“I don’t know.” Honest, this time. Painfully so. “I’ve been trying to determine that since the moment I met you. I’ve analyzed the data. Run correlations. Tried to identify what variable you represent that’s causing this—” He gestured between them. “—this deviation from my established patterns.”
“And what did you find?”
“Nothing.” He laughed—a strange, rusty sound that surprised them both. “Absolutely nothing. You don’t fit any model. You don’t correspond to any theory. You’re just—” He shook his head. “You’re chaos, Cassia. Pure, beautiful chaos. And my entire existence has been built on order.”
“Is that a complaint?”
“I don’t know what it is.” He met her gaze, letting her see the confusion he’d been hiding. The fear. The want he didn’t know how to deal with. “I don’t know what any of this is. I just know that when I’m not with you, I find myself counting the hours until I am. I know that when you smile, my pulse does something I can’t explain. I know that I’ve existed for eight centuries without feeling anything, and now?—”
He stopped. The words had run out, leaving him stripped bare in a way he hadn’t been in longer than he could name.
Cassia stepped closer. Near enough that her warmth cut through the chill. So near, he could see the lightning reflected in her eyes.
“And now?” she prompted.
“And now I feel things.” His voice dropped to barely above a whisper. “I don’t know how to do that anymore. I’m not sure I ever did.”
“Maybe—” She hesitated. Her hand lifted, hovered in the air between them, then fell back to her side. “Maybe you don’t have to know how. Maybe you just have to let it happen.”
“That’s not how I operate.”
“I know.” Her smile was soft. Sad. Understanding in a way that made something twist inside him. “I had to learn to make myself smaller so I wasn’t too much.”
“You’re wrong about that.” The words came out fierce. Certain. “You’re exactly what you should be. Anyone who told you otherwise was wrong.”
Something broke open in her expression. Not pain—something closer to hope. Something fragile and desperate and achingly tender.
“You really believe that.”
“I don’t say things I don’t believe.” He’d moved closer—deliberately or not, he wasn’t sure anymore. Near enough to see the pulse fluttering in her throat. So near the charge between them built to something almost unbearable. “You’re not what they said you were, Cassia. You’re magnificent.”
Thunder cracked overhead. The storm had moved closer while they talked, the leading edge of rain beginning to fall around them—fat drops that splattered against the grass, against their shoulders, against skin suddenly too warm despite the cold.
Neither of them moved.
“We should go,” she said. Didn’t move.
“Yes.” He didn’t either.
The rain intensified. Lightning split the sky directly above them, near enough to make the air sizzle with ozone. Cassia laughed—wild and joyful—and tilted her face up to the downpour.
“This is your fault,” she said. “The storm. It responded to me, and I—” She broke off, shaking her head, water streaming down her cheeks. “I was feeling things I shouldn’t feel. Wanting things I can’t have. And now we’re both going to drown.”
“I can’t drown.” Aero reached out—finally, finally—and brushed a wet curl from her face. His fingers lingered against her cheek. Her skin was rain-cold but her magic burned beneath it, reaching for his, and the contact sent a current arcing through them both. “Dragon.”
“Show-off.” She was smiling. Really smiling. Her hand came up to cover his where it rested against her face.
And Aero stood in the middle of a storm, touching Cassia Gale’s face, feeling more alive than he had in eight hundred years.
His dragon hummed with satisfaction.This is just the beginning, it whispered.Wait until you claim her.
For once, Aero didn’t argue.
He let himself feel it. All of it. The rain and the lightning and the woman looking up at him with storm-colored eyes full of something that might be hope.
The world could burn tomorrow. The surge could destroy everything. His careful existence could fall to ash.
Right now, in this moment, none of that mattered.
