I smile despite the prickly pain in my eyes, that smile growing when the touch sends a shiver through her body.
I move farther around the perch, dragging my fingers along her frosty skin, feeling the fine creases slip by. When skin melts into the silky tendrils of her tail tip, I hug the silver splinter closer to my heart, struggling to swallow. Even more so when her tail lifts slightly, the silken threads closing around my body like a loose embrace, the shift slow and tender, cracking me through the middle.
Her wing crimps closed, and my chest tightens as her pale lashes fan into view, then glitter-kissed orbs so fathomless I feel as though I’m falling. Unsure of why, exactly, I expected them to be milky.
Blind.
So achingly relieved they’re not.
Too many emotions battle for purchase as I take her in with greedy sweeps of my eyes. She’s two-thirds the size of Rygun, radiating an ancient ebb, as though her soul’s been tempered by time.
Or perhaps by too much loss.
I flatten my spare hand between her slit nostrils. The very spot I believe I may have rested my head on when we were together in the sky. Her lids flutter the moment I make contact, eyes softening with an emotion that looks like relief. A similar feeling echoes within me, like a mountain just lifted off my ribs.
Slátra tilts her head, offering the side of her face. Asking for a scratch, I think.
My smile is instant, fingers coming up to twist around her long tendrils, digging into where they spawn from her jowls and rubbing deep. Somehowknowingher pressure points, like my hand is two steps ahead of me.
Or perhaps it’s two steps behind.
Her eyes close in quiet content, and she releases a trilling sound that settles something within. Like soothing hackles that have been raised for phases.
I’m struck by how easily I could lose myself down here. How simply time could drain away. That with Slátra, in this strange place that’s so cut off from the world, I’m filled with a deep sense of belonging that desperately tries to weigh me down with confirmation. Tries to reaffirm something Kaan said to me after he showed me that big, beautiful silver moon he’s been working so hard to piece back together.
As though listening to my thoughts, Slátra opens her eyes, and I’m struck with the heavy intent in her gloomy gaze. My heart thunders asshe shifts, uncoiling to reveal a marbled, two-toned stone at the center of her dipped nest:
Silver and black.
Both our memories melded together.
I study it from afar. “Is that—” I look at Slátra, silence nesting with us as I try to push the thickness farther down my throat. “Is that the reason we missed it all? The reason I lost—”
The word clogs, choking me. But I feel it in my chest. Feel it sitting there like an icy moon lodged between my ribs.
You.
Slátra moves her head close again, and I feel her thoughts radiating through me like a quiet whisper to my soul. That she wasneverlost to me. That she’s with me now.
Together.
My face threatens to crumble. “Always?”
Her response is a lonely echo that seems to go on and on.
I nod, even though I want to scream.
Thrash.
Cry.
To run away from this hurt andneverlook back.
But I swore I wouldn’t do that anymore. That I was done hiding. Running from the things that sting and from the ones I love.
Swore I would be strong in all the ways that matter most.
I move deeper into the concave dip, sit cross-legged beside the lonely stone, and set the splinter beside it …
