Doesn't it? I have assumed the ache dulled over centuries. But sitting here, speaking of Eleanor, of tournaments and springs that will never come again...
Perhaps it does not dull. Perhaps I simply forgot how to feel it.
"What else do you remember?" Iris asks softly. "Good things. Happy things."
"Strawberries," I say without thinking. "The first strawberries of spring. They were..." I search for words. "Bright. Sweet. Like capturing sunshine in fruit."
"We'll have to find you strawberries, then."
"It is winter."
"Then I'll find a way. There are the fancy things in the moral world called grocery stores. The magic of a search engine is useful like that." She is still holding my hand, her thumb brushing absently across my knuckles. "Thank you. For telling me."
"You asked."
"And you chose to answer." She shifts slightly, turning to face me more fully. "Should we... should we do the feeding now?"
Reality crashes back. Right. This is why we are here. Not for conversation. For sustenance.
"Yes." I release her hand reluctantly. "If you would offer your wrist?"
She extends her arm, but she is watching me with an expression I cannot read. "Cadeon? This time... can you just let yourself feel it? Not just go through the motions?"
"I don't understand."
"Last time, you were so controlled. So distant. Like you were performing a duty." She touches my cheek gently, and I freezeat the unexpected contact. "I want you to be present. Here. With me."
Her words lodge somewhere vital. Present. Here.With her.
"I will try," I manage.
"That's all I ask."
I take her wrist in both hands. Her skin is warm, her pulse fluttering against my fingers. I can feel her life, her magic, the bright burning core of what she is.
From this angle, kneeling beside her chair, I must tilt my head to reach her wrist comfortably. It puts me in a position of supplication that should feel like servitude.
It does not feel like servitude.
The hunger rises sharp and immediate.
"This will hurt," I tell her, the old warning automatic.
"I know." She does not pull away. "I trust you."
Those three words nearly undo me.
I lower my head. Press my lips to her wrist, feeling her pulse against my mouth. She shivers. Not from fear. From something else. Something I can smell.
I bite down.
She gasps from pain, yes, but then the blood hits my tongue and everything narrows to this. The taste of her. Rich and complex and alive in a way I have not experienced in... I cannot remember.
Her magic floods through me with her blood, nothing but warmth and comfort and something almost like joy. It fills the hollow spaces, chases away the cold that has been my only companion for so long.
And through the bond, I feel her.
Not just the pain of the bite fading into warmth, though I feel that. But deeper. Her pleasure at giving this freely. Her satisfaction at providing for me. The heat that is building in her, turning the act of feeding into something intimate.
