still caught on the splendor of this mysterious, lucky shop. “Anyone. Let them know that I’ve ordered it, and they’ll sort of the payment. But I… I wanted to ask after one more thing, if you have the time?”

Mr. Hammond gestures to the otherwise empty shop. “I’m hardly a busy man, Ms. Cooper. Ask whatever you’d like.”

“Do you have any emeralds?” Sofia asks, nearly biting her tongue off in the rush to get the sentence out. “That is, the Jays have opted for green as their color. I’d like to give them something, as well.”

He hums for a moment, eyes turned skyward in thought. Then, wordlessly, he jumps off the stool and wanders back to a different display. With a wave of the hand, he urges Sofia to do the same.

“These would be the best of what we have,” Mr. Hammond says, pulling a shelf out from beneath the display case and bringing it to rest in front of her. “Now, mind you, the cost will be a bit higher. But I’ve checked the quality myself; they’re well worth the money. Heirloom pieces, straight from the Mantel House’s auctions.”

Sofia’s breath catches in her throat.

There’s a hair pin here, too. A golden, woven butterfly, its wings decorated in tiny cascading emeralds. Sofia can already see it buried in Maya’s hair, catching the light, holding back the mass of curls and revealing the elegant curve of her neck.

“That one,” Sofia insists immediately, extending a finger to direct him.

He looks at her, one eyebrow raised. “For Mr. Jay?”

The blush creeps over her face, unchecked and unwanted. Sofia forces herself to smile politely, to keep her voice as calm as she can. “For the sister of the groom, actually. For him, I’d think…”

And this, well. It’s not as though Sofia has ever asked Matti for his jewelry preferences. She ought to have, she knows, but they’ve barely had time to discuss the wedding at all. He’s been busy. Sofia leans down to examine the pieces, to pretend as though she’s giving them all careful consideration.

“Those cuff links,” she decides, nodding in affirmation. Square-cut emeralds in a gold setting, large enough to catch the eye without being unwieldy or inconvenient. Practical.

“Shall I deliver these to your house as well, Ms. Cooper?”

Sofia shakes her head. “No. No, take it to them directly. Please do tell them it’s a gift from me, though. If it’s no trouble.”

Mr. Hammond plucks the pieces from their case and walks back to the front. He pulls a notepad from some mysterious hiding place and begins to scribble out numbers, the sums of what Sofia will owe. She’s not worried about that; as it happens, she’s not worried about much of anything.

She finds herself very nearly giddy as she takes the invoice and exits the store, back into the sun where her brother and the world is waiting.

--

Maya is antsy when Sofia arrives to Jay House. That much, Sofia can read, despite the apparent Jay penchant for impeccable masks. She holds herself differently; her spine is curved, shoulders bent inward, shrinking down into something smaller.

“Come in, come in,” Maya insists, holding out a hand to take the umbrella from Sofia’s hands. “I cannot believe you walked in this, Sofia. The stones on this street will snap your ankle in a minute if you’re not careful, particularly when they’re wet.”

Sofia smiles and waves her off, rolling her eyes. “Oh, stop scolding. I’ve walked this neighborhood nearly as many times as you have, and anyway, Cee lent me a pair of her boots.”

If anyone had happened to see her, stomping through puddles in a pair of men’s shoes with her skirt hiked up around her knees, she’d be laughed out of town in a minute. But it had been hard to care about that, what with the letter burning a hole in her pocket.

Sofia. Thank you for the gift. Come as soon as you can – I’ve got a surprise, too. – Maya

“Now,” Sofia says, speaking over Maya’s incredulous laughter and ignoring the smile trying to creep over her own face, “what’s this urgent surprise I needed to see?”

Maya’s smile doesn’t fade, but her laughter gets softer. “Really? You rushed over here in the pouring rain because of me?”

“And why wouldn’t I! You told me to come as soon as I could, Maya. I did.”

“Well, I didn’t—oh, never mind.” Maya waves a hand. “Doesn’t matter. You’re here now, anyway. Follow me.”

By now, the slide of Maya’s fingers between Sofia’s is hardly a surprise. Maya leads her through the Jay household with an iron grip and the determined silence of a soldier on a mission. They march past the front rooms, up the stairs, through halls that Sofia hasn’t yet had the chance to wander, and come to a stop in front of an unassuming door. Unmarked, unopened, and – Sofia must admit – deeply mysterious.

“A door,” she remarks, forcing herself to sound calm. Verging on bored, even. “Incredible.”

Beside her, Maya snorts. It’s a charmingly undignified sound. “Close your eyes.”

“Shall I pray to Maha, as well? Perhaps Huna?”

“If you’d like.”

Sofia grins despite herself. She closes her eyes, running her tongue over her suddenly dry lips. As the lock turns in the door, she mutters under her breath, just loud enough for Maya to hear. “Maha, help me to weather the dubious plots and machinations of my future sister-in-law. Huna, do see that your faithful is well-behaved.”

The latter comment makes Maya sigh theatrically. Just ever so slightly spiteful, Sofia cracks one eye open to watch the way Maya throws her head back, her disheveled hair falling over her shoulders in tangles of walnut and teak.

Instead, she catches Maya’s dark eyes.

“Hey! No looking, Ms. Cooper!”

Sofia snaps her eyes shut. “I’m not!”

“Huna’s tits. You are worse than the twins,” Maya says. “Fine, then. Can’t be helped.”

There’s the swoosh of heavy wool skirts, and then Sofia is met with the distinct feeling of someone standing just behind her. Maya’s hand – calloused, long fingers – comes to rest over her eyes as the door swings open. A second hand comes to rest at Sofia’s elbow, and Maya walks her over the threshold.

Unbidden, Sofia’s mind retreats to her family dining room. She can almost feel Cee tying the blindfold over her eyes, smell the wine and spices as glasses are filled. Cee would lean in with her hands on Sofia’s shoulders, strong and warm and firm. Taste them, she’d order, voice gleeful and strained with laughter, and see if you can find the most expensive one.

Often, the remainder of those evenings became blank spaces in Sofia’s mind. She would wake the next morning with a tongue stained purple, Maha’s revenge already taken on her poor head. And Cee was never much better off; once or twice, she’d been tucked into bed with Sofia, too drunk and out of sorts to make it to her own room down the hall.

Sofia has a hard time believing she would forget this, though. Maya’s hands on her, warming her skin; Maya’s chest pressed to Sofia’s back, exaggerating a height difference that was already nearly comical in its severity.

“Okay,” Maya says softly. “You can look now.”

She pulls her hands away and, immediately, Sofia finds herself missing the warmth. The sudden light of the room, however dim, is blinding to her after seeing nothing but the back of her eyelids; Sofia blinks until the room comes into focus.

And then she gasps and stumbles back in her surprise, off-kilter and out of sorts.

“Maya!”

Maya catches her before she can lose her balance completely, although that does little to help Sofia’s disorientation. The smile is clear in her voice, even without Sofia looking at her. “Yes?”

“You can’t–  I don’t–” Sofia tries to steady herself, to overcome the blood rushing in her ears. “What have you done?”

“Well,” Maya says, hands still firmly grasping Sofia’s forearms, “it seemed the right thing to do, at the time.”

