“What do you mean?” he asks, running his hands over me and then looking around the room like he expects to find an opponent hidden in the shadows or vines.
“Fighting my gryphon,” I add. “She’s pissed, and I can’t let her kill…” I trail off on a grunt as Pigeon internally sucker punches me.
Understanding pools in Treno’s gaze, but I’m too busy mentally shouting at Pigeon and trying to decipher her images to pay much attention.
“I don’t know what the fuck your problem is. But you can’t go around killing anything and everything that you like! I don’t want to die, and going on a murder spree is only going to get us both killed!”I yell at her.
Again I’m hammered with images of gryphons, knots, fire, a phone, fabric being sewn together, and sex of the gryphon and people variety.
“I don’t know what that means!”I shout at her for the thousandth time, and we both turn our backs to each other and stew in frustration.
I don’t know how everything has gone so wrong in such a short amount of time, but I don’t know if I can take it. It’s one thing for everything on the outside to be fucked up, but this battle now between two pieces of my essence feels like the last fucking straw. Treno asks me something, but a sob shoves its way out of my chest. Out of nowhere, an army of them march their way up my throat and out my lips, arming themselves with the tears streaming down my cheeks. I slam my hands over my face, like somehow it will trap this army of devastation, but I can’t hold them all back. I’m not even sure why I’m trying to anymore.
Treno wraps me up, his arms holding me tightly, as I fragment and splinter. His lips move against my ear, but I can’t hear what he tells me as I bleed out my pain and frustration. There’s a small voice in the back of my mind, telling me that I don’t fucking know this guy and should immediately stop losing my shit all over him, but I don’t have it in me to care. I’m tired of fighting alone and not understanding anything.
I don’t know where to set my feet down or what to point my wings toward. I don’t know what’s safe or how to spot the threats. I feel fucking hopeless. I’ve never had to navigate that emotion before I came here, not when my parents died or my gran passed, not even back when I thought I was latent. Then I wake up in the Eyrie and learn my whole life is lies and bullshit, and all I can seem to feel anymore is helpless and…overwhelmingly hopeless.
A hand strokes from the crown of my head down to the small of my back where my hair ends. It repeats this action over and over again, gently working out the tangles, as my sobs slow. Shuddering breaths pattern my pain, and my tear reserves dry out. Everything around me falls quiet, but that hand keeps stroking down my hair as I’m held tightly against Treno. I soak in his warmth and shamelessly wrap myself in his comfort.
I sniff and ease into an empty calm, every emotion in my body purged. I drop my hands to my lap and rest my cheek against a warm shoulder. We stay like that for a while. I breathe him in. Pigeon evaluates the situation curiously while still flipping me the bird. Treno runs his hand soothingly down my head and back, and we all just exist and settle into a numb kind of peace.
“What can I do to help?” he asks me quietly after a while.
Several beats pass before I take a deep breath and respond. “I need answers, knowledge. I need to understand as much as I can so I can try to make sense of it all. I don’t want to feel lost or hopeless anymore,” I confess quietly.
His hand moves softly to the small of my back and pauses there. “Very well then, let’s go hunt for some answers.”
I sit up, surprised by his easy response. “How?” I ask, hope and uncertainty warring inside my chest.
“We can start with the archives, see if we can find what you’re looking for there. If that turns up nothing, we can check with the seers. If we have to comb the Amaranthine Mountains until we find where you woke up and search the area for clues and answers, we will. We may have to wait until the war is over, but we won’t stop searching for answers until you have them,” he reassures me, brushing strands of hair from my face.
My eyes bounce back and forth between his blue eye and his purple eye. I search them and then his face for any hint of deception orjust kidding, but I don’t see anything other than warmth and tenderness there.
“Just like that?” I ask, unable to help myself.
Treno’s brow furrows slightly at my question, and he studies my face.
“Yes,” he answers simply. He brings his hand up and skims my cheek with the back of his fingers.
“Okay,” I agree, my gaze dropping to his lips momentarily before I move to get out of his lap.
He stands up with me, and I move toward the door, ready to see what we can find.
“You may want to get dressed first, flower,” he calls to my back with a chuckle.
I look down and am quickly reminded that I’m completely naked.
Shit.
I whirl around and just catch Treno adjusting himself. He’s in soft leather pants and a well-fitted tunic. Hunger unfurls in my gut, and I trace every line of muscle and every smooth expanse of fabric over his incredible body with needy eyes. His long white hair falls over one shoulder, and I want to push it back so no inch of his upper body is obstructed. Satisfaction grows like a seedling in my chest, and I cough and narrow my eyes at its presence.
Pigeon!
I know without a shadow of doubt that the little turkey is back to fucking with me. She may be pouting in the corner right now, but she knows nothing pisses me off like when she scrambles my hormones. You’d think the winged menace would have learned her lesson with Ryn and Zeph, but no, here we go again.
I blink and try to clear my head of the lust-spiked fog currently rolling through my mind.
“I don’t have any clothes,” I tell him, ignoring my heavy breasts and the zings of anticipation flickering between my thighs.
