The sun was setting over their heads, though it was tucked behind a thick layer of clouds. The light brushed Taevas’s deep purple skin with soft yellows and pinks when he glibly replied, “I’m your fucking Isand. If I tell you to go home, yougo home.”
Vael glared. “I’mfine.”
“You’re not. You’ve been practically coming out of your skin since we left.” Taevas strode over to the narrow escalator that wound around one of the towers built solely for a perch. The rest of his Wing followed suit, their eyes carefully averted from Vael.
He gritted his teeth.
Pulling his phone out of his pocket, Taevas casually checked his notifications as they climbed up and up, toward the perch. He looked at it for a second, smirked, then quickly typed out a message. That done, he cast a look over his shoulder and said, “I’m giving you a week off, Vael. Starting immediately. Go.Home.”
He knew that tone. Taevas was serious, and that meant there was absolutely no arguing with him. Vael could only nod, his pride and his duty and his relentless urgency all tangled up into a knot in his throat.
Go home.
They both knew he didn’t mean the roost he’d purchased on a small spit of land just a short flight away from Drummond Island last year.
Go home to Hele.
But he couldn’t. She still lived in the family nest, where she was safe and cared for but inaccessible to him. He could not fly home because his home, the person instinct recognized astrue north,did not yet know how much he needed her.
Vael felt a deep, painful exhaustion settle into his bones as he watched his Isand and comrades throw themselves off of the perch one by one. Their wings extended with a snap as they caught an air current and arrowed back toward Drummond Island.
Gods, what he wouldn’t do to simplyholdher. He was so goddamn touch hungry, he felt like there were ants under his skin. He hadn’t slept properly in two years for the lack of her in his arms. Food tasted like ash unless she was with him, wrinkling her nose with playful disgust from across the table.
He missed her in a way that felt deeper than simple separation. He missed the things they had yet to have, and that was almost worse.
Short, spiky hair moving in the brisk wind, Vael stepped up to the edge of the perch and stared into the blush colored horizon. He was embarrassed that he’d been dismissed — and forced onvacation,of all things — but he knew that his Isand was right. He needed a break.
Ineedto see her.
If he couldn’t touch her, tuck her into the shelter of his wings, fucking kiss her until he couldn’t breathe, then at least he might be able to sit with her for a while and listen to her talk about everything he’d missed while he was gone. It wasn’t the same, but it was enough.
Vael leapt off of the perch.It has to be enough.
ChapterFour
Her nest was moreof a studio apartment in the great, arch-shaped honeycomb that was the roost in De Tour Village, but it washers.
Hele relished the thought as she walked to the sliding glass door that opened up onto her perch. Like the Dragon Roost on Drummond Island, home to the Isand and center of the ‘Riik’s government, it was designed to accommodate those who traveled primarily by wing. The building was an open arch, with a flourishing garden, business center, and m-lev hub in its center. The apartments within the arch faced one another, allowing for socialization as neighbors hopped from perch to perch. The perches — balconies that could withstand the weight of a full grown dragon — lacked railings, the nests were large, and the ceilings tall. What it lacked in square footage, it made up for in comfort.
Helelovedit. The apartment itself was not particularly noteworthy, and truthfully she felt moreat homeoutside and out of her skin than inside, but she was delighted by what the new development represented: control over her own life.
Though the first few days were disorienting without the noise and motion of her family, she felt a heady sense of relief in having her own space, her independence. It had begun to pain her that she did not know any other elementals, but from what she had read, Hele came to the conclusion that her kind were not keen on living by other people’s rules or routines. The word she came by most often wasmercurial.
This impression came mostly from her single most read book: the newly releasedThe Shrouded Cityby Elise Sasini. Part memoir, part love story, part biography, it was a sensational new release that exposed the hitherto unconfirmed guardian of San Francisco,Calamity,a fog elemental. Hele was obsessed with his story and horrified by it in equal measure.
He did not know what a home was,she thought, skimming her hand over the plain wall beside the door.He did not know love, or family, or comfort. He was born in violence and pain. I was saved from that. I am loved.
So why did she feel such a nagginglack?
Suddenly restless, Hele waved her hand over the small sensor by the door. The glass panel slid away from the octagonal doorway. Her apartment was not on the interior of the building, so she didn’t stare out across the arch and into another person’s dwelling. Instead, she was positioned on the outside of the arch, which gave her a marvelous view of the stretch of frothy water between De Tour and the Dragon Roost.
The sun was setting. The sky was overcast, but the light that filtered through the clouds was blush colored and streaked with burnt orange. The air whipping off the water was cold and faintly wet. She felt it bite into the bare skin of her feet and gust up under her long, gauzy skirt.
Shapes criss-crossed the horizon, and calls echoed — whistles, mostly, but also the occasional bone-rattling dragon roar.
Her eyes, black like spilled oil, scanned the horizon. She held her breath.
Was he there? Was he one of those massive shadows against the clouds? She knew the shape of his wings, the very particular way he twitched his tail. Hele could spot Vael from miles away. Shehad.Many of her days had been spent with her legs over the edge of the perch, watching, waiting, for a glimpse of an emerald-hued dragon.