The room is very nearly empty. A simple, bare wooden desk sits just below a wide window overlooking the city streets with a threadbare armchair, blue fabric printed with faded pink roses. A small cot is tucked to one side with a heavy woolen blanket thrown over top.

None of that is what matters. Not to Sofia, anyway; she’s far too busy admiring the walls, covered with the penciled outlines of vines, bunches of grapes. They’re rough, barely shaded, but the idea is there. An endless pattern, sprawling from the windowsill and taking over the room.

“Oh, Maya,” Sofia breathes. “This is… beautiful.”

“It isn’t finished yet. Obviously.” Maya backs away from Sofia, once again leaving a chill and a feeling of weightlessness in her wake. “If you want to change it, or if you want it to be something else entirely, that’s fine. I wanted to show it to you now, and we can work to have it painted after you’ve moved in.”

She wanders into the room and spins, eyes calculating as they scan over everything. Everything, that is, except Sofia. It’s as if she’s under some kind of spell, eyes drifting but never quite catching.

“Maya,” Sofia says. And then again, when Maya continues staring at something apparently far more interesting over Sofia’s shoulder, “Maya.”

Maya’s eyes snap to hers, lip caught between her teeth. “I just thought… I mean, once you and Matti are married, you’ll need somewhere to go that’s just yours. I know him, and he can be incredibly irritating, so—”

“Mayanesh Jay, if you mention your brother one more time I might just find it in me to smack you,” Sofia insists.

Maya’s mouth snaps shut with an audible click. She doesn’t blush the way Sofia does, less of a bright scarlet across her cheeks and more just a faint shadow, but her uncertainty is clear enough.

Sofia can’t have that. She steps forward, thanking Maha for the fact she doesn’t have to try to keep her composure in unsteady heels. “I love it. Thank you for thinking of me.”

Maya opens her mouth again.

“And don’t you dare,” Sofia insists, pushing past whatever objections Maya might have, “tell me that this was because of Matti, or some family obligation, or some archaic rites of Huna. I know it isn’t. This has your name written all over it, so accept my thanks. It’s for you.”

Without even realizing it, she’d kept moving forward as she spoke. Now, she stands just inches away from Maya, neck craned backward to maintain the eye contact she fought so hard to get in the first place.

“Um. Well.” Maya swallows; the line of her throat, Sofia thinks, ought to be inspiring sculptors across the continent. “Thank you. I did try. Grapes seemed a little predictable, but I wasn’t sure what else you’d like. I’d considered flowers, although...”

Sofia winces, and Maya winces in return. But then, finally, Maya smiles, like sunshine breaking through on a cloudy day.

“You really like it?”

Sofia laces her fingers through Maya’s, swinging their hands in the space between their bodies. She feels bright, and warm, and full to bursting with things she couldn’t possibly put a name to. Doing so would be – it would be irresponsible, really, for either one of them. But she feels them all the same, and for now, that will be enough.

“I do,” Sofia insists. “I really do.”

--

The vineyard has never been Sofia’s preferred environment for holding court. She was made for the indoors, where she can have a nice drink and a pastry or two while conversations are conducted. But to the rest of the Coopers, she knows, there is very little that matters more than a walk through the crops that define their livelihoods.

She might miss it, if given enough time and distance. But, for the moment, she curses Maha’s very soul for the seventh time as her shoe catches in a vine. She stumbles, very nearly knocking her mother to the ground. Again.

“Sofia, really!” Mama laughs, hoisting her up by one arm. “You’d think you had never seen a grape in your life! You are lucky the Jays deal in something less physical.”

Sofia thinks of Maya’s hands, carding loose wool into strands of roving. The finer muscles of her forearms ache from the thought of it alone.

“I suppose so,” she agrees. “One of many blessings.”

Mama smiles. It is crooked, her teeth stained from years of wine; Sofia loves her more than anything. “I am glad to hear you say it! A match that means well for the House is a lovely thing, but better still when the bride is a happy one.”

She loops her arm through her mother’s elbow. Ahead, Papa and Cecilia are examining the latest crop for abnormalities; their heads are bent low over the budding grapes, words too soft to hear at this distance. Despite its vastness, the vineyard manages to feel private, sheltered. Enclosed.

“Were you happy when you met Papa?” Sofia asks.

“Oh, no,” Mama sighs. She tilts her head to one side, surveying her husband with warm affection. “I thought him terribly boring. And dirty! Always tumbling in with grass stains and dirt beneath his fingernails. But I did come around, eventually.”

Sofia knew the story; her mother had started out as Daniela Vaunt, and she and her family operated a boarding house just outside the city. Papa had come in so often and so regularly that the family had offered him permanent residence, if only he could take one of their several daughters off their hands. The rest is history, oft-repeated and familiar as the sole of a favorite slipper.

“You are lucky, Sofia,” her mother says, bringing her free hand up to pat Sofia’s fingers. “He is a good man. You will never want for love, or for family. After all, we are just down the road!”

Sofia nods. “I know, Mama.”

“You will be a dignified lady, in your fine wool, with your fine husband.” Mama sounds almost wistful; Sofia barely manages to hold in a laugh. The dress her mother had worn here, to a farm, likely cost more than the Jays’ entire wardrobe. Combined. “I envy you, dear. You have an entire life left to lead.”

A life, Sofia thinks, that will involve scanning over ledgers for places to make ends meet. A life of raising children alone, while her husband works himself into an early grave just a few doors over. Not all bad, certainly, but…

“Don’t talk as if you’re on death’s door, Mama!” Cee cries, interrupting that train of thought before it can reach an obvious conclusion. “You still have plenty of work to do. You’ve yet to find a marriage for me, you know.”

Mama groans and shakes her head, though the smile she wears betrays her. “Maha willing, we can find someone who will tolerate you, Cecilia. It has proved a great challenge, these many years.”

“That’s because I’m difficult, and spoiled, and very dedicated to my work.”

“Yes,” Mama sighs. “So it is.”

Cee sticks out her tongue. “Lucky you had three of us, then.”

“One to run the business, one to manage the vines, and one to send away,” Sofia intones. “A perfect set.”

“Oh, you are not being sent away,” Mama insists. “Dramatic. All of you.”

Sofia nudges her mother gently with her shoulder, both a reassurance and an apology. “I know, Mama. I know. I was joking.”

“She’ll be much happier with the Jays, anyway,” Cecilia sighs. “Honestly, Fee, I envy you. Imagine getting a whole new group of siblings to torment. I’d consider that a dream come true.”

“Fine, then. You can marry Mattinesh, and I’ll come stomp around in the grapes.”

Even Sofia’s father laughs at that. Tino, up ahead of the rest, glances back at them in confusion. Sofia waves him on.

Cecilia flips her long braid over one shoulder. “You would never survive the harvest, and you know it.”

The issue isn’t that Sofia disagrees; it is only that, for one brief moment in her life, she almost wishes it weren’t true.

--

Somewhere between the first and fourth glass of wine, Sofia has lost her husband-to-be.

