I nod because it’s easier than giving that silver splinter the honor it deserves.
Slipping inside myself, I move some of the rocks on my shore. One at a time, I pile them on the splinter, building a stony pyre while ignoring the luminous presence at my back—watching from beneath the hard surface of my icy lake. A presence I was once petrified of. Still am, I guess … but for different reasons.
Heavier reasons.
I don’t turn. Don’t stop stacking stones until there is no silver light coming through the cracks. No sign of it there at all, bar the heap of rocks that hides the hurt for another dae.
When I’m stronger. Better.
Not this dae.
As I work, I’m distantly aware of Líri’s presence nesting within me, hardening beneath my ribs like a calcifying moon. As I imagine the world did when it first came to be.
A cold, solid weight I cradle … like the dark cradles the moons in the south.
“Are you with me, Moonbeam?”
Kaan’s dense and jagged words strike like a weapon that hooks into my soul and rips me up. Back to the surface, where I meet his panic-stricken eyes.
His grip on my chin tightens as he searches my gaze, the sound of Líri’s wings thumping in unison with my heavy heart.
“Are you here?”
I draw a shuddered breath and cradle his face with my hands, tip his head, and kiss the creases between his brows. “I’m with you.”
A soft groan moves up his throat, and he loosens like a spent lung.
“You have me,” I whisper, planting another kiss that seems to shudder through his body.
… Always.
Abrisk wind slaps my cheek, pulling me from a gluey sleep.
I open my eyes and see dark clouds threatening to bear down, trying to remember where I am. How I got here.
The satiated ache between my legs brings everything smashing back.
The bond. The smear of time I gave myself to the savage pull of letting go. Kaan in the spring.
Inme.
Both of us on the edge of the spring … up against the cliff … on the furs in his makeshift camp. Again.
Again.
Back in the spring to rinse off, only to end up with my legs splayed and tangled with his arms, draped backward over a rock while he ravaged me restless—screaming for him to fuck me until the world breaks around us.
A rush of heat throbs through my veins as I fill my lungs with his heady musk, like dollops of cream served on a sizzling stone.
My cheeks scald.
I shove at the heavy furs piled on my naked body when a whip of wind brings me the smell of smoke and roasting meat.
Twisting, I look back over my shoulder. Smile at the sight of Kaan sitting on a boulder beside the campfire, the burbling spring a backdrop that smudges everything but him; his chest and arms bare, all that rich skin on bold display, his hair pulled back in a loose bun my fingers ache to tangle in.
My strip of meat is poked through with a stick, suspended over a writhing flame, dripping pink juices onto the sizzling coals.
“I’m surprised she let you take that while I was sleeping.”
