Not now. I could not lose control now.
I sank to my knees beside the bed, my wings and claws emerging with the effort of keeping my mana at bay.
One breath in, another out, but the next one caught in my throat. Another gale swept through the room, even icier than the last. A high-pitched keening sounded in tandem with the eerie, hollow wind.
The wolves. They were frantic just outside the door, but I couldn’t open it. I couldn’t move at all, for fear of losing the fragile thread of control I had managed.
Draven’s mana slammed into me, throwing me off-kilter as an even higher, shriller sound melded with the rest.
Batty. And what was either a cry of alarm or another ill-advised attempt at song.
Her shrieks seemed to echo into eternity, her tiny white body impossible to spot in the veritable blizzard around me.The spires twisted further, shadows wrapping around them until both seemed to burrow underneath my skin.
All the while, the storm raged, and the wolves howled, and Batty cried out in what I could only hope was not pain. Surely she wasn’t hurt.
I carved my talons into my palm, willing myself to move… to do something. My legs trembled, and my teeth chattered, but I pushed to my feet just in time for something warm to smack against my cheek.
My skathryn was also trembling, though likely more from the effort of flying through the swirling winds with her adolescent wings than from the cold she was so accustomed to. She wove clumsily between the shadow-ice spires around me, scooting down until she was nestled against my neck.
I assumed she was trying to comfort one, or both, of us… until she flapped her wings against my skin. Hard.
A jolt went through me, one that might have been painful if the war raging within hadn’t already brought me to the edge of agony. My mana cut off abruptly, just for a second, just long enough for me to wrestle it back into submission.
“Did you do that?” My words were a whisper in the increasingly loud storm around us, but Batty squeaked what I assumed was an affirmation all the same.
Putting aside the issue of how the skathryn could do whatever the hells she had done, I focused on getting to Draven, one shivering step at a time.
Crawling across the bed, I gently set Batty on my pillow before I climbed on top of Draven, pressing myself fully against him. He was freezing, his skin burning like solid ice against mine.
“Draven.” I ran my hands along his chest, his shoulders, trying to infuse him with whatever warmth I could while I repeated his name.
His mana lashed out around the room, skirting around me like even in his sleep, it was his instinct to keep me safe. Once again, I cursed the fact that I still couldn’t use my mana to protect him in kind, couldn’t use it at all.
“Draven, don’t make me run off and do something stupid to keep you safe,” I muttered, trying to threaten him into waking up. “Here I go, putting myself in danger…”
Somewhere, my words must have pierced through whatever spell he was under. With a ragged breath, he finally jolted awake, his mana coming to an abrupt halt.
I gently moved to where I was pressed against his side, rather than full-on lying on top of him, tilting my head so I could see him. The aurora lights danced across his flawless skin, reflecting in the gaze he kept fixed firmly on the ceiling.
A faint sheen of sweat covered his brow, in spite of the cold, and his broad chest rose and fell in disjointed pants.
Still, the room was oppressively silent in the wake of his storm, but no more peaceful for its absence. Tension thrummed between us, the air weighted down with all the things we couldn’t bring ourselves to speak into the world.
To hells with that.
“I’ve seen that rose before.” My voice was too abrupt, too loud in the hush, but I didn’t regret speaking.
Whatever else we were to each other right now, whatever other issues we were grappling with, I knew all too well how short our time was together and I was so tired of spending it in silence.
He had tried, when he told me the story about Nevara. I might never accept the brutality with which he ruled his court, but I could try to understand him better.
So I let the sentence dangle in the air, seeing if he would respond to it.
Several seconds passed while I rethought my stance on whether I regretted speaking. Batty let out a light chirp that was decidedly awkward in nature, and I reached up to stroke her head like I didn’t notice that.
But Draven still didn’t speak.
I let out a breath, defeat curling low in my gut. Just as I was going to shut my eyes and pretend to fall back asleep, a vision entered my mind. The same rose, artfully crafted from crimson ice, set into an intricately carved tomb.