She wanders, somewhat aimlessly, through the crowds of her Half Moon Ball, a half-full glass of the spiced vintage her parents had developed specifically for this in one hand. Matti is nowhere, and Luca is nowhere, and the myriad of faces wishing her well are forced to do so to a bride alone.

“They might be having an affair,” one of the members of her bridal party offers. It’s half joking, but the hush to her voice indicates well enough that it comes with some sincerity. “Odd, to run off and spend time with the best man instead of the bride.”

Sofia can’t help laughing. Maha has done his magic, and her veins sing with the warmth and nonchalance of a bumblebee on a summer afternoon. “And what of it? Nearly everyone here suspects the same of me already.”

Adrean, Maha bless, had departed in a huff some time ago. Sofia hadn’t had to endure any more of his dramatic overtures, his overwrought confessions. There had been three already this evening; if he’d tried for another, Sofia might have lost her composure and dumped her wine down his ruffled shirt, gossip be damned.

Beside her, Cecilia rolls her eyes. “I’ve heard it said that many of the best marriages often begin with infidelity.”

“In that case, I should make haste,” Sofia shoots back. “Does anyone know where I might find a dashing stranger to ruin me, preferably sometime in the next two days?”

There’s a very gentle cough. Cee’s eyes widen in surprise, perhaps even embarrassment, and Sofia feels a heat spread over her own face. She turns, just slightly, hoping against hope that some other Head of House isn’t standing over her shoulder and filing this conversation away for later.

“Hello, Sofia,” Maya offers, a telltale twist to her lips to show just how badly she wants to laugh. “I don’t mean to interrupt your… wedding planning. I was hoping to ask for a dance.”

Sofia can’t help the laugh, the smile that splits her face open like cracking an egg. She shakes her head and rolls her eyes, holding her glass to one side for someone to take away. Like magic, someone does.

“Mayanesh Jay, it is very rude to eavesdrop on private conversations,” she scolds. She crosses her arms over her chest and tries, valiantly, to school her face into something stern and unyielding. “Particularly those of a bride before her wedding day. Really, you ought to know better.”

Maya ducks her head, hiding her smile and her dimples and her sparkling eyes behind a wave of hair. She’d managed to comb it today, to oil it and tame it into dark waves that catch the flickering light of the chandelier overhead. The deep forest green of her dress is unlike her usual warmth, the deep reds and oranges that Sofia has come to associate with her. It is, nevertheless, stunning against her dark skin.

“It only seems fair to let you know the sort of family you’re marrying into,” Maya offers. “I doubt you’ll ever have a moment of true privacy again.”

“As if I ever have!”

“Oh, please,” Cee interjects. “You have the whole house to yourself more often than not, Fee. Ms. Jay, I hope you’re prepared for a very high-maintenance new sister.”

Cee is hardly a valid source of information, given her tendency to romp around outside in breeches and uncombed hair. Sofia very nearly calls out her own biases, but Cee doesn’t allow it. She pushes Sofia, gentle but without room for argument, away from the safety of the bridal party and toward Maya.

“Go on, then. The wine will still be here when you get back.”

Sofia knows that’s a lie, but she takes Maya’s hand anyway. Sure enough, when she glances over her shoulder, Cee is already throwing the wine back and setting the empty glass on the tray of a passing staff member.

“Oh, she drives me crazy,” Sofia intones, rolling her eyes.

Maya laughs. “Don’t worry. We’ll grab you another once we’re done.”

She squeezes Sofia’s fingers in her rough hand and leads her firmly to the center of the dance floor. The other couples make way for them both, a parting wave of gold and green and black and vulture eyes. The band begins to play the slow, persistent opening of a sahessa, and dread settles firmly in Sofia’s stomach.

Sofia forces a deep breath in, then out through her nose. She firms her shoulders “I doubt this needs to be said after what you saw with Matti and myself, but I should warn you anyway: I cannot dance.”

“Oh, I know.” Maya huffs a laugh. She brings one hand to Sofia’s waist, the other to her elbow. “But I can, and I think that’s enough for tonight.”

There is a beat. A rhythm. Sofia knows this, intellectually; she can hear it, sort of, hidden beneath the notes themselves. It’s only that she’s never known how to translate that to her feet, her arms. She has an excellent control over her spine and her tongue, but the rest of her body is all but a mystery to her.

Maya doesn’t seem to mind. With the hand on Sofia’s waist, she leads her through a slow circle, a gentle step-step-step that sets both of their skirts swishing against their legs. Sofia stares at the floor in concentration, determined not to step on Maya’s feet in those delicate slippers.

But then Maya’s hand leaves her elbow, coming instead to her chin. She tips Sofia’s head up until their eyes meet, and Sofia nearly yelps in surprise.

“Maya, I’m going to—”

“Step on my toes, I know,” Maya interrupts. She’s still smiling, though, dimples on full display. “Go ahead. I’m used to it, with all the dancing Marko and Merri have requested this evening. If you wanted to stand on my feet and let me do all the work, at this point, I’m sure I could manage. I didn’t bring you out here to have a bad time, Sofia.”

Sofia feels the warmth in her face, the curl of it in her belly that has nothing to do with drink or nerves. She forces herself to stay composed, at least as much as she’s able, and arches an eyebrow.

“So why did you bring me out here, then?” she asks.

Maya directs Sofia into a spin with one hand instead of answering. She twirls her until her skirt flares out, a mess of glittering gold. Then she pulls her back, pulls her closer, until they’re very nearly chest to chest.

“I like to dance, and I like you,” Maya offers. She shrugs, leads Sofia into another slow circle of steps. “And anyway, people are expecting the Coopers and the Jays to mingle. Best to keep up appearances, since apparently, Matti has given up for the evening.”

Sofia swallows past the unbearable something building in the back of her throat. “Right. I suppose you don’t know where he is, either?”

Something unreadable travels over Maya’s face. Sofia wouldn’t be able to parse it even at her best, so she doesn’t try.

“I’d bet some urgent Sally-eye came through,” Maya offers. “He’s not one to abandon business for much of anything. I’m sorry, though, that it so often gets in the way of time he should reserve for you.”

Unthinking, Sofia reaches up with one hand to smooth out the crease between Maya’s eyebrows. She startles, but it works; her frown softens, gives way to a small smile.

“I don’t mind, Maya,” Sofia insists, for what must be the thousandth time. “I’d rather he care for the House than other, more frivolous things. I trust he’ll be a perfectly adequate husband.”

For a moment, Sofia thinks she’s misstepped somehow. Maya quiets again and, instead of responding, leads Sofia through a few clumsy steps in contemplative silence. Sofia had nearly forgotten, in fact, that they were dancing at all. Now she finds herself painfully aware. Once again, her eyes turn toward her toes, and she does all she can to follow Maya’s lead.

But again, Maya’s hand comes to her chin. She lifts Sofia’s head and searches her face, angling for something. Sofia couldn’t possibly say what; she tries to keep her expression open, honest, even as she finds her nerves alight under the weight of those dark eyes.

“You deserve more than adequacy,” Maya says. Her voice is barely a whisper, a breath. “I hope you know that.”

The world all but gives way beneath Sofia’s feet. The only thing that keeps her upright, she suspects, is Maya’s hand on her waist. Even the music is barely audible over the pulse of her heart, the rush of blood in her ears and face.

