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“Sentient,” I repeat. He heard everything.
A nod confirms he did. “Thank you for keeping watch over my rest, Wolayna.” There is no awkwardness as he smiles at me with exhausted eyes. “I’ll guard your secrets the same way you guarded me.”
“Where did you sail?” I asked instead of one of the fifteen other options coming to my mind—that he doesn’t need to thank me. That I was foolish to believe he wouldn’t be able to pick up each and every word even when less than a murmur. That he can forget those things right away because they are none of his business. Because the truth is I want him to know how much my heart aches when I glance out the windows each morning, missing the brine and salty wind washing away the sleepiness. How much I wonder if flying feels similar to sailing across smooth, glistening waters. If there is a chance he might tell me where he came from, where he is aching to go if the curse ever gets broken.
Myron’s throat bobs before he speaks, black eyes shimmering in the dimmed fairy lights. “Along the coasts of Neredyn in hopes to escape the gods. West toward new hope, new lands, where our people might find peace.” He swallows again, gaze darting to the pitcher of water on the nightstand.
I dive into my newfound magic and draw a string of water into the crystal goblet beside it before handing it to him.
The proud smile Myron presents me with makes my heart swell, and I need to press my mouth into a line in order to keep myself from returning it. It would be the beginning of my end.
“I’d say the fairy princess did a great job teaching me,” I say instead, gesturing at the goblet he’s sipping from.
He shakes his head. “She is a terrifying creature, but she isn’t as horrible as one might believe.”
I keep to myself that I figured that out on my own about two days into our training.
“She once was an intended bride. My father had a bargain with King Recienne, the First. She slipped through because a human woman valued the lives of all her friends above her own.” The look he gives me turns my heart into a puddle—because the question is there, in his eyes, if I’d sacrifice my life for that of my friends. If I would die rather than see one of them die.
“What a lucky female.” It’s the only response I find, and Myron nods his agreement.
“Lucky indeed. Lucky, because she knows true love.”
I don’t know why his words send shivers down my spine, why they sound more like an admission to a flaw than an appreciation of someone else’s luck to have found and forged such strong bonds.
Instead of responding, I draw more water into his goblet, and he drains it before sitting up to place it back on the nightstand.
He’s so close the air tastes of wind and pine, and his eyes?—
Two bottomless midnight windows gazing at me as if he’s never seen me before even when he’s studied me all this time from afar or up close. Heat coils in my stomach, the sensation rolling through my body as he brushes back a loose strand of hair.
“The water didn’t soak you,” he notes again, even when we’ve been through the specifics of what happened. This time, his pride raises a tingling awareness deep inside of me. “You’re powerful, Ayna.”
“Powerful enough to kill two Crows,” I whisper.
“To kill a Crow King if you’d wanted to.”
It hovers between us for a breath, his statement, offering for me to say I regret not letting him die, not using that new power to rid the world of him.
“To kill a Crow King,” I echo, which is beginning to feel like a habit, so I push on. “Who would I fight with if I killed you off?” It’s a weak attempt at dispersing the tension building between us, the tension that has always been there in a way.
“Who indeed?” The grin he gives me is nothing short of wicked, and I forget how to breathe altogether as he invades my space until our faces are lined up with mere inches between. His breath heats my lips as I wait, wait, wait with burning anticipation. His hand wanders up the arm I’ve braced beside his hip, swiping along my shoulder, my neck in a feather-light brush until it comes to a halt under my chin. With pressure so slight I barely feel it as more than a caress, he tips up my face until my eyes lock on his. “But right now, I’d rather kiss you.”
He leans another inch closer, his heated gaze blurring as I inhale the honey and mint of his breath, as I ache to close that gap. But his fingers close around my chin, locking me in place as he hovers just out of reach. “You know, I don’t waste time to fight with people I don’t care for,” he murmurs before he finally, finally quenching that ache the distance between us induced, his mouth touching mine ever so slightly—and pulls back, bringing a whole new devastation to well up inside of me. “As I don’t kiss people I don’t care for.”
“Even for show?”
For a beat, he stills like I’ve hit him right where it hurts, but he recovers fast, his mouth finding mine in a desperate kiss that has my mouth falling open as I gasp for breath as he sucks and nips on my lips until a moan escapes my throat. The slide of his tongue against mine summons heat to my core as he explores my mouth with expert strokes, as I ignite like a torch of eternal fire.
“Not like this,” he whispers when my breathing has turned ragged, my fingers digging into the sheets right by his hip so as not to slide it up his side to feel him shiver under my touch. Guardians—I want him. Want to lean into the hardness of his chest, to run my fingertips along the grooves of his muscles.
“Tell me, Myron…” My voice is trembling as he releases my chin to draw his hand down the side of my neck, mouth following to the base of my throat where he draws idle kisses along my collarbone. “How do you kiss a woman you want?”
His lips still, and for a beat, I’m afraid I said something wrong, asked too much of him when this is all a game to him. But the way his mouth crashes back onto mine tells me it’s anything but a game. That he feels the fire as much as I do, that he will combust if he can’t get his hands on me.
As if my thought summoned them, his wings wrap around my shoulders, one hand delving into my hair, at the nape of my neck where he tugs slightly until the angle allows him to deepen the kiss as he takes full advantage. My skin is on fire. My entire body is one wave of pleasure after the other chasing through me, fueling the heat melting my core. My eyes fall shut, and the world disappears as he groans low in his throat, the sound kindling a pulsing need that I know will hound me if I let him out of my grasp now. So, I lock my arm around his neck, securing him to my face as I suck on his lower lip, his tongue, as I kiss him like my life depends on it—and he kisses me right back, the same desperation in every ragged breath, every nip of his teeth and stroke of his tongue.
And still, it is not enough. Still, I need him closer.
