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CORDELIA

AUTUMN

The world spins back to autumn.

A year has passed since I’ve felt Zephyr’s aura sweeping over my skin. I blink my eyes open as the morning sun shines through the greenhouse windows.

Leaves blow over the frost-tipped lawn. I shiver and pull my blankets around myself.

Tonight, I’ll have to move the wishflower back into the house again.

Sticking my feet into slippers, I bend down to pick up the pot, and my heart hammers against my ribs. The petals are splayed open.

“Oh no.” I drop to my knees, searching for Zephyr’s essence. “Where did you go?”

“Right here, darling. Please don’t worry.” Zephyr is leaning against a wrought-iron bar near the potting bench. Their silver hair flows to their waist, and their wings peek through slashes in the back of their shirt, completely healed. “I didn’t want to wake you, so I curled up in your hair for a while, then went up to the cottage to grab some clothes before Orla woke up.”

“Kyle the kelpie lives here now too.”

“I know. I heard you,” they say. “I heard everything you told me.”

Their aura is healthy, glowing. It glows even brighter as I rush across the greenhouse and throw my arms around them.

They sweep me up in their arms and spin me around, their boots leaving the ground.

“A year,” I say, kissing them all over their gorgeous face. “You were gone for a whole year.”

“I tried so hard to get back.” They swipe a tear away from my cheek. “I don’t think I would’ve been able to if I hadn’t heard your voice through the aether, calling me back to where I’m meant to be.”

I hug them tighter. “Right here with me, always.”

“Always.” They press their nose to my hair, inhaling deeply. “Can I take you somewhere special?”

“Anywhere.”

They grin and pull me into their aether. I dissolve into blissful nothingness with them, reappearing in a night sky filled with milky stars.

“Where are we?”

“Somewhere on the other side of the realm,” they say, their wings fluttering. “Somewhere we can be completely alone together.”

The dark ocean stretches out beneath us. There’s only the sky and the water for as far as I can see.

“Goddess, I missed you.”

“Yeah, I missed you too.”

They toss me up into the air, and their aether wraps around me, suspending me above them. The ocean is far below, but I’m not afraid of falling because I know they’ve got me.

I’ve missed this trust, the way we fall into sync with each other so easily. I’ve never known this kind of feeling with anybody.

They float forward and press my knees open, kissing me along my thighs as they push my nightgown up to my hips and slide my undergarments down past my feet. The light fabric gets caught in the breeze and loops down to the sea.

Zephyr calls their aether up higher, lifting my arms and binding my wrists together as they kiss my pussy and lick sweet circles around my clit. Warm pleasure tingles through me as they taste me, plunging their tongue inside of me.

They eat me like they’re starving, grabbing my ass and pulling me closer to their face as they fly me up even higher. I relish all of the sensations in this body that I can shift at will and sing my happiness to the sky with a voice that’s all mine.