The moment stretches like honey, like a golden thread. Sofia’s tongue is bitter, burnt, with sentences she won’t allow herself to put words to. There is nothing else here. No strangers, no music, no wine or food or laughter. There is Sofia, there is Maya, and there are the places where their bodies meet: Sofia’s hands on Maya’s shoulders, Maya’s hands on Sofia’s chin and waist.

And then the thread snaps.

Maya steps back as the music ends, offering a low curtsy that once again hides her face behind her hair. Sofia wants to push it back, wants to pull Maya back into her arms and demand an explanation for whatever that was.

“Ms. Cooper,” Maya offers, voice louder but not nearly as stable. “Thank you for the dance. I am… overjoyed, that you will join our family soon.”

She turns and walks away, a blur of emerald and gold. Sofia is left in the center of the dance floor, confused and mystified. Her skin still burns where Maya had held her; without thinking, she brings one hand up to touch her own chin.

If her fingers shake, no one is near enough to see it.

--

“No one has seen your betrothed since last night, I’m afraid,” Tino says. “You may just be out a groom.”

Sofia rolls her eyes. “Matti is not the sort.”

There’s more she could say. That Mattinesh Jay would rather cut off his own limbs than leave his family without help, that he is an honorable man who will follow his word, or that she wouldn’t mind all that much if he didn’t show. She bites her tongue.

“More likely that his men took him out for one last night of festivities.” Cee waggles her eyebrows at them as she drops into her chair. She props her boots up on the table – Mama would throw a fit – and takes a long drink of her coffee. “Boys. What can you do?”

“Marry a woman instead,” Tino offers.

His wedding had been a much smaller affair, at his own request. Sofia didn’t have much of a choice in the matter but, if she had, she likely would have wanted a sizable party anyway. It’s more fun that way, even if it is a larger expense.

Cee snorts. “Marry no one at all.”

“Well, I’m glad you two have sorted out your choices,” Sofia says. “Some of us have other responsibilities to consider. Tino, pass the ham before I do something dramatic.”

Tino rolls his eyes and hands over the tray of cold meats for her to peruse. She selects a few options, and then piles it into a roll with a slice of cheese and a pad of butter. This, she ties up in a napkin, before she grabs a cup and pours coffee inside, then stands with her trophies in hand.

“Maha’s balls,” Cee says. “I didn’t realize you were planning to run away, Fee.”

Sofia smiles, all teeth and no mirth. “I have a meeting. I’ve been told my guest prefers to have something to help her wake up.”

“By all means. Cecilia hardly needs any more. She’s already annoyed the hell out of two of our staff,” Tino says.

“If they didn’t want to be lectured, they should have learned to make a proper raskil,” Cee says. She breaks one of the pastries in half in her hands, frowning at the crumbs as they fall. “Nessanesh Jay would have hung them from the rafters for what they served us this morning. Better me than her.”

“Well. If that’s all.” Sofia turns to leave the room.

Cee probably calls something out behind her, but Sofia doesn’t bother listening. Anything important will most definitely be brought to her attention later.

The country house is quiet this morning, a blessing almost definitely borne out of Maha’s revenge for last evening. She doesn’t see another soul on the grounds until she makes it to the stables. There, at least, the staff are already up and moving. Horses are already running through obstacles, eating breakfast, starting their days.

Maya, though, looks halfway to death where she sits on a pile of hay. Her hair is haphazardly pulled back, her tan pants and green vest wrinkled and disheveled despite the well-tailored fit against her long limbs. Her eyes are rimmed with dark circles and she squints in the light of the sun.

“Oh, dear.” Sofia giggles before she can stop herself. “You look…”

Maya holds up a hand. “Shh, shh. Too loud.”

“You poor thing.”

“Yes. It does feel that way.”

Sofia drops down onto the hay beside Maya, offering the cup of coffee and the napkin. Maya inhales deep enough that Sofia worries, momentarily, that she may choke herself. But the moment passes, and Maya takes a long drink before glancing at Sofia out of the corner of her eye.

“I forgive you – and your family, I suppose – for inflicting this headache,” Maya says. “But only because of the coffee.”

“And here I thought I’d have to throw a pony into the deal.”

“Huna’s tits. I need a better negotiator.”

Sofia pats Maya’s shoulder sympathetically. “Come, now, you’ll have plenty of time with the horses either way. The perks of being family, isn’t that right?”

“I suppose.” Maya sighs and takes a bite of her roll. “I do want to ask, though. Why are we here?”

Sofia shrugs. “I wanted to take advantage of the country house, seeing as we’re already here. And you’d mentioned a desire to meet the horses.”

At long last, Maya’s face seems to light up. She looks tentatively toward the fence, behind which half a dozen of the creatures are already out grazing. Then her eyes drift back to Sofia, a crease forming between her brows.

“Shouldn’t you have invited Matti out? The two of you should be spending this time together.”

Sofia can’t help it. She reaches out again to smooth the skin of Maya’s forehead, then shrugs and offers a smile. “If you can find your brother and get him out here, then he’s welcome. But I’d like to spend my time enjoying myself, not chasing him down.”

Something is at war in Maya’s face. Her eyes move between the stables and the house, there and back, there and back. But she seems to make a decision, setting her shoulders and putting down the remains of her breakfast. She brings one hand up to her shoulder and swipes it outward, as if she’s flinging water from her fingertips.

“Matti can find us if he wants,” she says. “For now, I’d like to meet the horses.”

Sofia stands and beckons for Maya to follow her into the shelter. As they walk, though, she turns her eyes to Maya’s hands.

“You do that,” she says, motioning her own hands in a poor imitation of the finger-flick, “all the time. What, exactly, does it mean?”

Maya seems startled for a moment. But then she laughs and brings her hand up again to repeat the motion. “Oh, it’s– it’s a family thing. It sort of means ‘why not,’ or maybe… ‘what can you do.’ An acknowledgement that some things aren’t ours to control.”

“Is it…” Sofia mimics the move she’s seen Matti do to his siblings dozens of times by now, a quick kiss to the thumb and a swipe toward the ear, “like that one?”

“Yes, a bit. We have a few of them, largely for communicating with each other when other people are in the room and we can’t speak freely.” Maya is obviously pleased that Sofia has noticed. She’s smiling wide enough for her eyes to crinkle at the corners; Sofia can’t help smiling back. “That one’s just an expression of affection, strictly for family. But there’s mine, and then there’s one to signal waiting. A few others that my father and Matti use all the time.”

“Will I get to learn all of them, these fancy Jay signals?”

“That depends. Do you plan to sit in on meetings with stakeholders and business partners?” Maya asks.

Sofia grimaces. She’s done a fair amount of that with her own parents; it’s tiring and exhausting, particularly when the discussion of numbers arises. “I’d hope not to, most of the time.”

“Then you may just learn the basics. Don’t worry, though; if Matti won’t teach you, I will.”

Sofia’s stomach twists at that. The thought of Maya sticking around, even after the wedding, is one she hasn’t been able to touch. There is always the fear that, someday, someone else will come along and sweep her off her feet, carry her away from Sofia and the rest.

