I pause, ears straining, but all I hear are faint sounds from the city below and the constant draw of the waterfall at the base of the mountain.
“Hear what?”
And she smiles, through the tears dried on her cheeks, through the glassiness of her eyes. The sight is so damn beautiful that it’s hard to breathe.
“The sun,” Auren answers quietly, tone filled with a tentative, innocent joy. One that you’re afraid of saying too loud in case it breaks. “She’s singing to me.”
Emotion clogs in my throat as I watch her tip her head back again. Watch her eyes close. I draw a knuckle down her soft cheek. “And what does she sing, Goldfinch?” I murmur.
Her smile breaks through like the sunlight above us. “The song of home,” she says. “The sun is singing the song of home.”
My chest swells, and when she reaches a hand up and tugs at my arm, I lie back with her, situating until we’re arm to arm, leg to leg.
“Listen,” she whispers.
So I do. I thread my fingers through her own, and I listen.
But my song of home doesn’t come from the sun. Mine comes from her.
CHAPTER 47
AUREN
I have no idea howlong Slade stays up on that rooftop with me, but by the time we climb down, I’m buzzing with bolts of energy. It doesn’t matter that I woke up before the dawn, I feel invigorated. Restored.Alive.
“I want to be outside today,” I tell Slade as we walk toward the archway where the guards are standing.
“Eyes up, gentleman,” Slade says, and I don’t understand for a minute until I look down and realize I’m still only in his shirt...and nothing else.
Their heads tip up comically fast, eyes going so far up that it’s a wonder they don’t see clear to the back of their skulls.
“I probably need some clothes, huh?” I say.
“It would be preferable so I don’t feel like stabbing daggers into my loyal guards’ eyes.”
One of the said guards lets out a choked cough.
“I’m going to frown upon eye stabbing, for the record.”
“I’ll make a note of it.”
I pause just before we go through the archway, looking over my shoulder at the open, clear sky. At the unobstructedsun.I haven’t seen it in so long.
I’d forgotten the way it felt.
The way I could just let my eyes drift close. Let my head tip up. How the light shone red through my lids and the way warmth seemed to lay against my skin, from forehead to feet. The way it sunk into my pores and soothed every memory of cold away.
It called to me.
Even before it rose in the sky, I heard it. I slipped out of bed and wandered back upstairs, letting its soundless voice draw me here where I could stand on a roof beside a mountain and just...feel.
Ten years. It’s beenten yearssince I felt sunshine like that on my face. Without any clouds to block it, without any storm to sully it.
Not once, while I was up there on that roof, did my magic try to come out unbidden. Instead, I let it pool in my palm, growing warm in the morning sunlight, letting it bask for a moment just as I was. Then, when I called for it to sink back into my skin, it did. Easily. So easily that it was almost effortless.
I think my gold missed the sunlight, too.
“Auren?”
