Chapter 24
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
BALE
“Stop.” I leap after Idallia like a lovestruck fool.
She turns bleary eyes on me. “You’ll break your neck falling down the stairs.
” I crook my fingers at her. “Come back here.” She just stares at me, swaying a little, so I move forward, lightly take her hand, and tug her toward a window. It’s the better way down.
“I think I’ll break more than my neck if I go out the window.” Her hand curls against mine, and my whole chest tightens with the need to pull her into my arms and pretend that nothing else exists in the world.
“And I think you know very well I’m not about to toss you out the window.”
“Debatable,” she mutters, staggering into me. She rights herself just as fast.
My lips jerk up in an involuntary smile, but real humor escapes me. I just had the perfect opportunity to tell her everything, and I still didn’t. My current excuse is that she’s been drinking. What will tomorrow’s excuse be? That the wind blows from the east?
I’ve never felt like the villain in any of the happenings of Ellonrift before. But that’s because I was never selfish about anything until the time to give up Idallia started breathing down my neck.
Still holding her hand in one of mine, I unlatch the window with the other and spread the panes wide.
With only a few words, I could change everything at the next Ellonrift Council. I could rip Rannigan’s double vote away. I could maybe avoid a war.
Instead, I ask her, “What do you see when you look out this window?”
She takes a moment to breathe, steadying herself. I can smell dragon’s brew on her lips and have the acute urge to lick it off, even though I don’t even like the drink that much. She’s tipsy and sleepy, and I should’ve just walked her down the stairs.
“The night sky,” she finally answers. “Too many stars to count.”
“You look up instead of down?” She nods, and I can’t help asking, “Why?”
A breeze caresses her shoulders and lifts her loose hair.
She turns her face into it, savoring the mountain air, even though I can tell she’s cold, her skin tensing and pebbling with goose bumps.
I drink her in—her fierce beauty, her bright sunshine on hard ice scent—and feel as intoxicated as she is.
“Because that’s where we all soar together. ”
Happiness jerks a lightning-bolt path across my chest. “You like flying?” Together.
She turns to me, the chill air slapping pink into her cheeks.
Her smile makes the floor open beneath my feet, and I feel like I’m falling so fast and hard that not even my wings can catch me.
“I love it. The freedom. The thin air. I can see everything from up there, and all the things that have seemed…difficult in my life can’t touch me from way down here. ”
“It’s an escape?”
Looking thoughtful, she shakes her head. “Not exactly. Just…a moment apart. When joy defeats everything else.” Her muted, self-conscious laugh tugs at my heart.
“Are you not happy otherwise?” I can’t help squeezing her hand a little harder.
“That’s not what I mean. Flying just makes everything else go away because there’s no room to think about anything but how special it is.” Her brow creases. “But maybe you can’t understand because you’ve had flight ever since you could shift. For me, it’s an unexpected gift.”
“Even after all this time?” Why am I still holding her hand? Why has she not pulled hers away yet?
“I think a million years couldn’t change how special it is.”
My chuckle makes her golden eyes flick to me.
“We won’t live a million years. A few thousand, if we’re lucky.
” Natality among Ellonrift’s long-lived peoples is very low—nature’s way of balancing our populations.
One of the few exceptions was the last royal family of Fanghaven.
But then, that was a love match like I’ve rarely seen.
“You’re more than halfway done with your first millennium. Does that ever scare you?”
The only thing scaring me right now is the terrifying need for more that this private moment stirs inside me. “Not really. I think life will have seemed very long by the time I’m old and gray.”
Idallia reaches up, her fingers lightly brushing the hair near my temple. “No gray yet.”
Sensation shudders through me, a roar of fire and desire that makes me desperately want to kiss her. “What else do you like about flying with the Elite Wing?” Maybe keeping her here isn’t just good for me, even if it’s not good for my kingdom. Maybe it’s good for Idallia. What she needs.
“The friendships. The belonging.” A soft smile breaks over her face. “My birds,” she adds with even more feeling, love sparking in her eyes like starbursts.
“Are we friends then?” I rasp.
Her brows arch in delicate irony. “You declared yourself friendless.”
“Maybe I don’t want to be friends.” My heart clenches violently as the potentially ruinous words leave my mouth.
