“He’s continued breathing well since you slipped off. He’s perfectly fine.”
Relief floods me.
I look at the kid again—at the few tangles of silver hair barely peeking out past the hood of Kaan’s cloak—beyond thankful that it seems his shieldworksagainst the dusty atmosphere in the mines.
If it didn’t, I don’t know what—
“Raeve, you both need more sleep before I’m comfortable continuing.”
I nod, working my hands through my hair before I lean back and rest my head against his chest, listening to his heart thump hard and heavy.
Strong.
The silence between us feels hungry. Rather than wait for Kaan to feed it, I do, with a question that’s been weighing me down since I first met Ahvi’s rattling silver stare.
“Do you think Ahvi’s parents are still alive?”
The words are passed quietly, gentle as fluttering sowmoth wings.
There’s a brief reprieve before Kaan pulls a large breath. Like he’s shoring himself. “I … think he’d have spoken of them if that were the case.”
I hate how right he is. Hate the heavy likelihood that Ahvi has experienced loss of his own at such a tender age.
I tuck deeper against Kaan, his heart powering through so many strong, perfect beats before he speaks again.
“Was it a slumber-terror, Raeve?”
I rub my thumb across the smooth surface of my replacement iron ring. “Something like that.”
Kaan pulls some loose tendrils back and tucks them behind the ear I cut into. “Do you want to talk about it?”
I think on his question, watching snowflakes sprinkle through the jagged cleft. Imagine the solemn song Rayne’s currently singing—a soft weep that somehow digs deeper than a drenching deluge.
She sees so much.
Perhaps she cries because she’s got nothing else to do with all that hurt?
“Another time. Just—” I let my eyes squeeze shut, my next words a grated whisper. “Hold me tight. Convince me it’s real.”
He’s quiet for a beat before he binds me in his arms, using his fierce strength to give me what I need right now; so close to where I emerged from a lonely trek across the plains. The place where I first broke my promise to Fallon and opened my arms to death, begging it to take me.
A love so crushing I can almost convince myself it’s not going to slip away the moment I fall asleep.
Iset a mug of water on the low table, passing a glance over the stranger draped across the seater, mostly covered with a thick black throw. Still passed out from her fainting episode, she breathes past barely parted lips—pink like the clouds outside—my gaze catching on the freckle that sits just above the precise bow, slightly to the right.
Perhaps the loveliest thing I’ve ever seen. On anyone.
Poking free of all that hair, I notice her ear is more slanted than most fae ears.
“Huh …”
Again, I take in her pale skin and blazing red hair. Features so fine they look …otherworldly.“I’ll be damned,” I mutter, seeing an uncanny resemblance to the portrait that hung on the wall in our family’s library before everything turned to shit. Probably still there, but I wouldn’t know.
A coincidence. Surely.
I scratch the back of my head and force myself to look away.
Moving to the encumbered feasting table, I frown at the round stone pinched between a metal clamp. A scope arched over it magnifies thousands of miniature runes that would’ve takencyclesto etch.
