Page 59 of Sokâr

But still… I wonder.

He wants me so often. Hardly a night has passed since his return that he hasn’t taken me, body and soul. And Iwanthim. Past reason. Past my body’s frustrating limitations.

Even when I ache. Even when I am unwell. My body could be burning. My injuries throbbing. Yet, when he touches my face, my hair, my skin—he is all the healing I could need.

No matter how much I beg otherwise,he is always careful. Always restrained. He never lets go—not fully. He is so large, so all-encompassing, his hands broad enough to encircle my entire waist within their grasp. On hotter nights, my body shakes after he’s finished loving me. I can hardly move for the ache in my back and in my thighs.

Yet I do not fear his passion. If anything, I lament this fragile body's lack of stamina.

I do not come from the Lattice of Strength. I was not bred to be the vessel for his need. I was not born for it. I simply fell from a place unknown straight into his willing arms, where he has done nothing but shelter me thereafter.

And yet...there is not a time when I do not crave him. When I do not want his hands, his lips, his tongue, his voice telling me I am his to ravish. Even in silence. Even in sleep. Even when the world unravels and nothing follows rules or boundaries in the chaos.

He brings me clarity.

He touches me, and I become more than just a thing taken from the ice.

More than a lost star, struggling to find its way among those with a past, with memories, with an understanding of how the world is meant to function.

When he enters me, I can hardly breathe for the breadth of him—and each time, I wonder if I’ll break. Yet, there is no pain in this kind of breaking. Only ecstasy. A shattering into someone new, someone more.

Once, I likened our joining to a vessel being filled. I want to be the cup he pours himself into. I want to hold every part of him that the world cannot contain. And yet...sometimes I wonder:

Does he seek Estâr because the depth of me is not enough to hold him? Can my arms not wrap around all that he is?

If the Resh’Agar needs mana, why can the Sokar not provide it?

What is it that I lack? Strength? Capacity? Will?

There are moments when I think I feel his hunger—so immense it could eclipse the sky—and I wonder if mine will ever be enough to match it. To soothe it. To satisfy whatever gnaws beneath the surface of his restraint.

But I will not ask.

He alreadybears too much for both of us.

And if I can give him peace through my silence, I will.

Even now, as I write, something changes.

A thrum beneath my skin. A hunger that is not mine. A tightening in the chest, low in the belly, impossible to name and yet unmistakable.

It crashes into me like a wave, hot and sudden. My thoughts blur. My breath shortens. My fingers tremble around the stylus.

This is not my feeling. It is his.

Kailorien.

I should go to the Archives. I should read. I should—

13

First Touch

Auryn stumbled through the halls, her body so hot she needed no mana to light up the Polis around her. As soon as her fingers or shoulder touched the walls, the sensitive crystal pulsed, the burning fire in her core drawing out blooms of emerald light from its depths.

She’d tried to diffuse her affliction with magic, thinking it was a hex. Zeera liked to hex her journals and trinkets when she thought Auryn wasn’t looking. And shehadn’tbeen, at first. But after decades of the same petty nonsense—and having to drink more of Lu'ma's bitter mana-correcting serums than she could recall—she now checked twice before touching any of the items in her room.

But she stayed with Kailorien in his wing now. Zeera couldn't have touched her things. And this was no hex. The mana serum hadn’t made it easier to breathe. No corrective spell made the pain bearable. It was like a fever. But Auryn’s body was immune to sickness. It healed minor wounds in minutes. It wasn’t possible that she’d caught something from her and Kailorien’s processions to the city.