Azur points at me. “You want to endanger your wife that much?”
I feel like punching him. “I want to protect her.”
He raises an eyebrow, his tone haughty. “Then do the right thing.”
I’m about to reply, when Ziven says, “What you did now, it was very brave.”
“What?” I glare at him.
“You could lie to yourself and to everyone else that your fire is fine. You could try to convince yourself that you’ll be able to do it when the time is right. Instead, you were brave enough to step forward, accept your limitation, and find a workaround for it.”
His words dig deep within my skin. Limitation. And yet he’s right. I hate that he’s right. And I know what else he’s implying. If fire can mess me up, can make me blank out, why do I think I can help my wife when she’ll have to use fire? The truth is dreadful.
“Right.” The annoyance is clear in my voice. I turn to her. “What do you think?”
“It’s best this way. The fewer, the better.”
My question was actually on her preference, but she chose to take it as a confirmation that I wouldn’t go with her. Itisthe right choice. Painful choice, but right, nonetheless.
Azur gets up. “If we’re going to rest, which is in fact a good idea, I’ll show you to your rooms. Most of them are single beds, unfortunately.”
We follow him up the wooden stairs, and then I find myself in a bedroom with Astra, its bed with a colorful quilt over covers and a pillow, everything clean, very unlike an abandoned house. The room also has a large window and a desk.
Astra sits on the bed, and smiles. “I agree with Ziven. That was quite brave.”
“I… still want to hide in a hole. It brings me so much shame.”
I sit beside her, and she touches my hair, her fingertips lingering at my temple before tracing a slow path down to the sensitive skin behind my ear. “You should be proud.”
“Yeah, that’s not going to happen, wife.” My chuckle is bitter.
The smile she gives me is sweet and enchanting and everything that’s good in the world. “I missed you calling me wife.”
“You never called me husband again.”
She laughs. “We were doing it in jest.”
“I was serious.”
“Fine. I need your magic, husband.”
“You want some of my blood?”
She looks up, her expression playful. “Not really.”
I pinch her nose. “What do you want, then?”
“We don’t have a lot of time. Can you… do it like you did in the cave?”
She can’t mean what I think she means. “What cave?”
“When we first met.”
The image of her on all fours flashes through my mind—her back arched, my hands gripping her breasts as I drove into her from behind—and my pulse quickens. Still, I say, “That was… a vision.”
“A shared vision we both conjured. And I wanted it. I wanted you since that day.”
“That early? We weren’t even together.” My lips get close to hers, and I let out a relaxed chuckle. “But I wanted you too. It felt wrong.”