Sofia swallows a sudden lump of bitterness, opting instead to motion with a wide swing of her arm toward the back field of the stable.

“So, Mayanesh,” she says, aiming for jovial and mostly landing it, “which one would you like to ride first?”

Maya practically glows. “Which one is the fastest?”

And so it goes for the rest of Sofia’s morning. She helps Maya up into the saddles of very nearly every horse on the property, leading by the reins until they get to open pasture and Maya can ride off into the horizon. She looks like something from a fairytale, a well-dressed princess journeying to accomplish some great mission for the good of her family. Sofia has never felt that sort of freedom on a horse; she’d been taught to admire restraint, to lead a horse into complicated footwork and gentle gaits.

With time, she feels another body come to meet hers. As Maya urges a horse to leap over a pile of stones, Cee comes to lean on the fence behind Sofia – a barrier as much metaphorical as it is physical.

“That’s the one, isn’t it?” she asks.

Sofia doesn’t need to ask what she means. She remembers the conversation just as well, the way the two of them had danced around their answers in equal measure.

“If it could be anyone,” Sofia nods toward the silhouette of her betrothed’s younger sister, whooping and cheering on the back of a stallion too tall for anyone else to possibly ride, “I’d think it would be her.”

Cee hums. Sofia worries she might say something else. Something crass, something cruel or pointed. As much as they love each other, she’d be lying if she said that her siblings were always kind. But when she does speak, it is neither the crack of the whip nor the slice of a knife.

“If I could carry this for you, I would,” Cecila says. Her bright eyes – her hair – catch the light of the midday sun, wild and untamed and used to the open skies in a way Sofia has never been.

Sofia sighs. “You could never marry out. Cooper House would crumble without you.”

“And you?” Cee presses, thumb to bruise, candle to headache. “Will you crumble when you leave us?”

“No,” Sofia says. She means it, too, even as she resents the truth threaded through it all.

On the horizon ahead, Maya turns her horse to face them both. She waves at them and shouts, standing in her stirrups.

Sofia waves back. It almost feels like a goodbye.

--

All at once, Sofia isn’t sure whether she wants to laugh, cry or scream. She tucks herself into the only room in the Jay House that she can be sure will offer solitude – the one Maya had made for her, the one with a cot and a desk and a window – and curls up beneath the heavy woolen blanket despite the warmth of the early afternoon.

Lucastian Harte.

For weeks now, Mattinesh Jay – her fiancé, the man she’s giving up her home to marry – has been running around behind her back with Lucastian Harte. It ought to be embarrassing. At the very least, it should be a surprise. It should make her angry with him.

It doesn’t. If anything, Sofia feels something close to relief. She isn’t the only one entering this marriage when her heart is somewhere else. She isn’t the only one who could come out of this with less than she had in the beginning. Matti would understand.

And, worse, if Sofia had done anything at all about the treacherous way her heart flutters despite her best efforts, if she’d done anything about the slow, honey-sweet glow that flows through her with each passing day… Matti would understand that, too.

Sofia forces her eyes to follow the vines sketched onto the walls of the bedroom. They trace and loop around each other and wind into knots. Clusters of grapes hang from them; Sofia does her best to count them.

One, two, three…

Matti doesn’t want to marry her. She doesn’t want to marry him. The wedding is in a day, and it’s a farce, and no one knows but them.

…ten, eleven, twelve…

She’s going to disappoint everyone. Matti is going to disappoint everyone. They might not even get what they want, in the end, but they’ll do everything to wreck what they have.

…sixteen, seventeen, eighteen…

She loses count.

Sofia takes a deep breath and forces her shaky fingers to grip the fabric over her shoulders even harder. Determined, she starts again: One, two, three…

It doesn’t last long. Someone knocks on the door before she even makes it to twenty. Sofia knows better than to wonder who it is; only one person in this house knows where she’d be going for a moment of peace.

“Sofia?”

Sofia forces a deep breath in through her nose, out through her mouth. “Come in, Maya.”

The door squeaks as it opens. The cot squeaks as Maya sits on it. Sofia latches onto the sounds for clues; she can’t bring herself to look at Maya’s face, to see whatever’s written there. To see her deliberately calm expression, her easy smile.

“What did Mr. Harte say to you?” Sofia asks.

“Something good,” Maya says. One hand comes to rest on the blanket over Sofia’s calf. “Can’t say yet.”

“Do you think he can do it? The wedding, without the marriage?” Sofia coughs a laugh. “I don’t even know what that means, Maya.”

Maya hums. Her hand swipes gently up and down Sofia’s leg. “Well. That’s okay, because I’m fairly certain that I do.”

“But you can’t tell me.”

“No. You’ll have to trust someone else to carry things out.”

Finally, Sofia tears her eyes away from the wall. She looks to Maya – it feels like she’s done that more often than anything else, lately – and finds her smiling. A soft smile, a real smile. It’s more than just the one she wears to be polite; Sofia knows that now.

“Am I trusting Lucastian?” Sofia prompts.

Maya laughs. She shakes her head hard enough to send her hair flying from its knot at the base of her neck. “No, I’d never ask that of you. I need you to trust me.”

“And you’ll… fix this.” It comes out as more of a question.

A firm nod from Maya does more for Sofia than anything else she can think of. The buzz of her mind quiets, just a little, replaced instead by warmth.

“Okay,” she whispers. “Okay.”

--

Maya challenged for her hand.

Maya challenged for her hand.

Maya, of all the people in the world, is standing at the altar with a sword in her hand, and she challenged, and—

Sofia nearly trips over her skirts in her efforts to race to her mother and father, their shocked faces the only thing keeping her from falling to pieces right here and now. She arrives at their seats in a flutter of gossamer and silk, heart pounding in her chest even as she forces herself to take a deep breath, then two, then several.

“Mama. Papa.” Sofia whispers. “Is this okay? Am I— will you allow it? For me to marry Mayanesh, instead?”

Her words are breathless, her chest heaving. She knows there are other people here, that hundreds of eyes are on her as she kneels on the ground in front of them.

Slowly, contemplatively, Sofia’s father holds out a hand. Sofia takes it between her fingers and rubs circles into the worn, thin skin of his palm. He doesn’t say anything immediately; his eyes drift, first to Maya at the front of the room, then to Matti, then to Sofia herself.

“Well.” Rauphe Cooper chuckles, incredulous. The lines of his face deepen as he smiles. “I would ask if you want it, dear, but I do think I know the answer to that.”

“Even so,” Mama interjects. She holds a handkerchief, still clean and dry, in her hands. “This is all rather… unconventional. The scrutiny to you both will be immense, Sofia.”

The corner of Sofia’s mouth tugs up, a wry smile she can’t help but give into. “Mama, people have been scrutinizing my marriage since before I even knew it would be happening. I can handle it. I promise.”

“I don’t see the harm, Daniela,” Papa says. “By now, surely, the entire city is bound to talk about the ceremony for the next century. We can certainly allow for one more surprise.”

Mama sighs. She runs her fingers through Sofia’s hair, gentle so as to avoid disrupting the curls, and then looks back to where Maya stands. Maya, sweet Maya, rose oil and all, with a sword. Sofia can hardly believe it; she hadn’t thought it possible.

