And so, she took him by the collar, pulling him down to her height, and kissed him.
~
Avalon was vaguely aware that something cool in temperature was covering her face. Its presence was reassuring, even amidst the fitful dreams that left her body drenched in sweat.
Wherever she was…it was too warm. A suffocating heat wrapped around limbs that felt bloated and heavy. There was a sharp, medicinal smell to the air, though it slightly aided her in breathing. Sometimes she felt like there was a voice inside her head.
A clearing stuffed with flowers, a man with eyes of jade, and the most beautiful Fey woman she’d ever seen. And there was love in the hazy air—the kind of love that left her heart full, even as it struggled to keep beating.
After a while, she began to realize the dreams weren’t dreams at all—they were memories. She thought she should remember whose memories they were, but the name escaped her, even as it drifted off the sculptured mouth of the jade-eyed captain in the clearing. Every time he uttered the woman’s name, Avalon trembled. It was spoken like the softest caress; like a prayer echoing against temple walls.
The name began to pulse inside her head as time wore on, like the slow, heavy thump of her own heart, and soon the five letters strung in order, at last making sense.
Sable. Sable. Sable.
Avalon slipped into the newest memory. Twitching and gasping for breath. Shooting pains lanced through her limbs as her mind drifted someplace far away…
Back into that other time.
Another life.
~
The waterfall seemed to tumble straight out of the gray sky.
As Sable and Killian climbed higher, through mist that clung to the mountainside and the cool overspray of the half-frozen waterfall, her limbs began to scream with the need to rest. She gritted her teeth against the pain twisting deep in her muscles and kept climbing, fighting for purchase in rock laced with frost, and grasping at snow-covered plants that poked through her moleskin gloves.
“Whose idea,” she gritted out, panting between every word, “was this again?”
Her brother’s answer was curt. “Yours.” He was several feet ahead of her, and she was somewhat grateful, for she was entirely relying on his choice of where to place his boots and which shrubs to grab onto. If it weren’t for Killian, she likely would’ve fallen long ago. She had been monitoring the pale sun as it shifted in the sky since they’d started climbing, and as she craned her neck to look at it again, she realized only an hour had passed. One blasted hour.
Thanks to Balthazar summoning Hunter to a meeting, she’d had no choice but to seek training with someone else. And there was no better person than Killian, though he certainly pushed her to her limits. But…she needed the exercise. After stumbling to the House of Ice, cut up from shoulders to lower back by Terren’s cat-o’-nine-tails, she’d been bedridden for a solid week. By the third day, she’d started pacing, bouncing on the balls of her feet. She wasn’t used to being so still—and so useless.
It was why Hunter had offered to take a stroll with her yesterday—when they’d ended up in the clearing where her and Levon had first met. The clearing where they’d carved their initials into the Wistwood tree.
And now…the clearing where she and Hunter had shared their first kiss. She’d only ever kissed one other person in her eighteen years—and that was Levon. It was different with Hunter, but she welcomed the difference. Before they’d shared that first kiss, Hunter was already healing the broken parts of her, like molten gold poured into cracked stone. Day by day, he was making her whole again, a better version of what she was before. She was terrified to love again, to let her walls down after so many years spent reinforcing them. Everyone she loved was always taken from her, eventually. Her mother, Hannelore, Levon… All good things must end.
As they neared the top of the roaring waterfall at last, she was ashamed to admit she missed the warmth of her fire. The tips of her pointed ears were freezing beneath the hood of her cloak, and her toes had gone numb hours ago, during the walk from the House of Ice to the mountains separating this realm from its neighbor. Killian had chosen this location so they could make use of every muscle. When Killian trained, he trained hard. Possibly even harder than Hunter.
They reached the crown of the waterfall and pulled themselves up. Her brother didn’t offer her a hand, but she didn’t expect it. For years she had rejected any form of help, had recoiled if someone dared lift her up if she fell. When Elden had crouched beside her in the mud over a week ago, and had lifted her over his shoulder, it was the first time in forever that she’d yielded. And it had felt…ridiculously satisfying to be cared for. To allow someone else to be the stronger one for a change. Perhaps if she hadn’t painted herself in such bold colors growing up, others would be more willing to help her.
Killian let out a low whistle. “That’s some cave,” he said, his words echoing faintly.
Indeed, it was. The waterfall drifted from the bowels of a towering split in the mountain, the jagged edges lined with perilously sharp icicles that were longer than Sable’s arm.
She came up beside him and shook off her hood, trying to hide the fact that her legs were still trembling from the climb. Those brutal months spent in the Dark Lord’s army had taken a toll on her. “I figured, when you suggested we climb this cliff, that you’d been up here before.”
He shook his head, his waves of reddish-gold hair catching the winter sunlight. “I’ve always wanted to, but never had the chance. And when you said you wanted a challenge, I figured not a lot in the world is more challenging than climbing a half-frozen mountain while getting sprayed in the face by a waterfall.” He cracked a smile, winked, and sauntered into the darkness.
“Wait—where are you going?”
“I’m going to check it out, obviously.” He strode casually along the bank of the river, and soon the shadows swallowed him up.
“Killian!” she shouted. Silence. She tried again, louder this time. “KILLIAN!”
But her brother was gone, and only a ghostly chuckle bounced from deep inside the cave.
And it was that laugh that made her realize… Made her wonder if Killian reallyhadknown this whole time that a cave loomed at the summit of this mountain. It wouldn’t surprise her, for Killian was forever trying to squash what few fears still lurked deep in the recesses of her mind. She had always denied these fears, but the bond shared between twins allowed for a deeper understanding of each other, one that surpassed explanation.
