Chapter 8 #3
I landed in the farmyard as the afternoon light was turning the orchard trees amber.
Valen’s hooves struck the packed earth with a solidity that felt like coming home, and the smell hit me before anything else: fresh bread, cut grass, the green scent of the vegetable garden where someone had been working.
They were all there. Gabriella and Sabrina in the field, working the rows of young plants.
Gabriella on her knees, her hands dark with soil, her blue dress hitched above her knees and tied there, her dark blonde hair coming loose from its knot in strands that stuck to her damp temples.
Sabrina beside her, wings folded, her light blonde hair caught in a braid, laughing at something Gabriella had said, the sound carrying across the yard.
And Angelina at the water pump, filling a watering can, her wings flexing slightly with each pull of the handle.
They looked up when Valen landed. Three pairs of eyes, three different versions of welcome, and I felt something in my chest expand to the point of discomfort.
“There he is,” Sabrina called, standing and brushing soil from her hands. “The wandering hero returns. Any fairies slain? Any dragons rescued? Or just a pleasant morning flight for the man who has nothing better to do than enjoy the weather?”
“I found her,” I said, dismounting. “Lyra.”
Gabriella stood, wiping her hands on her apron, and the way she looked at me carried a question she wasn’t asking out loud.
“She made something,” I said. “A potion. For the nightmares.” I touched the vial through my jacket, feeling its cool weight against my chest. “But she said… it works best when it’s taken somewhere safe.
With someone you trust. Someone who…” I hesitated, the words Lyra had used sitting in my mouth, heavy with implications I wasn’t ready to voice in front of Angelina and Sabrina. “Someone who makes you feel seen.”
Gabriella understood immediately. I saw it in her eyes. “The lake,” she said. “The island where we used to play. Remember? With the clear water and the flat rocks. We could go there.”
I remembered. A small floating island twenty minutes by pegasus, nothing on it but grass and wildflowers and a lake so clear you could see the bottom from the surface.
We’d gone there as children, the three of us, Sabrina diving from the rocks with her wings folded, Gabriella wading carefully at the shore while I held her hand, both of us pretending the water was deeper and more dangerous than it actually was.
“Perfect,” I said.
Sabrina’s expression did something complicated. The teasing didn’t leave her face, exactly, but a recognition passed through her eyes that she masked almost instantly with a smile that didn’t reach as far as it usually did.
“Go,” she said, waving a hand. “Heal my sister’s nightmares. I’ll finish the planting and try not to be bitterly jealous of your exclusive lake adventure, which I am, completely, but I’m mature about it. Mostly.”
Angelina said nothing. She watched us with those steady hazel eyes, the watering can in her hand, and whatever she saw in the space between Gabriella and me, she kept to herself, which was Angelina’s way of saying she trusted us to figure it out on our own timeline.
I went upstairs. Changed into cleaner clothes, though clean was relative on a farm where dirt was less an occasional visitor and more a permanent resident with strong opinions about personal space.
I tucked the vial into an inner pocket of my jacket, wrapped in a cloth to cushion it, and went back downstairs to find Gabriella waiting by Valen, her hair retied, her boots on, a small bag slung over her shoulder that presumably contained whatever a nineteen-year-old woman considered essential for an afternoon at a lake with me.
The man who had dreamed about her. The man who had read her diary. The man who was currently trying very hard not to think about either of those facts while helping her mount Valen, my hands at her waist, feeling the narrowness of her through the fabric of her dress.
We lifted. Valen’s wings caught the afternoon air, and the farm dropped away beneath us, shrinking to a collection of white buildings and green fields against the pale earth.
Gabriella leaned back against my chest, her body warm through my shirt, and neither of us spoke for the first few minutes of the flight.
Eventually, the lake island appeared on the horizon, exactly as I remembered it: a flat expanse of green meadow sloping down to water so clear it reflected the sky with the fidelity of a mirror.
We landed on the grassy bank, Valen’s hooves sinking into soft earth, and dismounted.
Gabriella slid down before I could help her, landing lightly, already turning toward the water with the eagerness of someone returning to a place that held only good memories.
