She sat up. “How?”
He dropped down from the roost, his claws curving over the edge of the nest. “I will join you if you permit it. Only to help you sleep, nothing more. You know my cock doesn’t work, anyway.”
She let out a shaky breath and nodded, moving to make more room for him. He slowly settled in behind her, keenly aware of her every breath and tremor so he would not distress her.
“Oh, youarewarm,” she said, sounding surprised. Her stiff back relaxed slightly.
“I can put my arm around you if you won’t find it frightening.”
“I’m not afraid of you,” she said, with a funny little hiccup of a laugh. So he draped his arm over her, searching for a positionthat was comfortable for them both. After some awkward fumbling, she grasped his wrist and placed it so his forearm tucked into the crowded valley between her breasts and belly. “There.”
“Can I tell you something?” he asked after a long minute of holding his breath while the hatchling kicked and squirmed against his arm.
She turned her head on the bolster so he could see a glimpse of one blue eye and her delicate profile. “What is it?”
“I’m afraid ofyou.”
She was quiet. He didn’t know how he’d expected her to react. Finally, she said, in the injured tone of someone who’d been teased, “No, you’re not.”
“I am,” he insisted. The explanation came slowly, scraped from his innermost depths. “I have been resigned to a certain life for many years. One where I am reviled for my appearance and tolerated for my tier. It doesn’t bother me. I no longer expect more. But our mating…it has made me want what I can’t have. You have made me want it, and I am afraid I will never have it.”
“What is it that you want?” she asked, sounding genuinely curious.
You.The word sat in his mouth like a stone.This.
“I want to fly again,” he said instead. “So I can dance with you at skyballs and show everyone my pretty mate. So I can teach our fledgling to hunt when he is older. So I can seed the clouds with my parents’ ashes when they die someday.”
The one lid he could see fell shut, and her lips parted. Her hand clutched the furs in front of her. “I wish you could have that. I wish you could have everything you want.”
Emboldened, he barreled on. “Iwantto share the nest with you every night, but I am too cowardly to tell you because I fear your rejection. I know what we have. I know what this is. I won’t ask for anything to change. But I consider you my true mate,even though we do not share the bond. I don’t want separate lives. I wish to be your mate in all ways. Fallen gods, forgive me. The mead is talking.”
“Then what is my excuse?” she asked mildly.
“Your excuse for what?”
The laugh that broke from her was wet at the edges. “For wanting the same thing. I only had a few sips of mead.”
He felt faint. Could it even be possible that she felt the same? “The mead was strong.”
She giggled. “I’m as sober as a keeper. I don’t know when it happened. But I listen for your steps on the ladder, and when I hear them, I feel—” She stopped, drawing a deep breath. “Safe. I feel safe. And I haven’t felt safe in a long time. And I find your company very pleasing, even when you are stone. I find I never want to be away from you.”
His arms tightened around her reflexively, pulling them together. The angle of his horns prevented him burying his face in her neck as he wished, but she tipped her head back so it rested under his chin.
“Sleep,” he said, because if she said another word, he would crumble back into the rubble the masons had so painstakingly reassembled. “I will be here when you wake.”
“You should go,” she murmured, already yawning. “People are waiting to see the Nadir.”
“Let them wait.”
“They’vebeenwaiting!”
“Then a little longer won’t matter. I have very important business in my eyrie. In my nest. In my arms, to be specific.”
She smiled, crinkling the corner of her eye before it shut again and sleep stole her away while he watched.
This was not new. He’d watched her every morning from his roost, frozen in stone while the sun tracked across the floor. He knew her sleeping face better than his own. The way her lipsparted with each exhale. The way her hand curled beneath her chin. Even the way she frowned in her sleep when the baby shifted inside her and pressed her palm to her belly, soothing it without waking.
But watching her when she was his, truly his, was something else. It felt—a little bit—like flying.
