Kestrel / Celeste
Grey dawn pours into the castle interior. Celeste gazes out through the windows, thick storm clouds roiling along the horizon. Something stirs in the periphery of her vision. She presses her palm to her neck, feeling cold perspiration on her skin. There’s no one behind her.
“Princess.”
Thunder roars in her ears. On her right is a woman of close-cropped blonde hair, hands held behind her back. The dullness of the morning washes color off her livery and flesh; everything save her eyes, which flash metallic steel at the strike of lightning.
“Kestrel,” Celeste acknowledges. She runs her fingers over her hair, smoothing stray locks. “If anyone catches you here…”
“They won’t.”
It’s a promise.
Three months have passed since Celeste had last seen the hard line of her lips, pulled taut as a bowstring. Her pasty skin, slightly tanned and craggy, worn by the vicious force of nature and an eternity of nights weathered out on the field. Her voice is a little rougher than Celeste remembers and there’s a cut on her cheek, maybe a week old.
Celeste glances around her. She pauses to listen to another clap of thunder. Then she tilts her head in the direction of her room, but Kestrel’s already gone.
A lone candle flickers in her quarters. Celeste had drawn the curtains back before leaving for her morning ride; now their thick velvet fabric obscures the outside world. She hears the crackle of a fireplace and turns to her left to see it burning. A small circle of coals, the iron poker left in their midst. Warm.
“Shall we?”
Celeste has grown accustomed to her vanishing act. She puts her hand out and feels Kestrel’s fingers slide in between hers, callouses pockmarking the ranger’s skin. Kestrel wraps an arm around Celeste’s back, pulling her short cape over them. Celeste won’t ever say it, but she loves when Kestrel does this.
So it plays over Celeste’s mind, as they trail over to the bed, how the two of them had first gotten tangled like this. A hunt, Kestrel wounded and caught in her net of stars. Celeste should’ve handed her over. She hadn’t.
“I don’t have long.” Kestrel murmurs this on the lid of her ear, fingers tugging on the intricate laces of Celeste’s collar. “Quarter of a bell. Then I must leave.”
Celeste has her palms on the curves of Kestrel’s waist. A wilted rose droops in the vase of her bedside table; a rather dashing visitor had come to her doorstep one day, promising the flower was a tribute from her love.
“As you always do,” Celeste remarks. She reaches for the lapels of Kestrel’s coat and smooths them out. The brooch of the Stormguards shimmer, frigid under her touch.
“Believe me,” Kestrel kisses her nape, brief and chaste. “I wish we had more time. But we will. When this is over.”
Celeste’s knuckles whiten. She curls her fists, held just above Kestrel’s chest. She mutters, in a low voice, “War never ends.”
Kestrel pushes her onto the bed, knees on either side of her. Celeste watches as Kestrel pries her coat off, her muscles and sinews pulling. Beneath the coat is a tank top the shade of nutmeg, stained and frayed around the edges.
“I’ll end it for you if I have to,” Kestrel growls. Her bangs fall over her eyes in a way that makes her completely feral, completely unreachable for Celeste’s pristine world. Celeste reaches out to pull Kestrel in behind her neck, pressing their lips together. Everything about Kestrel is roughness and rock solid determination. No matter what she says, as ridiculous as it may be, Celeste always wants to believe it.
“You will,” Celeste hums, as they draw away for breath. And one more time, to reassure herself, “You will.”
Kestrel takes Celeste’s hand and places it under her shirt, though it’s not like Celeste needs the guidance. She follows the planes up Kestrel’s body, stroking her breasts. Kestrel huffs and her eyes flutter shut momentarily. Celeste smiles, a little breathless at the sight of the infamous Stormguard archer taken by pleasure.
“You’re eager,” Kestrel murmurs. A lazy smile plays upon her normally stoic features as she undoes Celeste’s riding garments.
“Can’t have you ending a war and ending me,” Celeste smirks. It suddenly turns into a competition to see who can get whose pants off first. They grapple, forgetting to keep their laughter down until somehow Kestrel has landed under her maiden. But it’s not like she minds.
“I win,” Celeste tugs at Kestrel’s grey underwear. Kestrel keeps the sly look on her face; in bed, when one of them wins the other does too. Celeste sucks her thighs while keeping their eyes locked, always. Kestrel bites her lower lip, stifling a moan. Not for long. Celeste touches the parting between her legs, a thin trail of wetness extending on her finger.
“What’s this?”
Kestrel props herself up on her elbows. Her breathing is more labored now, with the way Celeste is spreading her legs, bared completely.
“Hurry.”
They take a little over a quarter bell to finish. Lying next to each other, Kestrel is the one to sit up and put her clothes back on. Celeste’s eyes never leave her as she does so, her gaze roaming the archer’s skin, hoping to commit each curve to memory before it’s gone for a week, five months, two years. No one ever knows. Kestrel kisses her one last time on the cheek.
“I’ll be back soon, love.”
Celeste isn’t a spoiled child. “You’d better be.”
A flash of lightning and she’s gone. Celeste glances to her bedside table to find that a new rose has replaced the old one, fresh and mortal but beautiful while they last.