“What is the task?”
That was a good question. I surveyed the blindfold in his hands.
“I think one of us needs to wear that.”
He didn’t hesitate to hold it out to me, and I scowled.
“The dark is unseeing, the light is unfeeling,” I recited from the podium. “I think that means you have to wear it. It’s not like I can kill you.”
“You might be able to retrieve the key piece and leave me.”
I was about to make a sarcastic remark, but something in the tone of those last two words made me stumble internally. I thought they tapered off with vulnerability. Was it possible that the more time he spent with me, the more Nyte’s truer, good feelings grew? I’d noticed how irritable and on edge Nightsdeath had become in recent days. How he often looked at me with the will to kill but something was making him hesitate even from torturing me.
“I’m not going anywhere,” I said, barely a whisper as I held his glowing amber eyes. “We’re getting that thing together.”
I snatched the blindfold from him, only to step closer and reach up while standing on my toes to tie it around his eyes. His hands immediately shot over mine as the material stole his sight. We stood there for a few wild heartbeats before his grip relaxed, and he let me tie it behind his head. When I let go, he hissed as the material tightened by some form of magick, making it impossible to remove now until we’d retrieved the key piece.
For a moment I was stunned by his vulnerability. The shadows around him still primed and swirled with more anger than ever, but he’d given his trust to me for this. If I ran out of the temple now, would he ever be free of that blindfold?
“Now what?” he asked, so quietly it was the first inkling of uncertainty he’d ever shown.
I went to reach for his hand, but suddenly the ground disappeared beneath my feet, and I hadn’t unglamoured my wings yet. Falling rapidly only lasted a few seconds before an arm wrapped around me, stopping my plummet. Then we were floating around midnight swirls and broken constellations. His wings of shadow suspended us there.
“Might want to release those wings,” he commented, a slight huskiness in his tone over how our bodies were forcibly pressed together. My legs wrapped tightly around his waist. Even if he couldn’t feel me physically, was he affected by the proximity?
I tried to reach my wings but they felt… missing. Then realization dawned.
“I can’t,” I breathed, clutching him tighter now that I understood he was the only thing that kept me from plunging into an abyss. “Trust has two sides. Don’t drop me.”
When he realized what I meant, Nightsdeath stiffened, and one terrible note of dread that he might let go slithered up my spine. Instead, his arm tightened, then his other hand hooked under my thigh, prompting me to wrap my legs around him more securely. My pulse skipped, and I was unable to resist pressing myself against him as tightly as I could.
“Best get comfortable then. Who knows what other surprises there might be. So likewise, don’t let go,” he said. His breath fanned across my lips, and I could have whimpered as I forced back the desire for him to kiss me.
Nightsdeath flew and I glanced over my shoulder to direct him. “Lower.” Then, “Left. No, my left, your right.” I bit my lip against the amusement bubbling inside me from how ridiculous this was.
“We should have swapped places,” he mumbled, but when I caught a glance, I thought a curl fought onto his mouth too.
“That wasn’t the instruction. Lower—not that much!”
The fact that I didn’t have my own wings to let go so I could dive straight for the floating key piece was becoming increasingly frustrating. Nightsdeath stopped moving to hover in the air with me, and I turned my face back to him. With his eyes covered I couldn’t read his expression to understand why he’d stalled.
“I want to feel you,” he said, five words that stunned me, coiling in my stomach. The faint flex of his fingers on my waist and thigh left no mistaking what type offeelhe meant. “It’s the only thing that makes me envy Rainyte.”
Without thinking, my fingers threaded through the back of his hair. “Physical touch… the yearning for it… has to come from a feeling within first.”
“Lust doesn’t need attachment.”
“Is that all you feel for me? Lust?”
He thought for a moment. “No. I feel a deep, unending desire to kill you. Because you making me contemplate such trivial things as lust is a terrible distraction. It’s what makes Rainyte fail time and time again.”
A swelling grew in my chest, perhaps made of sheer desperation that birthed a new hope in my mind. What if reaching the parts of Nyte that were suppressed in Nightsdeath could wake his physical body? Maybe it was a grasp in the dark, but my light was fading further the longer he lay cursed and out of my reach. No, not out of my reach—he was right here. Wrapped around me.
“Come back to me,” I whispered, then pressed my lips to his.
It took a second to bend the dark, but then he was kissing me back. Needy and desperate and searching. It was the dark welcoming the light, colliding as night and stars, accepting the inevitability and chaos of each other.
Then, as if he realized what wanting this would cost, his hold slackened, releasing me.
