With that, the tension in the air around it, one rife with unspoken goodbyes, broke.
“I thought we were no longer focusing on our differences.”
“You are right. I forget myself.”
“A rare admission of a misstep.” My own lips mimicked hers. “Coming from an Aetherian. Forgetting yourself is coming easier to you these days, is it not?”
Her eyes, wide with a mixture of mirth and sadness, suddenly hooded, if but slightly. I should not have made the quip. Thinking about how she opened to me, allowed me to see her desires, was not helpful.
“Courtesy of a certain Gyorian king, aye.”
I stood back as if burned, too many memories flooding my mind at once.
“If I stay…” Saying the words aloud would be akin to making them true.
“I understand,” she said. “A king with duties to his clan.”
“My father’s hatred of the humans broke Elydor’s balance, I realize now, more than any blade. So aye, I’ve much to repair if it is to be restored. And you have your own duties as well.”
I wanted to ease the strain from her shoulders. Make her worries disappear.
“Why did it not open?”
The question had been asked many times. I had no answer.
“A Gyorian scholar?—”
She grinned. But held back the comment.
“Once wrote that Galfrid was able to open the Gate because he bore not just the relics, but the will of Elydor’s people united. Without harmony, the Gate remains deaf.”
“Ours hint at the same,” Lyra said, likely not noticing she’d begun to pace the chamber. “Which does not explain how Balthor was able to close it, without the will of… any.”
Ignoring the tightening of my chest at the mention of my father, I speculated. “Opening it, allowing humans to enter our world, and closing it… two very different things.”
“True,” she said. “Perhaps the relics wait for a voice that has not yet spoken.”
“Meaning?”
Her shoulders sagged. “I do not know. But coming to you with claims of an Unbalance were not unwarranted.” Her expression became un-Lyra like. Sheepish. “If not entirely my mission.”
“No?” I teased, pulling her back to me, against my better judgment. “Was your mission to find yourself in my bed, Lady Lyra?”
“Aye, precisely that. How have you guessed?”
I said aloud what we both knew already. “Because you’ve been attracted to me… nearly as long as I’ve been attracted to you.”
“Debatable.”
“Liar.”
I kissed her. It was to be the last kiss… for now. Forever? I did not know. Tenderly, her lips moved across mine. It was goodbye.
“Be safe,” I said, when the kiss ended, too soon.
“I am not the one attempting to lead a clan of angry Gyorians.”
“We are not all angry.”
