“Getting us ready to take off. Stop… elbowing me. Fuck! Stop moving.”
And now his arms are around me, caging me, and I want to fight but his scent is like a warm blanket, his chest at my back a wall I can lean on. I want to fight him just to show I can, but even my body betrays me.
“All right?” His voice is a distant thunder, rumbling at my back. “Got the egg?”
“Yeah.”
“Are you sure about doing this?”
A laugh escapes me. “You’re the one who wants me gone from here. Make up your mind.”
“Maybe there is another way,” he argues. “Someone else might know?—”
“Roane.”
After a beat of silence, he asks, “Do griffins even talk?”
“In the stories, they can.”
“Then why didn’t it say anything when we were in its nest?”
“Have you considered,” I muse, “that it may think us stupid, slow creatures incapable of coherent thought and speech?”
Roane huffs, his breath warm on my neck. “I have an idea. Threaten to turn it into a nightingale. That should get the creature to talk. Nobody is safe here with you.”
“Nobody is safe with me?” I blink in disbelief. “The hells, Roane. Don’t worry, I wasn’t planning on turning Ardruna and Talton into something else. I don’t even know their story, so it’s a moot point.”
He’s silent for a few beats. “I hadn’t thought of the possibility. It is concerning, though, now you mention it.”
“Screw you, Roane.”
Another huff which could be laughter. “So prickly.”
“And you’re an asshole, so what did you expect?”
Silence stretches.
Then he says, “You’re right. Every decision we make comes back to haunt us and mine are the worst. Simu, let’s fly.”
That wasn’t an apology in any sense of the word, and I clamp my jaw not to say anything else as the phoenix gets off the ground and flaps his wings, sending sparks and flames flying. Roane won’t give me an apology because he truly wants me gone and after that, he won’t have to see me ever again.
Because this is who he is. The open laughter, the boyish smiles, the funny banter, the sexy smoldering looks, they may be real. Not a façade but facets of him, yet they aren’t who he is inside.
You have to study a person over time, watch them on dangerous, depressing and happy occasions, in all circumstances, to decide if they deserve a place in your heart. It takes time to figure out what is at the center of them, what drives and defines them.
What defines Roane? Hard to tell. Bitterness. Some anger. Some sorrow. But what is the thorn? Where is the wound? Which is the cause?
Again, you’re treating him like a riddle. People are more complex than that.
And yet… at the core of every one of us there is a thorn, a wound, big or small, directing our actions.
No more time to consider that, though, as Simu takes flight. The ground falls from under us just as my stomach drops to my feet. I bow over, instinctively burying my fingers into the fine plumage on the phoenix’s neck and yelp at the heat. I cling on anyway, with Roane sliding an arm around my middle as we rise into the air.
My hair whips around my face, lashes my cheeks and gets into my mouth. I’m forced to lean back against Roane as we spiral upward. Was it like this last time we flew together? Feeling every ridge of his muscular chest, every shift in his biceps as his arm tightens around me, feeling an exhilaration that is completely out of place, considering the madness of what we’re about to do?
The phoenix flaps his wings again. Below us sprawls this world made of tales, this impossible universe contained inside a gigantic cavern with its snow-capped mountains and forests, the plains and the city at its center. Herds gallop underneath us. Flocks fly away from us.
A lone griffin flies overhead, that characteristic chimeric body catching my attention. It snaps around when it notices usand screeches—a warning to his kind, no doubt. Or a warning to us.