“It’s exactly the same,” she said, her voice bright with the pleasure of recognition. “The rocks, the water, everything. Even the wildflowers.” She dropped to her knees in the grass beside the bank and began gathering them, her hands moving quickly, selecting blooms.
I watched her. The afternoon light turned her dark blonde hair gold at the edges, and the curve of her neck where it met her shoulder caught the sun in a way that made it difficult to look anywhere else.
She stood, an armful of wildflowers clutched against her chest, and turned to me with a smile that belonged on the face of someone much younger, unguarded and completely, utterly present.
“Come here,” she said.
I went. She reached up and tucked a flower behind my ear, a small purple thing with a center the color of fresh honey, her fingers brushing my hair, and the contact lasted less than a second but my nervous system registered it.
“Very becoming,” she said, stepping back to admire her work. “The Queen’s Falcon, decorated war hero, wearing wildflowers like he was born to it. The capital would be scandalized. I, personally, am delighted.”
She selected another flower, a tall stem with a white bloom, and brushed it across my face. The petals traced my cheekbone, my jaw, the sensitive skin beneath my ear, and when she dragged it down the side of my neck I felt a shiver move through me that had nothing to do with the temperature.
“Ticklish?” she asked, her eyes doing that thing, the gleam that meant she’d found a pressure point and was already calculating how hard to press it.
“Not even slightly. Military training. We’re inoculated against tickling. It’s in the manual, chapter twelve, paragraph—”
Her hand found my ribs. One finger, precisely placed between two ribs on my right side, and dug in.
I yelped. The sound was undignified and entirely involuntary, and Gabriella’s face lit up with the joy of someone who had just discovered that a war hero’s legendary composure has an extremely specific weakness.
“Oh,” she said. “Oh, this is valuable information. Extremely valuable.” Her other hand found my left side, both sets of fingers digging into the soft spots between my ribs, and I buckled, laughter exploding out of me before I could stop it.
“Gabriella, stop, that’s, God—”
She didn’t stop. Her fingers moved, finding new territory, under my arms, along my sides, her touch light and precise and absolutely merciless, and I was laughing too hard to form words, my body trying desperately to escape while also, traitorously, not wanting to escape at all.
I caught her wrists. We were both laughing, breathless, the sound carrying across the water, and I pulled her against me, our bodies colliding, and then we were on the grass, rolling, the wildflowers scattering around us, her laughter against my chest, my hands still holding her wrists above her head as I pinned her beneath me.
She was strong. Stronger than she looked, her body twisting beneath mine, her hips bucking, one knee finding purchase against my thigh, and then she was rolling us, her weight shifting, and suddenly she was on top, straddling my hips, her hands pinning my wrists to the grass beside my head, her hair falling around her face in dark blonde strands, her chest heaving with laughter and exertion.
“Checkmate,” she said, her voice breathless. “Again.”
I looked up at her. Her cheeks were flushed, her blue eyes bright, the wildflower still tucked behind her ear where it had survived the tumble.
Her dress had ridden up her thighs, the fabric bunched around her hips, and the position of her body on mine was generating a response that my military discipline was failing spectacularly to suppress.
I rolled us. One smooth motion, my hips shifting, my weight carrying us over until she was beneath me, her wrists still in my grip, her body pressed into the soft grass, and something tore.
Her dress, caught between us, the fabric giving way along one seam with a sound like canvas splitting, and the tear exposed the curve of her breast, pale skin and the edge of a cotton shift beneath, and Gabriella gasped, not in protest but in something that sounded dangerously close to want.
Her hands, freed from my grip, found my waistband in the scramble, fingers tangling in the fabric, pulling, and the linen gave, tearing along the seam, and suddenly there was skin against skin, her thigh against mine, hot and smooth, and my cock was hard and pressing against the thin cotton of my underclothes and her shift had ridden up around her hips.
I could feel the heat of her through the fabric, damp and ready, and neither of us was laughing anymore.
We were breathing. Hard, ragged pulls that didn’t seem to be delivering enough oxygen to either of our brains, which might have explained what happened next.