“Oh, but we can’t wish, remember?” Luna said at once. “It’s only for lovers.”
Nigel’s throat thickened, and it was this alone that stopped him from saying something incredibly stupid. Something along the lines of,“Well, we could fix that problem in about twominutes, if you’ll allow me to roll over and demonstrate how I really feel about you.”
Instead he said, “Erm, but if you could?”
“Oh, I don’t know.” She blustered out a breath through her lips. “Some part of me wishes more than anything to go home. To see the aunties. To get back to life the way it was before this stupid heptagram.” So saying, she lifted up her hands, flashing her wrist very briefly from under the cuff of her sleeve. When she lowered her hands again, they lay on either side of her. Nigel was suddenly, intensely aware that her pinky finger was no more than an inch or two from his. He could feel its shivering presence, like a prickling magical field.
“I miss the aunties so badly sometimes,” Luna continued softly, “my chest feels like it will crack in two. But I would also miss . . .” She swallowed. “I would miss Garden. And the stupid begonias and their dramatics. And the tiger lilies and the snapdragons and the double-delight. I’d miss Bryony and all her advice, both good and bad. I’d miss the Silly Young Things and their many little woes. I’d miss . . . I’d miss . . .”
Sensing where her hesitancy was coming from, Nigel supplied in a bitter voice, “Ward the Wardsman?”
“Yes, of course,” she answered shortly, without expansion. After a moment, she added, “So many things. Even Mrs. Boggs, if you’ll believe it! She’s been part of this grand and ridiculous adventure of Leaving Home and Growing Up and Discovering Myself.”
Nigel licked his dry lips. She hadn’t mentioned him in her list. And that should hurt, only there was something in thewayshe didn’t mention him. Though perhaps he was just deluding himself on that score. He did have a history of delusion, after all.
Luna suddenly covered her face with her hands and gave her head a little shake. “I don’tknow!” she said, sounding oddly distressed considering the hypothetical nature of the question.Then she laughed. “I suppose I ought to simply wish to have the heptagram mark undone. But that doesn’t sound very romantic, does it?”
The wordromanticlingered in the silence which followed, spoken into the dropping temperature of that gold-splashed evening. Pure and shining and shimmering. Nigel found he had to remind himself to do something as crude as breathing. It felt too base, too earthy of a necessity in this suddenly otherworldly sort of existence.
Finally, Luna’s hands dropped to her sides once more. “What about you, Mr. Grimm?” she asked, her voice directed at the cloudless sky in which the first faint stars were beginning to appear in the high, purpling dimness. “What would you wish for if . . . if we were lovers?”
For a long moment, he could not move. Could not think, could not act. Because he could not say what he truly felt. So, rather than speech, he simply turned his head and looked at her. Looked at her lovely profile, faced determinedly forward. Looked at the pink staining her cheeks, still just visible in the fading light. Looked at the way her lips parted as she released a long, slow breath that did not come out quite steadily.
He looked at her. And he said nothing.
But the truth of his heart sang out like a symphony:If we were lovers, I would have nothing left to wish for to the end of my days.
And, for the first time, he suspected she heard it. Suspected she knew.
A short eternity passed. Finally, Luna blinked. She turned her head abruptly, looking into his eyes, and Nigel found their faces were a lot closer than he’d realized. So close. Close enough that he could see the sparkle of evening stars reflected in the depths of her dilated pupils. She blinked, taken aback, as though she’dnot been aware of their proximity, and he feared she would withdraw. But she didn’t. She caught another short breath.
Then he watched her eyelids lower, lashes fanning as her gaze dropped to his mouth.
His heart turned inside-out in his breast. He exhaled, and it was like knives, so tight, so tense was every muscle in his throat.
Slowly, slowly, as though afraid of startling a poised bird into flight, he moved his hand. It didn’t take much. A gentle slide across the silk lining of the robe until his little finger bumped against hers. A spark of heat, an anxious awareness. He moved his finger slightly, the barest trace. She held so still, she might have been a statue.
Then, so faintly he might easily have missed it were his attention not exquisitely focused on that single point of contact, she moved her finger in response.
Summoning his courage, Nigel glided his hand up over hers, resting his warm palm atop her delicate dorsum. His fingers draped between the spaces made by hers, and another small eternity throbbed out both seconds and millennia in the pulse at his temples.
He watched her lips close. Watched her throat constrict in a swallow. Her lashes lowered until her eyes closed completely. But she did not turn away from him. She almost looked asleep, lying there. Frozen in that hushed silence.
Suddenly, she rotated her wrist.
Her palm came into contact with his, and their fingers interlaced, and it wasn’t an unconscious gesture made in the spontaneity of the moment. It was a choice. A choice which she made in response to his silent question.
With a little inhale, Luna turned her head forward, eyes flying open as she stared up into the sky once more, while Nigel continued to lie there, studying the curve of her cheek, the little bump on the bridge of her nose. Memorizing the way her softupper lip protruded slightly beyond the lower. All rendered in such exquisite detail to his gaze, despite the deepening gloom. He listened to the rapidity of her breaths, which she was obviously trying to disguise.
And he felt her hand in his. Felt her fingers squeezing ever-so slightly.
A glory of euphoria seemed to take hold of him.
Nigel lifted her hand from where it rested on the silken robe. Clasping it firmly, he drew it to his mouth. He breathed out against her skin for an instant before his lips came softly together and kissed the knuckles of her index and middle fingers, the gentlest brush.
Luna emitted a ragged exhale. But she didn’t pull away.
Nigel turned her hand slightly. Once again, he held it in place over his mouth, let his breath tickle against her skin. Then he pressed his lips to the lovely blue veins on the back of her hand, a firmer contact, more certain, more sure. Closing his eyes, he savored the feeling, wishing he might catch and hold onto it forever.
