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He chuckled again, and Brinna realized how much she liked the sound. “Yes. Auri.”
They talked deep into the night, sharing, laughing, finding a new common ground that hadn’t ever existed between them. It felt so natural. She liked it. Liked talking with Lucian Uraiahs, who smiled easily and was so much more than she’d ever given him credit for—even if she wasn’t his type, which she decided was okay even if it hurt her pride. Eventually, she yawned, and though she fought the exhaustion so she could keep talking with Lucian, somewhere between words, she fell asleep.
8
A small wooden door decorated with swirling metalwork brushed with a turquoise patina and heavily flourished with green vines laced with white blooms stood in Luc’s way. A floating gateway between him and where he knew he needed to be. But he didn’t recognize the door. With a knock and a push, the door unlatched and swung open like an invitation. He pushed it open all the way and peered inside.
Beyond, it wasn’t unlike the woods where he’d once seen his woodland fairy—only it felt thicker somehow. Warmer. There was no snow. The woods leaned into summer, overflowing with green leaves and bright blooms. His mind recalled his singing sprite, trying to remember her name—which seemed important—but it flitted away like a hummingbird as he ducked through the small doorway. He pushed through the foliage, looking for that something he was there to find, though he wasn’t exactly sure what that something was. He just knew he needed to walk forward.
Her.
He was looking for her.
Flowers bloomed as he walked, a profusion of colors: white, yellow, violet, green, red. Tiny pink blossoms rained around him, creating a lush pink carpet on the forest floor. Ahead, a curtain of vines and blossoms obscured the path. When he reached them, he pushed them aside and walked through. The jaunty song of a creek trickled somewhere nearby, and the buzzing whispered laughter of sprites sounded from the bower of the trees.
Luc continued on, traveling deeper into the woods, though to call it the woods didn’t feel quite right anymore. There was something magical about it, comfortable, as if he were still in Sol walking through the solarium. Though while the greenery was lush and beautiful there, it didn’t look like this. He was sure he might be lost, yet he didn’t hesitate to continue on, sure that he was supposed to find something.
Her.
He was looking for her. Always looking for her.
The thicket thinned and opened overhead, and Luc walked into a magical glen framed with trees and foliage as if they were walls. Flowers bloomed. Butterflies flitted from blossom to blossom. Pink petals still rained gently around him. Under the bower, with low branches dripping with vines and flowers and framed in a thicket of black and white aspens was a dais. A woman reclined on a chaise made from the forest, waiting.
Her.
Luc’s breath caught, then released. “I found you.”
Brinna.
Her gray-blue eyes met his, and she smiled. “I wondered if you’d come.”
She looked like the woman he’d come to know, but different somehow, as if she had her own light, a faint glow that drew from the pink blossoms, the foliage, the music of the forest, as if she were truly a woodland fairy whose sole purpose was to share her beauty with the flowers. She swung her legs off the chaise and stood, the gauzy, aquamarine gown draping around her shape. He caught a glimpse of her creamy thighs through the side slits that rose to her hips as she walked toward him, his eyes traveling up over her waist, cinched with a gold belt, to the shadowed outline of her breasts and nipples under the sheer fabric, to the lines of her neck up over her face until he met her gaze.
“I found you,” he repeated. “Look at you.”
She smiled, the pleasure touching the corners of her eyes and brightening them. Luc realized he hadn’t seen her smile with such abandon in a long while, and thought it was a shame. It did something otherworldly to her face.
“I can only see you,” she said.
“Do you still sing?” A dumb question, but it was always on his mind.
“Still?”
“The first time I saw you, you were singing.” He hummed a few bars of the song he remembered.
She tilted her head, listened, and smiled. “It does seem familiar.” Then she glanced over her shoulder. “Walk with me?”
“Where are we?” Luc followed her as they started through the forest. It made way for them as she led them through, as if the forest obeyed her, moving, adjusting, blooming, changing to create a cleared passage.
She looked over her shoulder at him, her copper hair loosely braided and threaded with blossoms, wispy tendrils framing her face. “I suspect a dream.”
“Like the dream you told me about?”
She didn’t blush like he thought she might. In the waking world, she would have. Now, however, she tilted her head to regard him without any artifice. “Not quite.” She smirked. “You wouldn’t have any clothes on.” Her gaze raked over him, almost as heavy as a fingernail’s touch scraping along his skin.
He shivered. “Why am I here?”
“Why not?” she countered.
