I stare and I stare. My heart falters, wanes, shrivels into collapse. “Help me up,” I rasp.
My every limb aches, and my head throbs with excruciating agony. Boreas retreats at our approach, his expression somber, blue eyes dulled to murk.
I gird myself for the sight of Eurus, motionless. Eurus, broken, his wings crushed beneath him, black scales cast about. But the rise and fall of his chest is a ray of sun spearing through an endless fog. It casts all that was once gray in gold.
Relief weakens my knees. They buckle, sink deep into the mud patching the ground. I smooth back the tangle of Eurus’ hair with a shaky hand.
“Bird,” he mumbles. His eyes crack open, two slivers of darkness glinting beneath lowered eyelids.
And oh, I have never heard a more beautiful sound than his voice, that coarse rasp of two rocks ground together. My chin quivers. “I’m here.”
One of his large hands frames my face. My eyes sink closed, and I angle my cheek against the warmth of his palm. I have never been particularly devout, but if the Mother of Earth—Demi—is listening, I wish to thank her for keeping the East Wind safe. For keeping my heart safe.
“How are you alive?” I whisper.
“Yes, actually, we’d all really love to know that as well,” Zephyrus quips from behind me. “You destroyed Prince Balior with the entirety of your power. You should be dead.”
Slowly, I swivel my head toward the West Wind, glaring all the while. He holds a glass of water in his outstretched hand. “Do you mind giving us a little privacy?”
With a shake of his head, Notus drags his gregarious brother toward the manor, despite the West Wind’s protests. Boreas follows at a clipped pace.
I turn back to Eurus, who gazes at me with a depth of emotion I fear to dissect. “He has a point,” I whisper.
As the East Wind takes my hand in his, the air wavers around us, a softened swirl of salt and rock dust. It lacks a certain something, this wind. It is gentler, less turbulent, its nature at last tamed.
“The morning we departed from the City of Gods,” he murmurs coarsely, “I approached the council about my favor.”
I search his eyes questioningly. “What did you ask for?”
“I told them I wanted to live the rest of my days in the mortal realms—with you.”
I am warm. The chill of the muck sucking at my knees, the thin stream of sea air, it cannot touch me, cannot dive beneath skin.
I realize then how profoundly I’d hoped for this, but it was buried deep, all but entombed. I have been alone these last ten years, and I wish to be alone no longer. Knowing Eurus wants to share a life with me, it is more than I could have hoped for. It iseverything.
I swallow once, hard. “You w-want to live with me?”
“Returning you to St. Laurent was always the plan. But falling in love with a mortal woman from Marles…” His throat dips, and if I’m not mistaken, color pinkens his cheeks.
“You love me?” I whisper.
Tenderness, I did not expect. Yet it is in his eyes, the tentative bow of his mouth where his scarring breaks the smooth line of his upper lip. And it is in the point where our eyes meet, a seeking of shelter, belonging.
“Is that so unbelievable?”
When I fail to respond, too overcome with emotion to speak, he goes on, “It did not happen swiftly, or easily, or even willingly. I knew what was happening. I did not want to accept it for fear of the power you would have over me.”
As he speaks, his fingers graze my chin. Gooseflesh ripples down my arms, and I shiver.
“But I could not ignore my body’s reaction to your presence,” he continues. “How my heart would calm when your eyes met mine. How your touch did not incite fear for my safety. Over the weeks we spent together, I felt myself… softening.” His lips part as he traces my mouth in a hypnotizing graze of skin on skin. “I was your captor, but you treated me with kindness, even when I did not deserve it.”
“You did test my patience a time or two,” I say pointedly.
He smiles. It completely transforms his face.
“And that is why my thoughts toward you began to change. I saw what I was previously blind to. Mortal or not, you were a woman, and there was fire in you, though you did not see it. I began to notice the fall of your hair, the shape your hands made as they clasped some object—gentle, even then. And your body…”
The tips of my ears tingle with sudden warmth. “Eurus.”
