Chapter 28 #3
After the seventh bell, the air stilled.
I expected the worst. A monster, rising from the Nocturne, water dripping down its scales.
Or an evil darkness, devouring Evernight like the moon in the king’s dream.
Instead, the Nocturne’s waves fell at once, smoothing into glass, and seven great bridges were fully revealed, spanning across the sea from Evernight into the Weavers’ separate territories.
“Evernight’s call,” the Shadow Bringer explained. “The bells ring to summon the Weavers.”
“For danger or for amusement?”
“Sometimes danger, demons and the like.” He walked back inside his bedchamber, arranging himself atop the bed in a stiff, uncomfortable-looking line. “Sometimes amusement. Either way, it doesn’t concern us.”
I followed his lead and climbed into his bed, pulling a slip of quilted velvet up to my nose. Maker, the smell was divine. “What do you define as amusing, Shadow Bringer? Paint me a picture.”
He propped his head up on an elbow, peering at me from under his draconic helm. It was beginning to look quite lopsided; its caged mouth and one of its two horns had broken off, and I desperately wanted to yank off the rest of it.
“My amusement used to be dreaming. Flying over the Nocturne with outstretched wings. Imagining and creating entire worlds.” His voice grew soft, a velvet purr.
It was positively distracting, though I doubted he was even aware he was doing it.
“Now the only thing I can qualify as amusing or enjoyable in the slightest has been the time I’ve spent with you. ”
I promptly turned around, shocked. I did not want him to see the flush rising to my face.
“Your standards for entertainment are a bit low. I don’t know that I’d qualify this as either amusing or enjoyable.
” That was a lie. Parts of these dreams had been exhilarating.
But if I focused on the darker moments—the hurt, the grief, the terror—they threatened to devour me whole.
“Particularly since our eternal damnation is imminent.”
“Yes. There is that.” I felt the bed shift as he moved closer, once again enveloping us in a whooshing cocoon of shadow.
Only this time, instead of his back, I was clearly pressed against his chest. “We still have two dreams left. We just need to find something in one of them that helps us break free.”
He lifted my hair with a brush of his hand, fingers briefly grazing the nape of my neck. His clawed gauntlets were perpetually cold, and his unexpected touch felt electric.
Get ahold of yourself. He was moving my hair because it was in his way. Not because he wanted to touch me.
“What do you define as amusing, Esmer Havenfall?”
“I’m not sure. Reading? Daydreaming? What most girls my age would qualify as amusing hasn’t happened yet.”
A pause. “What’s that?” He dared me to go on.
“I’ve never had a lover.” I hated how exposed I felt around him, how right it felt for his hand to be threaded in my hair.
“And if our souls really do become lost at the end of this, that means I’ll die before having experienced all that life has to offer.
Just as you’ll die without having experienced freedom outside the Dream Realm in centuries.
It’s terrible. And wretchedly inconvenient for someone who has never even been kissed. ”
“You would desire such a thing?”
“Well, of course,” I said with a laugh, turning to face him. “Doesn’t everyone?”
His gaze dropped to my lips, a silent and shocking question.
I hadn’t expected for our conversation to turn this way.
Hadn’t imagined that he’d even consider doing what his expression now suggested.
But his lips were slightly parted, and his helm had broken away just enough around his mouth and jaw to make it possible.
I nodded yes before the moment could be ripped away.
He brought his lips to mine. The kiss was soft, slow, and achingly tender.
Just a graze of his sensuous mouth. But where his lips were soft, the rest of him was firm, rigid, and unyielding—a man encased in obsidian armor from his feet to his brow.
The top of his helm felt cool against my forehead, his nose a mere suggestion in the shape of the metal.
Still, while his mouth was pressed against mine, I scarcely noticed.
Warmth surged through my limbs, pooling pleasantly in my stomach.
He leaned away too soon.
“There,” he murmured, voice a shade darker than I’d ever heard it. “A first for both of us. Perhaps now our spirits will be less discontent after we perish.”
“Perhaps so,” I agreed.
I ached to kiss him again. To kiss him back fully.
I wanted to lift his helm from his face and thread my fingers through his moon-white hair.
To arch into his chest as his arms pulled me closer.
To explore more of him, chasing that warm, tingling feeling as he explored more of me, too.
I wondered what more skin might feel like.
Maybe it would feel safe. A comforting nearness that would push away everything terrible and cruel about the world.
But it could feel like betrayal, too. Like blinding, teeth-gnashing guilt.
I turned back around, my nonexistent heart racing at a steady, frantic pace in my chest.