A woman stood before him, one hand on the door jamb. Her skin was a perfect, deep gold and her curly hair was the darkest shade of mahogany. Her generous hips and chest were swathed in a simple wrap dress. She wore no makeup, no ornament, andstood there silently, her full lips unsmiling. For just a moment, the great Isand felt all of two inches tall.
“If you’re going to burn my house down, I’d appreciate a bit of warning.”
How could I forget?Taevas’s rage died in the space between heartbeats.Alashiya. A nymph. Yes. Yes, I remember her. She’s helping me. I need her.
He stared at her, dumbfounded. Cypress and her unique personal fragrance filled the room. It mixed with the scent of hanging herbs, green things, the impressions of thousands of meals and cooking oil and cleaning solvents.
It was the scent of home.
He could say nothing even if he had the means. The almighty Isand was struck speechless as the nymph gave him a withering glare. Her feet made hardly any noise when she padded meaningfully around him, using the tiny amount of space he didn’t occupy to reach the cooking area. She cast withering looks at the chair and the pans.
The narrow shafts of sunlight struck her as she filled a dented copper kettle in the deep basin of the sink. For just a moment, she appeared ethereal, her skin made of shining bronze, her curls of pure gold. His breath stuck in his throat.
Never in all his long life had Taevas seen a creature as lovely as Alashiya.
With a graceful flick of her wrist, she sealed the kettle’s lid and placed it on the stove. He watched with confusion as she reached for a lighter on the spice rack. A few strikes saw a little flame spring to life, which she used to light the burner beneath the kettle. His sense of disorientation grew.
What on Earth… I haven’t seen a stove like that in seventy years.
She didn’t spare him another glance as she moved about. Even when she had to step over him, or nudge him aside to open a drawer, she kept her gaze firmly away from him.
Something deep and fundamental in him balkedat that, but Taevas could only watch her, his higher mental processes ground to a halt.
That scent. That face.
The events of the previous day came to him all at once. He’d crashed into this nymph’s barn and she’d taken care of him. Then something went wrong. She left him there, defying orders she couldn’t hear, and drove him into a panic so sharp it’d cut him deeper than any of his wounds.
It was an unbeatable compulsion, the urge he’d felt to follow her. It’d nearly killed him to do it. His progress was slow and painful. The sight of her narrow doorway had nearly driven him to tear the whole house apart in order to get to her, but he’d used what little sense he still possessed and managed to squeeze inside.
He’d been deeply vexed by her. She wasn’t allowed to storm off, not when there was a threat around, and certainly not when he didn’t know where she’d gone off to. Didn’t she know who hewas?He’d commanded her to stay.
He was Isand. His orders were followed without question. Taevas never had to ask twice, let alonefollowsomeone.
But he’d followed her. He didn’t have a choice.
He’d dragged himself through the rain, his belly and tail slipping through the mud, as thoughtless and desperate as a beast. There was no pride. There was no Isand. There wasn’t evenTaevas.
Just her.
He experienced the oddest sensation of vertigo. It was the result of realizing that, for only the second time in his life, he’d been driven by nothing other than instinct. It had possessed him, body and mind, until even the pain of his wounds hadn’t been enough to deter him from seeing its will done.
Just as it’d been the first time, it was, in a word, revolting.
“I’d offer you a cup of coffee, but you said you don’t drink in that form, so I won’t.”
Alashiya poured the hot water through an old-fashioned enamel pot. The scent of fresh coffee bloomed allaround her as she slowly spun to face him. There was something flinty in her large doe eyes. Bruises decorated one side of her face, giving the look far more weight than it otherwise would’ve had.
He tensed, claws curling into the tile and tail rattling with furious intent.Who did that to you?
His knee-jerk reaction to the sight was just strong enough to out-muscle his instinctive revulsion to being so… not himself. Out of control.Wrong.
“I don’t know who you are,” she began, her tone painfully measured, “and at this point, I really don’t care. You’ve scared me. Battered me. Held me against my will. And then, against all good sense, when I helped you anyway,you broke into my houseand got mudeverywhere.”
Taevas balked.I did that to her?
He had vague impressions of her saying something like that to him before, but his head was clearer now. Hurting her intentionally was still beyond outrageous, but if he’d been careless?—
How could I be careless? I’m never, ever careless. I don’t lose control like that.
