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Jill expelled a long breath and dropped forward, resting her forehead against the window. “It was probably nothing. But then it could have been. It nearly could have been.”
She swallowed painfully, hating the unreasonable amount of pain that settled within her chest. The ache she felt but couldn't name pierced even deeper with that shadow moving through the rain
It had felt real, however. And it brought all that pain that had been festering within her to the foreground with that extinguished hope when the shadow disappeared.
“Was that you?” She whispered out loud, speaking the question held within her heart out loud. The words that she wished she could ignore and brush off even as they fell from her lips. “If only I could have seen for sure, I would feel less crazy, like this weird fucking connection isn’t just me. That I’m not the only one feeling incomplete here. If only you gave me some sign that you were still looking for me as you promised. I didn’t think it mattered when you gave me those words. But it did,” she admitted to the silence. “And every day it feels like I lose a little more of myself as I wait for you, like something is incomplete and strangely, now I feel abandoned all over again all because of a fucking shadow.” She laughed grimly but it ended on a groan. “Agor. Brydis. Please don’t leave me here.”
Rolling to her side, she lay against the window and rubbed her face with both hands, glad that no one had been around to witness all that.
“Maybe it's just the rain making me morose due to being locked inside for a couple of days now. I’ll be okay once it lets up and I can get out of here.”
Pushing away from the window, she walked away, pushing away her desire to glance back at it. She was going to go get that book. There was more than one on her shelves that would make a worthy distraction.
Chapter14
Claws scraping against the side of the building, Agor scrambled for the balcony door, the cold knife of the rain cutting deep into the marrow of his bones. He had been out too long and was now suffering the consequences. His fingers were numb as he attempted to open the door leading into the rented room, his teeth clenched against the shivers wracking him. For a moment, he suffered a brief fear that he wasn’t going to be able to get it open. He clawed at the latch and was relieved when it was suddenly wrenched open, letting him spill through it in an ungainly stumble, his sodden wings dragging behind him.
He barely heard the click of the door sliding shut behind him over the chatter of his teeth and shuddered miserably as a hard hand clamped on his shoulder, drawing him further inside.
“Agor, you idiot! What do you think you were doing?” Brydis demanded, giving his shoulder a firm shake, which took little effort in Agor’s current weakened state. A thick blanket was immediately thrown over him before his twin’s arms and wings encircled him to offer him what warmth he could. “You could have died, and then what would have happened?” he chided. “How would I have explained it to Jill that one of her mates simply disappeared while the other was sleeping?” He expelled a long breath, his own body quivering with tension and residual fear. “How would I have gone on without you?”
“S… sorry. I didn’t intend to be gone for so long. I meant to be back before you woke up,” Agor admitted, barely able to speak coherently as intense shivers wracked his frame as he turned his head at an angle to peer over at his twin. “I just wanted to take a quick flight over the city to get a better view. It was stupid, I know,” he added at the exasperated look his twin gave him. “I just couldn’t stand here doing nothing. I knew it was unlikely that I would see anything, but I thought maybe there was a chance of glimpsing her through a window in passing.”
“Through a window?” Brydis gave him an incredulous look. “You would’ve been soaring several spans above the tops of the buildings and thought you might catch sight… through a window? While it was pouring rain. In a city full of thousands of windows.”
Agor wilted a little as his exhaustion climbed higher. “All right, put like that it does sound crazy, but when I was pacing back and forth in this room, being driven mad by the relentless sound of the downpour, the idea felt like it had sound reasoning behind it. What if she were standing at her window, the light of her home filling the room behind her, watching for us—waiting for us?” He shook his head, frustrated with his lack of ability to properly put into words exactly the thoughts and feelings he experienced in those moments. “She would be in one place rather than going about her daily life, just waiting to be found. I couldn’t get the thought out of my head that she was there behind one of those windows—waiting for us.”
Brydis sighed and rubbed the blanket over him briskly, though his red wings remained caged around them to maintain the cocoon of heat. “I admit I was tempted by similar thoughts. Waitingisdifficult.”
Agor groaned and slumped against his twin. The chill was gradually receding and was replaced by an insidious lethargy seeping into him. Brydis chuckled and nudged him with his shoulder.
“Not falling asleep on me are you, charlathe?”
“Maybe,” Agor slurred, sinking deeper into the warmth surrounding him.
“You should not have stayed out so long,” his twin murmured, but Agor shrugged his wings faintly beneath the weight of Brydis’s wing-clasp.
“I just needed a little longer. If it weren’t for you comming me and demanding that I return…”
“As I should’ve. I woke to find you gone with no message. Of course, I would worry,” Brydis rebuked softly. “Just because we can handle this weather better than a human doesn’t mean we are impervious to it. I don’t know when you left, but I’m certain it was far longer than is advisable for even our species.”
“You don’t understand,” Agor groaned. “It may sound crazy, but I didn’t want to turn back. I swear, I was so close. I could nearly feel the dance of her taliazon. Just a little longer and I know I would have found her.”
“A little longer and you probably wouldn’t have made it back at all and would have fallen from the sky and froze to death if the fall itself didn’t kill you! You take too many chances. What if you hadn’t found her? What if you were wrong?”
“I was close. Nearly there,” Agor repeated stubbornly, earning another a lengthy sigh from his twin.
“Very well. Once the rain lets up, we will go together to that spot, but if we don’t sense her, we return to our original plan.” Brydis’s head angled and Agor tipped his head and cracked open one eye to meet his twin’s gaze. “Agreed?”
“Agreed,” Agor sighed.
It was still raining. Five days with nothing but rain and Agor was ready to go crazy from being confined within the hotel. After his last venture, he didn’t dare go out again. Not when it took him most of the day to get warm again. So he’d remained within their rooms, much of which was spent staring out the window, mentally tracing along his route, imagining that he could touch her despite the distance between them. Brydis gave him worried looks, but he hadn’t gotten close. He didn’t understand that Agor could still almost feel the faintest lingering touch of her taliazon urging him to return to her.
Not that Brydis was unaffected. His twin’s longings and frustration manifested in long periods of sleep, as if he couldn’t bear to be awake while they were so helplessly restrained. Agor should have seen it coming. The male had been acting increasingly listless as the weeks passed, spending more and more of his free time within the rookery. Agor had never questioned it, but now he wondered just how much of that time spent sleeping was to escape their current reality without their talia. Now, since settling into the hotel and having nothing else to keep them active, Brydis spent most of the time sleeping again, though it was often restless, as if plagued by nightmares that woke him. In truth, it was a miracle that he had woken to summon Agor back and let him in from the rains when his fingers were too frozen to work the latch.
It just all disturbed Agor even more. He hated how uncomfortable he felt in the cramped space, and how vulnerable Brydis was as he slept much of the hours of the night and day. Agor decided that being trapped in the human hotel throughout the storm was perhaps the worst form of torture or punishment that could be devised for him.
His lips twisted wryly. Hopefully, Aerhal Zherist would not discover it. The male could be brutishly fiendish when he wished to be.
