My whole body trembles again at her touch, not from the force but from the gentleness of it, her finger cold and sure as any promise when it traces my cheekbone, trying to memorize it. “If I gave you my word, would that be enough?”
“Not nearly.”
“Would it help if I kissed you again?”
“No,” Adria says, but she leans in anyway, her lips tentatively brushing mine as if expecting a second embrace to make me disappear altogether.
We stay like that for a while, kissing soft and slow, hands settling on each other’s hips instead of wandering, learning each other’s corners and edges. She holds one hip with the other hand braced against my back, since she has to bend so far to kiss me, dipping me low. And I grip her hip right back with one hand, and the underside of her good wing with the other, just barely keeping myself upright through the brain fog ofshe’s kissing me, I’m kissing her, we’re kissing and I don’t ever want to stop …
I’m the one to draw back this time, needing to catch my breath despite the softness of the kiss. It takes Adria half a moment to register my absence, her eyes fluttering back open, violet orbs pinning me where I stand, ordering me not to withdraw any farther.
“Nothing ties you here,” she says.
I shake my head, defiant. “I’ll come back for you.”
“And I want to believe you, Kori, I do.” She sighs. “But without something to draw you back, to demand your return …” At once her gaze goes wide. “After I’ve tended to my wounds, and to yours, would you accept a parting token from me? Something of the nightfolk?”
“Of course I would,” I agree without thinking.
Before I forget, I gather the collapsed pieces of my armor, reattaching them to my various joints. I don’t extend them to cover my full body, though; I’ve spent quite long enough in that sun-forsaken security suit. Instead I let the shrunken pieces of metal stay at my wrists,my ankles, my waist, and my collarbone, ready to extend as needed, but notably less constricting.
“My wing is too wounded to carry you on my back,” Adria says, glancing up to where we both tumbled from a floor and a half above. “But I can’t very well expect you to climb with that arm. And there’s Aspect to contend with.” Her eyebrows furrow as she determines a solution. “You carry Aspect; I carry you. All right?”
With a grunt, I heave Aspect into my arms, unsure of what to do next. “I’m not sure I—” But before I can protest, Adria sweeps me up into her arms—one of them beneath my back, the other settled beneath my knees, holding me securely against her body.
The sun serpent’s slash on my arm stings more every moment, but complaining about it given the state of Adria’s wing feels like every time Aspect has tried to convince me thattheirlife is very hard.
I expect Adria to put me down once we alight on the upper floor. Instead she holds me close, her heartbeat pattering against my cheek, as she walks us both back toward what’s left of her quarters. Fur ragged, triple tongues panting, Russ patters after both of us, all three heads observing Aspect’s supine body in my arms with ever-increasing canine concern.
Once upon a time,
the princess of sunlight caught flame,
like a rogue star born of another’s destruction.
CHAPTER
24
ADRIA
Istill store simple antiseptics in my quarters. After my overcharge, when I broke every mirror that hung too close and proceeded to play with the pieces, I resented my weakness and was loath to admit it to any healer, even trusted Zalel. So I cared for the wounds on my own, with bandages and alcohol rather than nightfolk gifts. Zalel either assumed I was conserving his powers for my soldiers, or he was gracious enough not to ask.
I set down Kori, who subsequently sets down Aspect. Russ immediately begins nudging at the inert robot with his central head, the first and third heads whimpering at the lack of response. Kori scratches both heads under their chins in an attempt to offer some comfort. Her eyes returned to their usual brown, not blue, when she keeled over into my arms in the rubble—but regardless of her irises’ shade, I can’t stop looking at them, looking atherproperly outside her armor. This battered, beautiful rule breaker of a girl, just … sitting in my room, flesh and blood and bone, as real as anything.
But nevertheless, she doesn’t feel real. I half expected her to fall through my arms like a ghost when I went to lift and carry her safely out of the wreckage.
Across the room, nestled next to my pillow, exactly where I left it when going to visit Neo in prison, is my comms tablet. I can hear it buzzing with frantic notifications from here—doubtless, my soldiers are panicked and thrown off guard by the sun serpents’ attack—but my brain is already a whirlwind. I can process only so much at once. And right now, the volume of the pain in my torn wing is drowning out nearly all else. So I launch into a long-winded explanation to distract myself from the imminent pain.
“This isn’t my first wing wound. The membrane reseals itself within a sleep cycle, even in nightfolk without a healing gift, but I need to sanitize it first, or risk an infection spreading through the whole structure when it closes.” I rummage through my stone drawers, seeking antiseptic bottles that aren’t already mostly empty. “I can hold the wing still well enough, but reaching that slash is another story. Can you pour a few drops of this along the wound?”
Kori visibly pales and gulps. Having her face hidden for so long truly concealed her greatest weakness; without her helmet, her visage is a canvas constantly painted outright with whatever emotions she’s feeling. I can’t help but marvel at the openness when it feels like all my apparent feelings have to go through a mutation process first, becoming anger before eventually simmering down to their original form.
“I won’t hurt you,” I reassure her through already-gritted teeth. “And if I kneel, like this, and you stand on the bed, you should be able to reach—”
“I don’t want to hurtyou,” Kori protests, vaguely waving her arms in the direction of my increasingly throbbing wing.
I take a deep breath, holding the antiseptic out to Kori again and shaking the bottle. Finally she takes it, white-knuckling the lid. I’m a good soldier; my last wing wound was hundreds of sleep cycles ago, butshe doesn’t need to know that, or it’ll only make her nerves worse. “If we don’t clean it now, it’ll hurt a hell of a lot worse later.”
