“The friendships. The belonging.” A soft smile breaks over her face. “My birds,” she adds with even more feeling, love sparking in her eyes like starbursts.
“Are we friends then?” I rasp.
Her brows arch in delicate irony. “You declared yourself friendless.”
“Maybe I don’t want to be friends.” My heart clenches violently as the potentially ruinous words leave my mouth.
Her lips part on a startled breath. Her eyes roam my face, looking for clues to my meaning. It could be that I want more from her. It could also be that I want to continue my friendless existence.
My pulse pounds hard. Hers does too. She finally turns away, her gaze fixing out the window again. “You say you don’t want friends because you’ve never actually been alone. You isolated yourself plenty, but you had a choice, which makes all the difference. Loneliness wasn’t imposed on you.”
“Could you not have gone into Glarraden?” I ask, still holding her hand like a prize I won and won’t relinquish. “There must’ve been potential companions there.”
“All they did was point fingers and call me the gildenfae-gold kid in loud enough whispers for me to hear. I used to wish the gold would stop coming. Then maybe they’d all forget.” Her sigh feels like a mountain sitting on my chest.
“There’s nothing wrong with the gildenfae,” I say stiffly.
She scoffs. “It wasn’t about them. It was about the sheer amount of gold every year, which even you have to admit was a lot.”
No more than any queen of Ellonrift would have at her fingertips. “Do you think Rita and Gerard would’ve kicked you out if the gold stopped coming?”
She laughs, the sound like ice cracking on a lake. “That would’ve required them noticing I was there to begin with.”
I squeeze her hand, trying to convey an apology I should be free to say aloud. “I’m sorry,” I still tell her, though she can’t know why or how much.
Shrugging, she pulls her hand from mine. “Your plan to sober me up with frigid night air worked. I’m pretty sure I can make it down the stairs intact now.”
“You’re not going down the stairs, Sunshine.”
Her suspicious gaze snaps to mine. “So you are tossing me out the window?”
Grinning, I step up onto the low window frame and reach out a hand. She looks at me warily but slips her hand back into mine. I haul her up with me.
“You said you like to fly.” I grab her around the waist and fall backward, tipping us both into the void.
She gasps my name in a way that makes me want to devour her whole. As she clutches my shoulders, I turn in the air and let my shadow wings unfurl and solidify. We glide, the dragon in me heating us both, and she throws her legs around my waist, holding on with a grip so strong it pulls a low groan from my throat.
“This feels dangerous,” she whispers in my ear.
It feels disastrous. “Don’t worry. I’ve got you.” Her hair flies into my face, the scent of it filling my lungs. I pull her flush against me, bury my face in her neck, and breathe.
Her heartbeat thunders in my ears. My own echoes it. I slowly circle in wide arcs to prolong the moment, dreading her window coming into sight.
“Is this what it’s like to be starborn?” she asks huskily. Her hand slides to my neck, holding my face to her throat. Heat ripples down my spine. “A man and a dragon in one.”
I think the dragon is about to take over. It wants to claim, keep, mate.
So does the man. There’s no denying it, and I don’t even try. “Yes…for me.” And Idallia should know what it feels like to be starborn for her, except I’m keeping her from it. Or at least, from the choice.
“Why don’t you ever show this to anyone else?” she asks as her perpetually open window slides by. I let it pass.
“I don’t like to use this kind of power too often. Magic is waning, and I don’t want to waste mine.”
She pulls back a little, looking curiously into my face. “But you’ve shown me plenty of times.”
My wry chuckle is almost pained. She’s so close that it would take just the slightest dip of my head to kiss her. Would she welcome my lips? “I want you to know me.”
Color rises in her cheeks, the deeper flush visible even in the dark. “For what it’s worth, I think it’s beautiful. You’re everything at once. You don’t have to choose.”
