Chapter 10
INTERLUDE
We’re laughing, hard and we’re trying to stop, but we can’t. We can only manage brief pauses, but we’ll look at each other, just a look, and lose it again. “I can’t—I can’t b-breathe, Bayaden stop it.”
“You stop it. You’re the one making me laugh.”
“Me? You keep looking at me, stop looking.”
“No, you keep looking at me.”
The fields of Aldrienian wildflowers stretch out before us as we lie in the middle of them, not a soul in sight. The grass is tall and because it’s eternal summer here, it’s hot and lovely. The blue sky is dusted with fluffy clouds and bees zip by to tickle my nose.
Finally, we can look at each other without laughing. “Baya? What do you like best about me?”
“Best? That assumes I like anything about you at all. You’re human, what’s to like about a human?”
I whack him on the shoulder. “Arse! Fine. I don’t like you either.”
He laughs, but it’s not uncontrollable like earlier; it’s “you’re adorable when you’re mad” and “clearly that’s not true”. I know this, and I still pout. He schools his features to something more serious. “All right, it’s a secret but the Warlord fancies a human. Can you believe that? A human.”
The soft glow of gold from the tattoo over his right eye makes his face brighter and more mischievous. I play along. “Oh? How scandalous.”
He stares. “It is. Poor bugger was blindsided,” he learned that saying from me, “and it can’t be said that it’s his fault. The human is quite enchanting.”
“How so?”
His fingers dance up my bare torso. “Well, there are a great many reasons. Like how he moves on the field with a weapon in his hand and his quick wit. It is even said that the great Warlord enjoys his sharp tongue.”
“Great Warlord, eh?”
“Oh yes, I can’t stress the ‘great’ enough.
” I laugh. “The human is also more beautiful than any other he’s seen, more than any Elf too.
” His face gets soft. “But none of that’s why he’s enchanted.
It’s just a thing that is. I find I wait until he breathes before I take my next breath, I live to see his next smile, selfishly hoping I’m the cause of it, and when I kiss him the world falls away and life feels easy if only for that brief moment. ”
He presses his lips to mine. The memory fades. Summer’s gone and our laughter is trapped in the wind.