It was a mistake. He knew it the instant he turned, because she wasright there, looking down at him, the pale light tracing the line of her cheek, softening every edge, catching in the loose strands of hair that had come free around her face. And the whole of it, the nearness and the dark and the way she was looking at him, hit him somewhere just below the ribs with a force that made his breath stop.
He forced a laugh out of himself. “Dragons, yes.”
“That is what you meant when you spoke of dragon fire and that enchantment for burns. You mentioned dragons that were large. Considerably large. You did not mentionridingthem.”
When he laughed again, it sounded somewhat closer to normal. “Yes. It is quite something.”
She lay down again—thank the stars—and Kazrian breathed a little more easily. “Do you enjoy it?” she asked.
“I do. If one is already fond of being on the back of a pegasus, it feels like the natural progression.”
She shifted slightly, and this time he was almost certain she was turning herself toward him, curving her body sideways.
Do not look. Do not look.
“What else did you do there?”
Take a breath, Kazrian.
“I … came to know the royal artificers in the palace workshop. They work a lot with lumyrite, and I learned a great deal from them after I manifested. They maintain everything from the palace infrastructure to the Veil Gate itself, and they were generous enough to let me work alongside them.”
“Do you miss being there?”
“I do.” A pause. “Though I missed being here too.”
“But you did not return for so long.”
“No.”
“Because …”
“Because,” he said simply.Because of you.
“Was it—” She stopped herself, then started again. “There was talk, the Season after you left, that you—that there was someone. In the Shaded Lands. A match of some kind. A promising—I mean, it was only what people said, I did not—” She broke off abruptly, shifting away and rolling onto her back. “I should not have mentioned it. That is entirely none of my concern and I do not know why I—please forget I?—”
“No, it is fine. You can ask. That was …” He hesitated, though he could not quite say why. He already knew he would tell her the truth. Perhaps it was more that the truth needed a moment to stand on its own. “It was a fabrication,” he admitted. “An excuse I fashioned. So that no one would wonder why I had not returned to debut that Season. So that there was a reason for my staying in the Shaded Lands that would satisfy the kind of people who require reasons for everything.”
He heard her draw a breath, hold it, then exhale. “So … there was no one?”
The question hung in the dark, and in the silence that followed, a dozen things moved through his mind in quick succession. Hearts drawn in Orrit’s flour—the two of them racing through the tea house back garden—their heads bent together over an enchanted puzzle lock—sitting on the pantry floor laughing—the night he had finally taken her into his arms and danced with her in the kitchen.
A slow smile curved his lips.
“There was never anyone else, Lucie.”
She did not answer. He had not expected her to. He had not said it to receive anything in return, only to set it down between them, quietly, the way one might place something fragile on a table and step back.
Outside, the rain had thickened, falling harder now, drumming against the glass in heavy, uneven sheets. Thunder rumbled somewhere above therooftops, closer than before, and then again, a low, shuddering growl that he felt in his chest.
And then, in the dark beside him, he felt her turn. Not the small, restless shifts of before. She turned toward him, slowly and deliberately, and this time he was certain of it, and his heart did something fierce and aching.
“We should sleep,” she murmured. “There are bees to make tomorrow.”
“There are.”
“And the honeycomb structure still needs assembling.”
“It does.”
