I, too, grieved the months stolen from us, time lost like stones dropped down a bottomless well. I, too, ached for his touch, like a flower yearns for the sun. I, too, felt untethered without the steady, wordless language of our bodies.
“I doubt we are in any danger,” I said softly. “We are both Treasures. Additionally, I carry within me the great, ghastly power of a dying star. I should think anyone who dared stumble upon us in the night should be more afraid of us than we of them. I wish you would rest.”
“Do not scold me for safeguarding your slumber, mo chroí.” He quirked an eyebrow at me. “And I was resting.”
“You were looming.Brooding.”
“I neither loom nor brood, mo chroí.” The barest smile touched Irian’s perfect face—little more than a glint of a canine beneath his lush lips. “I stand sentinel.”
“Handsomely, I might add. But I wish you would sleep.”
“I will sleep when I am dead.” The broad line of his shoulders shifted as his gaze dropped to me. His eyes lingered on my face, tracing the plane of my cheek and the bow of my lips. Against my breastbone, the Heart of the Forest throbbed. Scabbarded across Irian’s lap, the Sky-Sword let out a plaintive hum. Anguish spasmed over Irian’s face. “In truth, you are mad to believe there are any circumstances under which you and I would ever be here, alone… and I would let myself sleep.”
Pleasure and loss stitched over my skin, gossamer as spider silk—as intricate as it was inescapable. Of all I had lost and all I had found, my physical connection with Irian was not the most precious. And yet I did feel its loss keenly. As I knew he did. He and I were bound by all the touches we had shared—sweet heat and bared skin and the desperate clash of mouths and limbs and bodies. Now we were bound by the distance between us—cool airand thick cloaks and the growing knowledge that we might never share another kiss.
The moonlight slicing low between trees made me think suddenly of our strange, stealthy, combative courtship last year. All the dark forest corners and flowering groves and moonlit ruins. All the considering glances and careful touches, growing more intentional and heated as our mutual attraction grew. All the sly flirtations and gratuitous banter we’d traded to hide the words we would not—could not—say.
If I wanted you, colleen, I would go to any lengths to keep you.
I shivered beneath the weight of his gaze, the weight of my memories. Yes, the loss of our physical connection was a grievous blow. But we had once had less… and made it into far more.
“Surely my snoring isn’t that loud, Sky-Sword.”
Irian exhaled and dropped his eyes. His raven hair fanned down around his ears as regret and resignation soured his smile.
“Right.” Irian shifted, drawing his knees beneath his body as his fist closed around the sheathed Sky-Sword. The other hand braced against the tree at his back as he prepared to rise. “Because of the snoring.”
“Wait.” I was not ready to let this moment go—bittersweet though it might be. Poised here, in the soft, sweet sigh between night and day, with mist sifting between silent trees and the sun waiting somewhere beyond the horizon, I wanted him. I knew I could not have him—not like that. I could not have the imprint of his fingertips at the divot of my waist. Could not have the press of his mouth against my lips. Could not have the thrust of his hips between my legs.
But there was more than one path through the forest.
“Tell me,” I breathed, the moment already so tenuous I feared it might be broken by speaking too loudly or moving too quickly. Irian stilled, one arm propped on a raised knee as he stared at me across the space separating us.
“Colleen?”
“Tell me why we would not be sleeping.” My voice dropped even quieter, a sudden shyness tiptoeing between the rising vines of desire thorning my veins. “If you and I were here. Alone. In the hour before dawn.”
Irian’s pupils dilated, the depthless black devouring the silver until it was little more than a halo. “Do not tease me, mo chroí.”
“I would never tease you.” My voice was little more than vapor in the silver mist. I slid a finger over my metal brooch, then swiftly unfastened it, allowing the hem of my cloak to fall down over one shoulder.
Irian hesitated, the powerful slope of his shoulders bunching as he battled some inner indecision. “Your eyes, Fia. Let me see your eyes.”
Slowly, I rose onto my knees and leaned toward him, bracing a hand on the tree at his back. His gloved hand rose to push stray strands of hair off my cheek; his silver eyes flicked between mine, searching for something I could not name—a single thread lost in a tapestry, the final piece of a puzzle, a memory he dared not touch for fear it might dissolve.
“Why?” I whispered.
His throat worked. “The hour before dawn—that was whenshecame to me. Talah. When she peered through your eyes and possessed your body. But I always knew her—by the taste of your lips and the color of your eyes. I knew her, and I held her at bay.”
Curiosity and horror mingled with the desire rising inside me. “Did you never—”
“Never.” His voice was vehement. “You are more to me than a body to be held. What warmth in your skin, without the fire behind your eyes? What comfort in your touch, without the heart that spurs it? What meaning in your presence, without the thought beneath it? She was but the outline of you—and I have never desired to hold a shadow nor lie with a ghost.”
I drew carefully back. Irian settled on his haunches, although he did not relax. If anything, his whole body now sang withtension—his neck cording and his forearms clenching and his jawline tautening. As if he held himself back from me through sheer will.
“If my eyes are my own,” I urged, “tell me why we would not be sleeping.”
“If you and I were here, alone—” He swallowed, forcefully. “Not safe but not in any pressing danger—” Again, he paused, and his eyes on mine were strangely vulnerable. He was silent so long that I almost pulled my cloak back up over my shoulder. “Well. We would not be so far apart.”
