“The challenge is for you to find the act of creation that speaks to this Lethian garment.” He leans closer, his ethereal features dominating my view. “What moves the threads? Is it joy? Sadness? Peace?” He pauses. “Lust?”
My heart jumps.
Other than enabling me to take care of my bodily needs, the Lethian threads only changed their form when Antony touched me. Kissed me. Stroked me. Ran a finger across my skin…
“Lust,” Stellen whispers.
I have no doubt the quick catch in my breathing and the thunderous beat of my heart gave away my thoughts.
Stellen studies my lips as he says, “Do you know the story of how this dress was sung for the last Lethian Queen, Thyra?”
I recall how Cassia spoke about the dress with a hushed voice.
“Love and beauty were sung into its threads,” I say. “It was created using a song of strength.”
She told me the dress had last been worn by Antony’s mother, Aeliana Vividari, who’d embodied the love and strength of these threads.
For a brief moment, I have to ask myself if Aeliana ever bonded with the dress or used it as anything other than a garment.
If she ever did, it must have been out of sight of Antony and Cassia because they were shocked when the dress assimilated with my body and changed its form.
The slow smile tugging at Stellen’s lips draws my attention back to him.
“Love and beauty, sure,” he says. “Butlustis another power altogether.”
He reaches across the distance between us, leaving my hands where they press.
Placing his fingertips at the side of my throat and his palm to my heart, he mirrors my contact with his body.
“This dress was sung by the queen’s betrothed,” Stellen says, his touch nearly tugging me closer to him. “He was a Lethian man from a poor family. When they married, he became her husband but didn’t become king. Lethians only have queens because our women’s voices are…were…always stronger. But before they married, he sang this dress as a wedding gift.”
Stellen’s gaze flickers to the stone garden and I’m reminded that these stone flowers were a gift that represented false promises from his father to his mother.
“It took him a year to finish the dress. The Lethians call it theYear of Yearning. With every day and each new thread he sang for her, he proved his love to her.”
My heart hurts, an ache growing. For the lost Voice of the man who wove these threads and for the woman who waited for him to complete his gift.
“A year of wanting.”
Stellen’s fingertips cool my skin. Not only where he presses them gently to my throat, but also across my heart, because, with my next ragged, indrawn breath, the threads part to allow his hand through, his palm now pressing to my bare skin.
“Close your eyes, Thyra.”
Doing as he asks, I close off the visual and focus on the sounds around me. The quiet. The soft swish of material as he brushes my dress aside.
“Inhale and exhale,” he says, waiting for me to follow his instructions, the air slowly leaving my chest. “Feel the air flowing through your throat and mouth, becoming an instrument you can play.”
The remaining tension leaves my shoulders and neck as I lean into him and relax into my inhalations and exhalations.
“Imagine you’re completely safe.” Stellen’s voice is like the air I’m inhaling, soft, caressing my senses. “Any danger feels far away. There is only heat, soft at first, then more intense, building layer by layer.”
Slowly, he speaks, drawing out each word. “From the first brush of fingertips to the firmer press of a palm. The caress of warm lips. The drag of a tongue…”
My breath catches, my body pressing closer to his, a moan building at the back of my throat but catching there.
“Find that sound, Thyra.” His lips brush across my jaw, a tantalizing sensation. “Find it in the heat of an indrawn breath and in the letting go of an exhalation. Find it in your most uninhibited thoughts. Draw them out. Give them freedom. Submit to your desires?—”
I jolt forward, my eyes still closed, my most basic desire exploding through me.
