I nod.
“Oh, and your room is done.”
For a moment, I bristle. He’s been working on his spare room, as he calls it. A space that would be my own, but I do not want space from my Dante.
I must have thought that a little too loud because Dante laughs again and takes me by the hips, pulling me close. His soft, tender human fingers dig into my skin, and he leans forward, pressing a kiss over my left heart.
“It’s not about having space from me. It’s about having something to call your own. Something just yours.” I swallow heavily as he meets my gaze. “I have a feeling you didn’t get much of that before you came here.”
I say nothing. I was not trained to want things that belong to just me. I am an Outerlander. We lived in shared villages and worked to serve those in the capital. There was nothing else for us.
It has been and always will be our duty.
Only, now that I’m here—now that I’ve seen the way humans live—perhaps there are things we could learn from them. Because they suffer as we do, and they have unkind, cruel people in positions of power just like us.
But they find happiness where we were told happiness and joy stand in the way of our true purpose.
And the lies I have swallowed for so many years now taste bitter.
“This bed,” Dante says, drawing my attention back to him, “will always be ours. But let me show you something, okay?” He takes me by the hand and tugs me out of the bedroom. “I was going to do this last night, but then there was the party, and then I had the weird reaction to the zitha.”
He stops at the same time I do, and he reads the expression on my face.
“Do you know why that happened to me? Is it…is it like a human thing? Or an allergy thing?”
My eyes widen. We did not speak of why he took the herbs. I assumed perhaps he was curious. Or that Everest talked him into it. Now I realize he does not know what they were.
‘Not zitha,’ I sign to him, spelling the herb name as best I can with ASL letters.
He frowns. “What?”
‘You took ruenox and oyen.’ I watch his lips curve through the letters like he’s testing how they’re pronounced. I send him the Eretharian words and what they mean in my head, and he jolts.
“Wait. So…” He licks his lips, then glances over his shoulder in the direction of the kitchen. “I’m going to call Everest later. I can’t believe he gave those to me.”
He seems confused, and I do not like that he feels this way. I don’t want last night to have been a mistake. I do not ever—ever—want him to regret me.
“Cielo,” he breathes out. I am no good at hiding my thoughts from him now that we have a connection. His smaller body pushes me against the wall, and he lifts onto his toes. He’s nowhere near my height or my size, and yet I feel completely safe in his arms. “I don’t regret that. Any of it. Or you. Everest probably left them here by mistake—an accident,” he clarifies when I flinch, “but I wouldn’t change it. Last night felt…”
He doesn’t use words.
Instead, he sends me sensation, emotion, things that overwhelm me and make my cock stir in my sheath. I wish to release it, but I don’t. Instead, I let him take my hand and pull me to the second bedroom.
The door opens with a soft creak, and inside, there are gentle, small, flickering lights hanging near the ceiling that remind me of the caves at home with the glowing githyn floating along the walls. There is no bed, but there is an oversizedcushion like the one at the gym café that I once spilled my latte on.
There’s a table in the corner and a small machine that smells like coffee, and a row of hooks with coffee mugs dangling from each.
There are other things I don’t understand and don’t recognize, but I can feel Dante’s trepidation humming between us. He is not sure I will like this.
“Beauuutifllll,” I tell him.
He laughs. “It’s not much. Not yet. I thought maybe we could figure out some things you want to put in here. I gave you a Nespresso.” He points to the strange device that smells of coffee. “It’s not as good as the machine in the kitchen, but it’ll make small lattes whenever you want.”
I trill happily, and he grins wider.
“And maybe—if there are things from Erethar that you miss, things that Everest can bring back for you—we can put them in here, too.”
There is little, I think, that would survive on Earth besides us. Perhaps an animal. A xelshe would be a fine companion, but I’m not sure I want to take the risk.