Her lips part on a startled breath. Her eyes roam my face, looking for clues to my meaning. It could be that I want more from her. It could also be that I want to continue my friendless existence.
My pulse pounds hard. Hers does too. She finally turns away, her gaze fixing out the window again. “You say you don’t want friends because you’ve never actually been alone. You isolated yourself plenty, but you had a choice, which makes all the difference. Loneliness wasn’t imposed on you.”
“Could you not have gone into Glarraden?” I ask, still holding her hand like a prize I won and won’t relinquish. “There must’ve been potential companions there.”
“All they did was point fingers and call me the gildenfae-gold kid in loud enough whispers for me to hear. I used to wish the gold would stop coming. Then maybe they’d all forget.” Her sigh feels like a mountain sitting on my chest.
“There’s nothing wrong with the gildenfae,” I say stiffly.
She scoffs. “It wasn’t about them. It was about the sheer amount of gold every year, which even you have to admit was a lot.”
No more than any queen of Ellonrift would have at her fingertips. “Do you think Rita and Gerard would’ve kicked you out if the gold stopped coming?”
She laughs, the sound like ice cracking on a lake. “That would’ve required them noticing I was there to begin with.”
I squeeze her hand, trying to convey an apology I should be free to say aloud. “I’m sorry,” I still tell her, though she can’t know why or how much.
Shrugging, she pulls her hand from mine. “Your plan to sober me up with frigid night air worked. I’m pretty sure I can make it down the stairs intact now.”
“You’re not going down the stairs, Sunshine.”
Her suspicious gaze snaps to mine. “So you are tossing me out the window?”
Grinning, I step up onto the low window frame and reach out a hand. She looks at me warily but slips her hand back into mine. I haul her up with me.
“You said you like to fly.” I grab her around the waist and fall backward, tipping us both into the void.
She gasps my name in a way that makes me want to devour her whole.
As she clutches my shoulders, I turn in the air and let my shadow wings unfurl and solidify.
We glide, the dragon in me heating us both, and she throws her legs around my waist, holding on with a grip so strong it pulls a low groan from my throat.
“This feels dangerous,” she whispers in my ear.
It feels disastrous. “Don’t worry. I’ve got you.” Her hair flies into my face, the scent of it filling my lungs. I pull her flush against me, bury my face in her neck, and breathe.
Her heartbeat thunders in my ears. My own echoes it. I slowly circle in wide arcs to prolong the moment, dreading her window coming into sight.
“Is this what it’s like to be starborn?” she asks huskily. Her hand slides to my neck, holding my face to her throat. Heat ripples down my spine. “A man and a dragon in one.”
I think the dragon is about to take over. It wants to claim, keep, mate.
So does the man. There’s no denying it, and I don’t even try. “Yes…for me.” And Idallia should know what it feels like to be starborn for her, except I’m keeping her from it. Or at least, from the choice.
“Why don’t you ever show this to anyone else?” she asks as her perpetually open window slides by. I let it pass.
“I don’t like to use this kind of power too often. Magic is waning, and I don’t want to waste mine.”
She pulls back a little, looking curiously into my face. “But you’ve shown me plenty of times.”
My wry chuckle is almost pained. She’s so close that it would take just the slightest dip of my head to kiss her. Would she welcome my lips? “I want you to know me.”
Color rises in her cheeks, the deeper flush visible even in the dark. “For what it’s worth, I think it’s beautiful. You’re everything at once. You don’t have to choose.”
Her words remind me of the secrets between us and help quell my crushing desire to fly her back up the mountain, lay her on my bed, and slake this fierce passion I’ve tried so hard to ignore.
I pump my wings, bringing us back up and through her window. Her legs drop from my waist, and I force myself to let her go. Her arms slowly fall from my shoulders, lingering just long enough to make me doubt my choice.
Her room is dark, though light starts glowing from inside the roosting wall almost immediately. Three twinkling lanterns to welcome her home.
My chest collapses with loneliness.
I back toward the window and hop onto the ledge. Standing there, I take her in.
Starborn.
Sunblood.
Idallia of Glarraden.
Which part of her will win?
She shivers, and I immediately want to warm her again.
“For what it’s worth, I think you’re beautiful,” I rasp.
Her eyes widen as I drop backward off the ledge.