 “Will she make you happy, Sofia?” Mama asks, forehead creased with worry.

Sofia nods, emphatic and sure. “Mama, I know this is hard to believe, but I truly think this is the best result for everyone involved. That includes me.”

Papa releases her hands, and Mama waves for her to carry on. They both seem confused, still, but Sofia could swear that her mother’s eyes have misted over since the conversation started. Satisfied, Sofia stands and turns to face the crowds of onlookers, the officiant, Matti and Maya and the rest.

“If Mayanesh Jay was challenging on her own behalf,” Sofia starts, willing her voice to stay steady despite the way her heart flutters against her ribs, “then I offer her my hand and my family’s blessing. And I offer myself into the named service of Jay house” – here, she can’t help smiling – “if it’s still prepared to have me.”

The Jays might have agreed. Sofia doesn’t really hear much over the roaring in her ears. But Maya’s smile is like the sunrise, which seems promising. Sofia runs toward it, and she doesn’t even think to look back. She takes Maya’s hand in hers.

Maya is already laughing, breathless, as she’s dragged along. “Sofia. Sofia, please, I–”

“No more explaining!” Sofia insists. She points a threatening finger at Matti, at Luca. “Not a peep out of either of you, either. Understood?”

They both nod, and Luca goes so far as to offer a wink. Absolutely insufferable. If not for the fact he’d saved her from marrying Adrean, from marrying Matti, Sofia would slap the grin from his face.

She turns back to Maya. “Mayanesh Jay,” she says, breath low, the words barely loud enough for anyone else to hear, “I would very much like to marry you now. Am I right to assume that you feel the same?”

Maya swallows. Her eyes flit over Sofia’s shoulder, likely checking with Matti for an answer; Sofia brings one hand up to Maya’s cheek and redirects her, forces her to meet her eyes.

“Yes,” Maya whispers, cheeks stained dark and eyes dark even in bright light. “Yes. I would.”

“Perfect.”

And, to Sofia’s delight, she even means it. Her chest is full of sunlight, of spun sugar and sparkling champagne. She feels giddy – drunk – overwhelmed with it all, with Maya’s hands in hers and the world watching on.

She turns to Rowain Duvay and raises an eyebrow. “Well? What on earth are you waiting for?”

He stammers something that might be an apology, or might be a curse. Sofia can hardly find it in her to care. She’s got Maya, and Maya’s got her, and it’s hard to give a damn about anything else in the face of that.

--

It doesn’t quite feel real. Even when the papers are signed and the ceremony’s done, when dinner’s eaten and everyone else has gone home to gossip and recount – when they’re standing alone in a room meant for Sofia and someone else – Sofia has difficulty wrapping her mind around the idea.

But it is Maya standing in front of her, sheepish and staring at some point on the wall over Sofia’s shoulder. Beautiful, sweet Maya, and not her brother nor Adrean Vane nor anyone else. Sofia’s knees are weak, unsteady; if not for the door at her back, she’d be a pile of bones and silk on the floor.

She ought to say something. There was a whole speech prepared, at some point, for when she and Matti first had to sleep in the same bed, to – Sofia shudders at the thought.

Maya clearly sees it. Her eyes lock onto Sofia’s and she moves forward, skirts swishing against the ground. She doesn’t make it the full way; she seems to catch herself, one hand raised as if she meant to touch, didn’t quite follow through.

“Sofia?” she whispers.

“Please.” Sofia’s voice cracks. A tear falls, burning, over one cheek; she hadn’t realized she was crying. “Please tell me this wasn’t just for my sake, Maya. Did you want it?”

“Oh, Sofia.” Maya’s brow furrows. She searches Sofia’s face, looking for something. Sofia couldn’t possibly hazard a guess at what she wants, or what she finds.

“I didn’t– don’t,” Sofia starts, then forces herself to breathe, to pause before continuing. Her hands come to rest on her abdomen, gripping the fabric of her dress. “I can’t be to you what Matti was to me. What– what I was to him. I can’t put you in a box, Maya.”

 Maya smiles. It’s neither full nor robust; more of the flicker of a candle than her usual sunshine. “Never, Sofia. Never.”

“Promise?”

It feels painfully vulnerable. It feels like pulling her ribcage open, like revealing the messy, bloody insides of her. That one word takes with it any feelings of composure or control that Sofia thought she had, every shred of dignity she’s clung to for the past few months.

“Can I…” Maya starts, instead of answering. She pauses, too, swallows. Sofia’s eyes track the movement of her throat. “Sofia, can I touch you? Is that all right?”

Sofia nods. It’s about all she can manage, in the moment, but it seems to be enough. Maya steps closer and – finally – brings her hands to Sofia’s face, rough thumbs swiping away the tears she hasn’t managed to stop.

“Sofia Cooper,” Maya says, her own voice shaky and soft, “you are not a box. You are not a business agreement, or a token, or a prize. You’re so much more than that, and I’m here because I want to be with you. Very much.”

Something inside Sofia snaps.

She wraps her arms around Maya’s neck and pulls her down, pressing their mouths together in a frantic clash of lips and teeth. Maya stumbles, one hand coming down to press against the wall and keep herself upright. She gasps, too, and Sofia takes full advantage of that, slipping her tongue into the warmth of Maya’s mouth.

Maya’s breath turns into a groan. She sinks into the kiss, neck relaxing beneath Sofia’s hands, and leans forward until they’re pressed together at the hips.

“Sofia.” Her name is muffled against her own mouth; Sofia feels something like laughter bubbling up in her chest. “Sofia, please.”

Sofia hums her agreement and lifts one leg to wrap around Maya’s hips, to pull her that much closer. Maya’s hand comes to wrap around her thigh and hold her there; it brings her hips up to Sofia’s core and Sofia sighs, shifting against the pressure through the silks of her skirt.

Mouths aren’t enough, she decides. Sofia moves to kiss Maya’s cheek, to trail kisses down her neck, to where her collarbones sit just above the neckline of her dress. Maya tilts her head back; Sofia presses her advantage, savoring every inch of available skin like a fine wine, a tea.

Maya tastes like sweat and warmth. She smells like spiced fruit, like the almond cake that they’d picked out together weeks ago, split between them over dinner earlier this evening.

“Sofia,” Maya groans again.

“Mayanesh,” Sofia parrots back. Her teeth catch the delicate skin of Maya’s throat.

“I—Huna’s bleeding fingers, Sofia.” Maya’s fingers dig into Sofia’s thigh. And then, like some kind of grand realization has hit her, she brings her other hand down and hoists Sofia up, urging her to wrap her legs around Maya’s waist.

Face to face, at least to some extent, Sofia can see the dark flush spreading over Maya’s cheeks. Her lips are smeared with the red of Sofia’s lipstick, and her pupils are blown wide enough that her eyes seem nearly black, endless.

“What do you want, Sofia Cooper?” Maya asks. Her thumbs dig into Sofia’s thighs, as if to prove a point, but she doesn’t do anything more.

The words tumble over each other in the hurry to get out of Sofia’s mouth. “Whatever you’ll allow.”

