“I do know,” he counters, tapping at his heart. “I can feel it.”
My chest warms and I wrap my arms around him. “I’m so happy for you,” I breathe against his skin.
He tilts my head up and kisses me, just as the dragon’s form drifts away, fading like mist.
“Come on,” he says before reaching down to clasp my hand in his. “Let’s go home, Goldfinch.”
Home.
Hand in hand, we walk in the dark, guided by the gilded path that leads us back to the street. The night whispers, the city sparkles, and inside, my heart sings.
Slade and I look at each other, and the stars look at us.
My wings flutter, my heart soars, and I know.
That after everything. After all of it.
Thiswas what I was always fighting for. This was why I kept going even in the bleakest of times. Even with every stumbling fall.
Because this love?
This is what it feels like…
to fly.
Little Sun
There was a star above and a root below.
And a world somewhere in between.
And for a time, that’s all it was.
Space, and death, and gleam.
But that star began to glow,
she began to burn with heat.
And that root, it looked above,
fought from soil then to seek.
The star that burned, it beckoned him.
And the root, it knew to lift.
For that warmth that bled into the void,
it was an ordained gift.
So, from the ground unburied,
it looked up to see afar.
But that was when the root then saw,
it wasn’t just a star.
