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“Not exactly.” I still couldn’t look at her. “My mother told me that it would be a disservice to you, to shackle you to me when there might be someone out there who could give you a real life, a full life, children and… ” I trailed off, fighting the color in my cheeks.
There was a stilted silence before she responded.
“Didn’t you think I deserved a say?”
I finally forced myself to meet her eyes, and I was utterly unprepared for what I saw in them. True, there was still anger swirling in their teal depths, but there was so much more—things I couldn’t identify any more than I could the myriad of colors washing over her skin.
“And what would you have said?” I asked, in a voice I hardly recognized.
The inches between us seemed to crackle with electricity, our ragged breaths the only sound in the otherwise silent room. Her gaze searched mine, and I might have stopped breathing entirely while I waited for the answer to the question I had thought about every day for three years.
47
Lina
For all that Aster had been coaching me in regulating my colors, I couldn’t seem to find an ounce of that control now.
He had wanted me. Wanted a life with me. All this time, when I hadn’t so much as dared to let myself dream of the possibility of a future with him, when I had never let myself consider that he may see me as anything other than the strange girl next door, he had longed for that future.
And more than just wanting it…
You said you couldn’t make her big.He had hurled those words accusingly at Uncle Stiltskin, not in a casual way. Not in the way I had taken it at the time, because he had wanted to be rid of his burden, but for this. For a future with me that I had never, in my wildest dreams, imagined him working toward.
Now Edrich was standing before me with features less guarded than I had ever seen them, waiting for an answer he clearly cared about. He had always been so competent, so sure, so unyielding, that it took me a moment to place his expression.
Uncertainty.
It was another stilted minute before I found my voice.
“Are you asking if I would have wanted to be with you, even if we couldn’t… ” I felt myself turn a bright, embarrassed fuchsia before I willed it away, fighting for the control I was only just getting a handle on. “Even if I couldn’t have all of you?” I finished.
He swallowed, then nodded. I owed it to him to consider it seriously, so I forced myself to look away, to stop thinking of the way my hands itched to trace the rugged lines of his face again, and lower, to trail across his broad shoulders.
My skin slowly turned a shade of deep purple, and I looked back in time to catch Edrich’s eyes stirring in response. Because he knew what that meant, he knewme.And there’s my answer.
“That would have been enough for me.Youwould have been enough.” I hadn’t even finished my thought before Edrich was closing the short distance between us. He was in front of me with half a stride, his calloused hands cupping my face more gently than I would have thought possible from him.
“Lina,” he breathed my name, but I didn’t let him finish whatever he was going to say.
Because I may not have let myself think of the future, but I had spent half my life wondering what it would be like to have his perfectly shaped lips on mine. I erased the space between us. He opened his mouth to mine without hesitation, like he had been waiting as long as I had for this moment.
I knew, logically, that it was my first kiss, and it should feel awkward. But it didn’t. It felt like my lips were made to be fused against his, like there was a wrongness in us being apart, and we were making it right with each searing point of contact.
His hands trailed down my shoulders, following the lines of my back and wrapping around my waist while I tangled my fingers in his shaggy blond hair. I had heard the girls at the tavern talk about stolen kisses, but I had never imagined that just the feeling of another person’s mouth on yours could set your entire body on fire, make you feel safe and exhilarated and so many other conflicting feelings all at the same time.
I backed away enough to explore the hard lines of his chest, and I felt his fingers skate softly along the outside of my delicate wings. I shivered, and he smiled against my mouth.
When we finally, reluctantly, came up for air, he rested his forehead against mine.
“You should probably get back to your rooms in case they look for you in the morning.” It was clear in his face that it was the last thing he wanted to be saying.
Logically, I knew he was right, but…
“Not yet,” I said, fisting my hand in his shirt and pulling him back against me.
He chuckled against my lips, and the sound reverberated through every part of me. I pressed my palms against his chest, walking him backward toward the spacious four-poster bed.
He wasted no time in laying back, pulling me on top of him where my wings wouldn’t be in the way. I had a split second to wonder what fairies did when both of them had wings before his next kiss chased away every rational thought.