Maya huffs a laugh. She leans in close, closer, until her lips are against the lobe of Sofia’s ear. “Anything.”

She pulls Sofia’s ear between her teeth, a sharp, stinging pain that sends electricity straight to Sofia’s spine, sets her alight. Sofia throws her head back against the wood of the door behind her, and even the dull thunk of it isn’t enough to clear her head as pictures fill her head all at once: Maya on the bed, spread out, Sofia between her thighs; Maya’s tongue on Sofia’s breasts, her fingers inside her; Sofia touching herself, spreading her slick over the skin of Maya’s stomach.

“Gods, Maya,” Sofia says. “I can’t pick.”

Again, Maya laughs. Sofia loves her for it. Of all the futures she imagined for herself, laughter was never in this part, and yet here it is. Maya, laughing easily as she turns and carries Sofia to the bed, as she drops her onto the sheets and leans to press a gentle kiss to her temple.

“We’ll start with the basics, then,” she says.

Sofia wonders if Maya has ever done this before. If she’s brought girls home and spread them out over the bed, just like this, or if she’s just as new to it as Sofia herself. It’s something to file away for later; for the moment, she’s happy to watch as Maya undoes the ties on her skirt and the buttons on her bodice, the lacing on her corset. She lets the fabric fall away to reveal the shift beneath.

Maya catches her eye and raises an eyebrow. “Well? You, too, Ms. Cooper.”

Sofia can’t help snorting. “You’ve seen this dress. I can hardly move, much less get it off.”

“Fine, then stand up! I have hands.”

Sofia could respond to that with something witty, she’s sure, but she loses focus as Maya holds her hands out, long fingers waving as if to prove a point. She’s marvelous with those fingers; Sofia knows as much, has seen her spin roving into yarn and weave it away into something else, has seen her maneuver pieces of charcoal to create patterns on the page.

Maya could use those hands to unravel more than just the dress. Sofia knows it; she suspects Maya knows it, too, based on the knowing twist to her mouth.

Best to get on with it, then. Sofia stands and turns, presenting the lacings of her bodice to Maya for further examination. Cee had tied them up this afternoon; based on the sound Maya makes, it hadn’t been by the most effective method.

“No, you would need help with that, I imagine,” Maya says.

She moves forward once again into Sofia’s space. Sofia closes her eyes on instinct and breathes in deep and does her best to hold steady, bringing one hand to grip a post of the bedframe as Maya’s fingers trail up the line of her spine. It leaves a burning line in its wake despite the layers of fabric between them.

Maya is gentle. Slow, methodical, attentive. Sofia knew these things, and yet it’s something else entirely like this, as she unties the ribbons at the base of Sofia’s spine and carefully loosens her dress. She doesn’t touch a single inch of skin, somehow, not even as she slides the shoulders of the gown down Sofia’s arms and discards it to the floor.

The skirt, thank Maha, is quicker. Two pulls on the ribbons lacing it together and the whole thing collapses into a pile of chiffon and tulle on the floor. Sofia stutters out a breath as the air of the room hits her through the thin linen of her underthings, as Maya leans to press a kiss to her shoulder.

“Better?” she asks, smiling into Sofia’s skin.

And Sofia—

Sofia has waited long enough.

She turns around and pulls Maya to her, sending them both tumbling back onto the bed. The weight of Maya on top of her is heavenly, and she doesn’t hesitate to slide her hands up Maya’s legs, to gather the fabric of the shift around Maya’s hips and grab, hold, pull, whatever she can do to bring their bodies closer.

Maya gasps again, and Sofia catches Maya’s soft lip between her teeth, pulls it just enough to make the gasp become a moan. Maya lets her; Maya lets it all happen, as Sofia leans up to learn the shape of her mouth, her taste, to drink her up like wine.

“Lie down,” Sofia insists. “Maya, lie down. Please.”

Blessedly, Maya does as she’s told. She drops down to the mattress beside Sofia and watches, eyes wide and dark, as Sofia moves to straddle her hips. Sofia pulls on the linen of Maya’s shift, drags it upward until Maya gets the hint and sits up just enough and lifts her arms above her head to aid the removal of the offending garment.

And then it’s just Maya, beautiful Maya, spread out beneath her. Sofia marvels at her: the soft mounds of her breasts, the dark peaks of her nipples, the trail of hair leading down to between her legs. Her arms, her thighs. Her hair, spread out over the pillows, restricted only by the wings of a butterfly on a pin that Sofia gave her.

“Sofia–” Maya starts.

Sofia interrupts her with her mouth, her tongue. Whatever Maya’s going to say, Sofia doesn’t want to hear it. To prove her point, she punctuates the kiss with a sharp nip to Maya’s lower lip, already swollen from their previous work.

“No talking,” she insists.

Maya’s mouth opens, closes. Opens again, closes again. She swallows and nods her consent, a faint blush once again staining her cheeks.

It’s only fair that Sofia stop talking, too. Not that she needs to worry about that; her mouth will be busy elsewhere. She starts with Maya’s mouth, a brief kiss to soothe the sting of her teeth, and then moves. Down over Maya’s chin, following the curve of her beautiful neck, nipping the line of her collarbones.

She keeps going, too, much as she’d like to spend hours getting to know every inch. They’ll have plenty of time for that, a thought that fills Sofia with the same giddiness she’s been pushing down all evening.

Sofia presses a line of kisses down the soft skin between Maya’s breasts. It earns her a groan and the arch of Maya’s spine, the press of her ribcage to Sofia’s hands. It would be cruel to tease; Sofia takes a breast into her hand, rolls the nipple between her fingers while her tongue lavishes her affections onto Maya’s skin.

I love you, I love you, I love you, she doesn’t say, and hopes she doesn’t need to. As Maya whines, as she writhes and twists under Sofia’s hands, it feels almost sacrilegious to ruin it with anything else. To break the noises apart with words. Instead, Sofia tries to tease more out of her, moving to tongue at Maya’s other nipple experimentally.

Maya shouts, hips stuttering beneath Sofia’s thighs. “Sofia, I–”

“Shh,” Sofia insists, twisting her fingers to drive the point home. Maya keens, but otherwise keeps quiet.

Sofia bites at the soft skin of Maya’s breasts, licks and sucks her fill until she could swear she’s heard every noise Maya is capable of making. Only then does she move lower to press a line of kisses down her abdomen, to slide her thumbs into Maya’s pants and slide them down her thighs.

Her cunt is dark and wet, the hair glistening with slick. Sofia wants nothing more than to taste it. But she is nothing if not a creature of restraint, so she focuses instead on biting marks into the unblemished skin of Maya’s thighs, watching as she presses her heels down and tries to lift herself closer to Sofia’s mouth.

“Sofia, Sof– I need–”

Maya’s pleas cut off with a high-pitched squeal as Sofia leans in to lick a stripe up through her folds. The taste is heady, earthy, deep in a way nothing else has ever been. Sofia breathes in and does her best to appreciate it, to pace herself. She focuses on Maya’s clit, offering small flicks of her tongue that make Maya gasp and wriggle to get closer, to get more.

