This time he doesn’t stop. He pulls back and thrusts deep into me, hitting that sensitive spot deep inside. I cry out in a mix of pain and pleasure. With the next stroke, we find a rhythm, unfathomable euphoria swamping any pain.
We continue this dance, and he does exactly what we couldn’t do in my study that day. He explores my body until he finds every place to touch, suck, and caress that makes me moan. When I don’t know if my body can take any more, the room pulses with our connection, the walls vibrating with the force of what we are, what we’ve become.
With my headon Cillian’s chest, I listen to the flow of his heart. I run my fingers across the ridges in his stomach.
“I need to ask you something…” I trail off still trying to catch the wind in my chest but the need for answers is too strong to wait.
He hums, urging me on.
“Why did you push me away when we were younger? After everything, I thought we -,” The words trail off. Even with the bond in place the pain of him cutting me out of his life echoes through me. I have to know what happened.
He squeezes me closer to him. “I came to visit you a few months after the gala.” A line forms between my brows at his words. “I wanted to see where you lived, meet Ophe and the family that was raising you.”
“I never saw you.”
“No, I found the two of you in your herb garden. Ophe was begging you to go somewhere with her. I don’t remember where, but you refused. You said you wanted to stay and wait for me to wisp you. The two of you had a huge fight and she accused you of wasting your life waiting onme.”
I remember the fight. I was so hurt by her words and after she left my powers felt abnormally stronger, out of control.
“You don’t get to decide what’s worth waiting for. I would have chosen you.” My words are choked and I can feel him nod against the top of my head.
“I know. And I should have talked to you about it. I was just scared of being the thing that held you back. I loved you too much to let you sacrifice your life just to live for the two days a year when you visited.” His words are resigned.
The sadness, the abandonment, that has lived in my heart for so long, falters as his confession sinks into me like rain over parched soil. He didn’t just say he loves me. He said he loved me then, too. The words I have thirsted for — words that begin to heal what I thought would always remain broken.
I lift up on my arm to look into his eyes. “I love you too. I’ve loved you for as long as I can remember.” Leaning in, I whisper, “Even when I hated you,” before pressing a quick kiss to his lips and then falling back to his chest.
He chuckles softly, kissing the top of my head. “I will always love you, Lila.”
“Why do you call me that?” I muse.
I feel his chest shake with his chuckle. “The day before that gala, an instructor was brought in to teaching us about the linguistics of all the different worlds. I found it fascinating?—”
I smile at how different we are.Thank the Goddess I got to skip that lesson.
“—Caspien was struggling with it. While our instructor reviewed it with him, I dug deeper into the books he’d brought from the library. One of them was an account of all the different flowers in the human world and the meaning of their names. One of them was called alila, it is derived from the word ‘liat’.”
“And what does it mean?” I ask quietly, each beat of my quickening heart healing the wounds of my past.
“Mine.”
Chapter
Thirty-Two
NISSA
Our feet crunch along dried mud and debris that litters the ground as we take in the destruction wrought on Aquaria. Years of scant rain has left most of the rivers and lakes dry and cracked. The few remaining waterways are muddy and brackish like the one Cillian and I visited.
We have approached a barren channel, filled with large chunks of earth and the broken remains of trees from past earthquakes that shook these elemental lands. I can sense the faint heart beat of the few remaining plants that have prevailed through the devastation and my magic aches for it.
Following Cillian’s orders, the Guardians are already moving into action, using a mix of magic and pure strength to clear the earth away. Fae murmur around us as they take in the ravaged lands firsthand since they were restricted from visiting years ago.
A few Elite have tagged along under pretense of helping. I’m guessing they’ve been drawn here by the novelty. Not only can they spread the stories about the damage they see, they can also pass judgement on their new king.
Cillian’s parents discouraged our efforts.Unsurprising. They claimed all past attempts to repair the elemental lands just resulted in additional storms.
But we hope by putting the rightful king on the throne and fulfilling my side of the prophecy that the Goddess will be appeased. Wehopewe have done enough to appease the wrath of the Goddess and stop any future storms.
