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No, she couldn’t announce that she had decided to stay, not yet. She could not make a promise that sacred until it was in her power to keep it. She must wait until her plan succeeded. Until she was free. Then they could celebrate not an intention, but a certainty.
Lio pulled his mouth away. “You are powerful and kind and beautiful, you know.”
“You always do the right thing.”
He hesitated. “Cassia, have I ever made you feel fragile?”
“What are you talking about?”
“Have I ever said or done anything that gave you the idea I don’t believe you’re strong?”
“Of course not. You are the person who has always helped me see my own strengths. Why would you think otherwise?”
“Xandra said I treated her like glass, and it only made her feel worse about herself.”
“It sounds to me as if you and Xandra were carrying around a lot of long-standing burdens that you and I never picked up in the first place.”
“I still fear repeating the same mistakes with you. I’m afraid it’s my tendency to treat my lady like a goddess to the point that she feels idealized rather than adored.”
“You worship Hespera. What lady in her right mind wouldn’t want you to treat her like that kind of goddess?”
Lio kissed her eyelids. “When I make a portrait of you in glass, I will give you one white eye and one red.”
She looked down, at a loss for words. “No one has ever treated me the way you do. You told me the things we did in the shrine were sacred.”
“And you told me you hold me sacred.”
She put his hand to the glyph shard at her neck. “‘Awaken unto me…beneath the endless sky, where we are free.’”
“My embrace is certain.”
“‘With your heart against mine, I shall be strong.’”
His brow furrowed. “Then what is that lingering knot of distress in our Union? I can feel you trying to untie it without success.”
Cassia frowned and looked away. But why hide this? She could not make him a promise until she paved the way for her escape. But she could keep paving the way for what she hoped they would have together.
She could not resist seeing how he reacted to her hints.
She met his gaze. “I will always be jealous of Xandra. I cannot help it, for she has tasted your blood, and I have not.”
Lio was silent for an instant, as if afraid to breathe. When he spoke, his voice was low, almost gravelly with intensity. “Cassia. Is that something you think about? You, drinking from me?”
“Yes. I imagine it.”
“That gives you pleasure?”
“How can you think I would not feel pleasure at the idea of feasting on you, as you do on me?”
“That’s not something I would take for granted.”
Of course. His one attempt at providing the Feast for another had ended in disaster. How unbelievable, how unbearable, that Lio had any cause to doubt the pleasure his blood would give another. Cassia would make that right, when the time came, she vowed.
She ran a finger down his neck. “Does it give you pleasure to think of me drinking from you?”
“Pleasure?” He was nearly hoarse now. “Cassia, what would I do if you did not think of me in that way? How would I bear it if the thought disgusted or frightened you?”
“Nothing about you could ever make me feel like that. After the ways you’ve feasted on me…”
