Page 114 of Of Bargains & Betrayal

“You made a break for it, I see,” he mused, and the faint hint of spiced wine on his breath was unmistakable. “As bad as it always is?”

Clearly, the boys were well into their celebrating already.

“Yeah,” I sighed, and I appreciated that was all the elaborating I needed to do with him. “But I didn’t leave empty-handed.” I pulled my bag in between us and revealed my poorly hidden bounty. “It’s wine, I think.” I glanced up to find his moss-green eyes full of amusement. “Want to drink it with me at one of the lookouts?”

“Princess,” he chided. “You know I’d love to. Let’s get out of here.”

The best thing about being in the lower bailey so many hours deep into the Turning was that most revelers were too lost in their cups to pay any heed to a bastard princess and a mage-in-training hauling ass like they’d just stolen the crown jewels. A couple of rowdy soldiers nearly flattened me as we ran for one of the less-traveled gates, but my firm grip on Kieran’s arm kept me upright. Barely.

We laughed our entire way to one of dozens of lookouts dotted around a walkway that encircled the outer wall, looking out onto nothing but craggy mountain passes and the inky, star-speckled sky. Apparently, they’d served a strategic purpose back in the days of regular conflict, but now, they were just convenient markers of respite.

One with a hideously gnarled oak tree served our purposes perfectly.

I ran on ahead to pick a perfect spot between two exposed roots that were bigger than my damned legs each and wasted no time pulling the wine from my bag and wrenching the cork from it. As soon as Kieran settled onto the grass beside me, I stuffed the bottle into his hands.

Kieran gave the lip a sniff, and his nose wrinkled, accentuating the bump he earned breaking it last winter. Still, he tipped back the bottle and took a cautious sip.

“Oh, Nor,” he chuckled after with a displeased cough. “This is port.”

I glanced between him and the bottle. “So? That’s wine, right?”

Kieran winced and passed it back to me. “Only the worst kind. Go on.”

One hesitant mouthful confirmed that. I coughed against the thick, disgusting sweetness of it and wiped my mouth.

“That’s awful,” I rasped before I corked the bottle and tossed it into the grass with a thud. There went my hastily-crafted plan of getting a little wine drunk under the stars to bolster my courage, and a tremor of nerves took its place. “You’ll still stay, right?” I fumbled out an embarrassingly desperate plea. “Even without…”

Kieran gave me a curious look, but nodded. “Of course I will.”

“Good.” I settled my head on his shoulder and forced out a sigh. “That miserable woman wouldn’t stop looking at me like I had the black lung or something, and Chancellor Roy smells worse than usual. I really don’t want to go back up there.”

At least with Kieran, I didn’t even have to say my stepmother’s name to clarify who I was talking about. He held as much disdain for the sniveling woman as I did, entirely on my behalf, and often had pretty choice words about her.

But this time, he just chuckled and shook his head.

Silence between us was usually the most comfortable thing I knew—it came with the territory of being tied at the hip since we were little kids. But at that moment, the tension was so thick, I wasn’t sure if my teeth wouldn’t crack from how tightly I had them clenched. My palms were sweating again too, and there was no casual way to keep wiping them on my skirt.

After a long stretch of that agonizing silence, Kieran grabbed the discarded bottle of port, uncorked it, and took a healthy swig.

“Still terrible,” he hissed before waving it at me. “Do you want any?”

“No. Goddess, no,” I chuckled and then sucked in a startled breath when he sat up, pulling me with him, and lobbed the bottle out into the cliffs with an echoing shatter. “Kieran. That was unnecessary.”

“Let the ptarmigan fight over it.” He rested back on his palms and let me settle my head on his shoulder again. “They deserve to have a happy Turning too.”

I clicked my tongue. “Poor birds.”

He snickered but said nothing else, and my window of opportunity was waning before my very eyes. If I’d skirted my father’s celebration, located Kieran, and got him away somewhere private, I’d be damned if I didn’t see my determination through.

“Kier…” I whispered, and his attention drifted down. “Don’t laugh, please. But would you be mad if I…kissed you?”

His moss-green eyes widened, and he let out a quiet huff. “Would I be mad? No, Nor, I wouldn’t be at all.”

For the sake of my ever-increasing heart rate, it would’ve been better if he had said yes.

I didn’t know what the hell I was doing. Was there a mode of operation I was supposed to follow? A clearly established set of steps for kissing your best friend for the first time? After having never kissed anyone? If there was, I’d missed it somewhere in years of lessons I’d only half paid attention to.

“Was that just a hypothetical question, or…?”