She tried to, but it wasn’t easy. A great weight had settled on her chest. It pressed down on her so hard, it squeezed all the air out of her lungs and made her eyes water. The more her thoughts spun, the worse the weight became.
Out of the corner of her eye, Taevas’s wings arched and flexed. It didn’t appear he meant to do it, and as soon as they began to move, they stopped. The appendages jerked back into position behind him, the elegant bones and gauzy, veined membrane twitching uncontrollably.
Taevas’s dark skin went ashen. A curse hissed from between clenched fangs. “What kind of dragon am I, that I can’t do eventhis?”
She had no idea what he meant and couldn’t ask. Whatever had upset him, he seemed to come to a compromise when he snatched a blanket from his lap and, in a series of sharp, urgent movements, wrapped it around her tight enough to make her squirm.
Tugging her into his arms, Taevas pressed her face into the juncture of his shoulder and neck. “If you must hide, my Shiya, I will be your shelter, even now, when my wings fail me.”
The long curtain of his raven hair blocked out the light. His skin was feverishly warm under her cheek. Had the fever reducers done so little?
Worry nagged, but his scent, something warm and rich andhim,closed in around her as tightly as the blanket. He wrapped her in his arms, two iron bands over her back. She was strewnhaphazardly across his lap, rendered entirely immobile, and it was the single most comforting embrace she’d had since the night her grandfather died.
Her heartbeat began to slow. Pressing her face into his skin, she felt the frantic thrum of his own pulse against her lips. Her eyes closed.
Adon.
Was this not what she’d imagined when loneliness clawed at her belly in the night? The scent of him. The warmth of his skin. The baritone of his voice as he whispered her name into her curls.
This is my Adon.
And it was Taevas, too.
A tentative calm crept over her the longer they stayed like that, so tightly intertwined that she could hardly perceive any distance between them. The existence of Taevas didn’t mean the death of Adon, though that was, she realized, what her mind had instantly fixed on. It was so very used to loss that it could imagine little else.
Or at least, it didn’thaveto mean that. Maybe.
“You’re Taevas,” she whispered, mostly to herself.
“And you’re Alashiya.” His breath caressed the curve of her ear. One large hand skated up and down her spine. His throat bobbed with a hard swallow before he asked, “Why did you want to hide from me?”
“It’s what nymphs do when we’re threatened. It’s how we survive.”
A beat of tense silence passed. “Do I threaten you?”
“Yes,” she answered honestly, though she believed it wasn’t the answer he wished to hear. “This is terrifying, isn’t it?”
“I’ll be honest, I’d hoped for a happier reception. Or even a more neutral one. But I suppose nothing has gone according to plan so far, so why would it start now?” Taevas stroked her spine again, slow and careful, as if he were counting the beats of each pass in his mind.
“What did you imagine it’d be like?”
“I hoped our meeting would go a very different way. I thought that eventually you’d agree to see me, and I would take you to dinner in the city. You’d offer to show me your studio. And then?—”
Her heart skipped a beat.And then…
There was so much in those two words, but no matter how long she waited, it didn’t appear that he intended to finish the sentence.
“And then?” she whispered.
Taevas cleared his throat. “I never let myself think past that part.”
“Why?”
A heavy sigh stirred her hair. “A question with too many and too few answers,metsalill.Maybe you could tell me whatyouexpected.”
Alashiya would’ve happily pulled her teeth out instead. She’d been married to her imagination for so long that it felt disloyal to even entertain the thought of— well, she didn’t know what she was doing with Taevas just yet, but it felt likesomething.She grappled with the urge to refuse until it quieted down.
This is Adon,she reminded herself.Don’t you want to know him? To be known by him? Isn’t that all you’ve ever dreamed of?