When she seems adequately worked up, when her slick is trailing down her cunt and drenching Sofia’s chin, Sofia finally sets to her task in earnest. She takes Maya into her mouth and swirls her tongue around her, presses flat against it, tests every movement she can make to see which one can get Maya to shout, to squeal.

“A-ah,” Maya breathes. One hand comes down to tangle itself in Sofia’s hair, to hold her in place. “Sofia, I’m close, I’m–”

Sofia glances up through her lashes. Maya is drenched with sweat; her hair clings to her face, and her skin is lined with bruises from Sofia’s teeth, from her fingers. Her eyes are closed and her eyelashes flutter, beautiful and delicate as spiderwebs, against her cheeks.

Go on, Sofia thinks, sliding one finger into Maya and pressing down with her tongue, urging her on.

With one long groan, Maya’s entire body shudders. Her muscles spasm around Sofia’s finger, against her tongue. And, after a moment that seems to stretch and bend around itself, she collapses back down onto the bed. Her legs fall open, leaving ample room for Sofia to crawl up her body and rest her head on Maya’s chest.

Maya takes some time to recover. Sofia doesn’t mind; she takes the opportunity to admire her. The long lines of her body spread over the bed like vines, claiming everything beneath. Her face, always schooled into cheerful agreement, is now blissfully blank. Fingers scratch idly at Sofia’s scalp and she leans into it, content to wait.

With time, Maya does open her eyes. She blinks sluggishly at Sofia, expression somewhere between bewilderment and adoration. “Is it always like that?”

That answers that, then.

“I wouldn’t know,” Sofia responds. “Likely not. Luckily, we won’t have to find out.”

Maya’s eyes drift over her, still foggy but coming back into focus by the second. “You… have too many clothes on.”

Sofia’s own desire is quiet, drowned out by the pleasure of working Maya over. She shrugs, though, and sits up to remove her own underthings. The air of the bedroom is warmer now. It doesn’t stop her from curling up into Maya’s side, seeking the heat of her body, the fire of her fingers against Sofia’s skin.

And Maya’s fingers do find her. They follow the knobs of Sofia’s spine, over her hips and down her pelvis. She presses Sofia’s knee back, and then runs one finger through Sofia’s center. The sensation of it – rough, calloused skin against her clit, her opening – makes Sofia shudder, her mouth fall open.

“There,” Maya whispers. Sofia blinks open her eyes to find Maya staring at her face, enraptured. “There you are.”

“I haven’t g-gone anywhere,” Sofia tries.

Her hips buck up into Maya’s touch of their own accord. Maya circles her thumb around Sofia, setting her nerves alight, and the pad of one finger teases at her entrance.

The angle must be hell on Maya’s wrist, but that doesn’t seem to stop her from sliding first one finger, then another, deep into Sofia. Sofia gasps; lightning strikes behind her eyelids as Maya slowly starts to thrust, fingers rubbing up against her walls in a delightfully rough drag.

Maya leans to bite into Sofia’s neck, to soothe the stinging skin with her tongue. She moves deliberately, but not slowly. With a few twists of Maya’s fingers, Sofia feels herself tensing, every muscle of her body pulled tight as she teeters on the edge.

It must be obvious to Maya, too, because she moves to press a firm kiss to Sofia’s lips. “I have you, Sofia. Let go.”

The waves crash over her all at once. Sofia is little more than a rowboat in Maya’s current, held at the mercy of her mouth and her hands. Her entire body tenses and pulses, wracked with pleasure that empties every thought she’s ever had from her mind.

It must be years before she comes back to herself. She senses, more than feels, Maya getting up from the bed and readying towels in the washbin. A warm, damp cloth runs over Sofia’s skin, between her legs, up her sides and across her forehead.

“Maya,” she mutters, reaching a hand out to grasp at her. “Maya, you are too far away.”

Maya laughs. It’s a full, delighted sound that Sofia looks forward to hearing again very soon. The bed dips again, and then Maya is pulling Sofia to her chest. Sofia feels the weight of woolen bedclothes across her legs, her torso, and then Maya is pressing a soft kiss to her temple.

“I’m right here,” she says. “Go to sleep, Mrs. Jay.”

A week ago – a day ago – the name would have filled Sofia with dread and uncertainty. But now, as sleep creeps over her limbs claims her, she feels nothing but warmth.

--

Luca is in the kitchen when Sofia enters. He’s barely dressed, shirt half-tucked into a pair of loose-fitting trousers, which means Sofia has ample opportunity to look over the dark bruises that litter his neck, the disheveled state of his hair.

It’s only when he turns around that he sees her. In his surprise, he nearly drops the buttered roll he holds in his hand. Sofia wishes she had Maya’s skill with a pencil and could capture his expression to show everyone later.

“Sofia!” he exclaims, one hand coming to frantically comb through his curls. “I– sorry, I didn’t expect anyone else to be up. Matti is… an early riser.”

Sofia’s eyes drift down to a prominent bruise on Luca’s collarbone, the skin around it still red and bright. “So it seems.”

“Wh– look,” Luca starts, pointing a finger accusatorily. “He’s not your betrothed anymore. I owe you nothing.”

“That is not at all true. If not for our engagement, you never would have met Matti. And then where would you be, hm?”

“Huna’s tits. It’s too early for this kind of thing,” Luca says, waving her off with his hand. “I hope you and Matti are looking forward to plenty of lonely mornings while your spouses sleep until a normal hour. You both deserve it.”

Sofia rolls her eyes. It makes her feel better, though, to poke Luca in the side as she approaches the sink; he leaps out of the way with a yelp that she might well describe as puppyish. Sofia grabs the tea kettle and fills it to the brim, carries it over to the stovetop to heat.

“Go on, then. Tell your fiancé good morning for me, and that I’ll have tea outside his room in a few minutes,” Sofia says. She flutters her fingers toward the door to usher him along. “I won’t bother knocking.”

“You’re much ruder now that you’re married. Has Maya told you that yet?” Luca demands.

He does move toward the door, at least, snagging a second pastry from the table as he goes. Sofia waves him on, a little more insistently.

“Of course I am.” She offers him a serene smile, then kisses her thumb and swipes it at him through the air. “We’re family now, Mr. Harte.”

Luca pretends to gag as he hurries out of the room. Sofia can’t stop herself from laughing at his back as he retreats, and the good feeling buoys her through the process of steeping tea and portioning it out into a series of tea cups.

She loads them onto a tray, then wanders back upstairs with everything in hand. Carefully, she sets the tray down outside of Matti’s door, intent on neither seeing nor hearing whatever is happening inside. Then she picks up two cups in her own hand and she walks down the hall.

The room was always meant to be hers. For a while, it was supposed to be Matti’s, too. But as she pushes the door open with a toe, as she steps inside, she finds it nearly impossible to picture him in it. Not when Maya is there, tucked beneath the blankets with her hair spread over the pillows like ink, like something out of a painting.

Sofia walks around to Maya’s side of the bed and sets the teacup down on the side table. She leans to kiss Maya’s forehead, soft enough not to wake her.

Quietly, Sofia exhales a sigh of relief. Her shoulders relax, one millimeter at a time. Her heart feels warm.