“Small ones. In a few months. They’ll grow.”
I should have been panicking. Should have been demanding explanations, questioning what I’d gotten myself into, cataloging all the ways my life was about to change.
Instead, I thought about flying. About the wind in my face during that first journey to the Aerie, the way the world had spread out below us like a map. About what it might feel like to have that freedom for myself.
“Okay,” I said.
He blinked. “Okay?”
“I spent years trapped in my uncle’s house, counting coins and cataloging cruelties and waiting for something to change.” I leaned forward, pressed my forehead to his. “Wings sound like an improvement.”
His laugh was rough and wondering. His hands came up to cup my face, and he kissed me again, deeper this time, with an urgency that made my toes curl.
A knock at the door interrupted us.
“Wren?” Elspeth’s voice, muffled through the wood. “Are you... is it safe to come in?”
Tavrin made a low sound of frustration.
“Give us a minute,” I called back. Then, quieter: “We should get dressed.”
“Must we?”
“My sister is outside.”
“She could wait.”
“Tavrin.”
He sighed. But he released me, and I climbed out of the nest to find my scattered clothes.
Getting dressed took longer than it should have. My shirt had somehow ended up behind a stack of poetry volumes. My trousers were tangled in a silk throw. And every time I bent to retrieve something, I felt his eyes on me, warm and appreciative and entirely unhelpful.
“Stop looking at me like that.”
“No.”
I threw a pillow at him. He caught it without looking, a grin spreading across his face.
By the time we were both decent, I was flushed and breathless and entirely too aware of how thin the door was. I opened it to find Elspeth standing in the hallway, cheeks pink, studiously examining the ceiling.
“Morning,” she said to the stonework above her head.
“You can look at me, Elspeth.”
She lowered her gaze. Took in my rumpled clothes, my tangled hair, the obvious evidence of what had transpired. Her blush deepened, but she didn’t comment.
“I made breakfast,” she said instead. “Or I tried to. Your kitchen is very strange.”
“My kitchen is efficient,” Tavrin said from behind me. He’d pulled on trousers but nothing else, and my sister’s eyes went wide at the sight of him: a monster of bronze feathers and golden eyes and muscle that wasn’t even trying to look human anymore.
“You’re very large,” she said.
“Yes.”
“And you have wings.”
“Also yes.”
