Chapter 5
five
. . .
When I stirred awake the next morning, I was surprised to feel something warm pressed against me.
The desert nights were cold, but I could feel the morning was starting to warm. It wasn't hot enough outside yet that the heat was unpleasant, though. I moved closer to it before opening my eyes.
When I did, I tried to make sense of what was in front of me. There was a head of icy blonde hair lying against my chest. I blinked away the thoughts of sleep that were still clinging to me, expecting the apparition to go away. When it didn't, my thoughts started to spiral.
There was a person in my arms, lying with me.
Based on their body shape, it was a shorter woman.
She had icy blonde hair. My thoughts struggled to make the connection.
It couldn't be her. I had to have dreamed last night.
I tried to pull away gently, but I was pressed against the side of the tent with nowhere to go.
I tried to wedge my arm out from under the sleeping woman, but she stirred.
I stopped immediately, but the damage was done. She rolled over and her eyes blinked open. I stayed frozen. There was no more denying it now; it was Astra. She blinked a couple of times before her eyes widened.
“Ci?” she blurted out.
My heart stopped beating. I couldn't have heard her right. She never called me that. “Good morning,” I said carefully.
Her eyes widened even more, and her hands flashed magenta before settling to a soft lavender.
She leaned in, and I couldn't have moved a bone in my body if the entire tent had burst into flames.
Her lips came within a breath of mine before she moved to my ear.
I gasped as her teeth gently tugged on my earlobe. “It is for you,” she whispered.
Then she pushed herself away from me and jumped up to her feet. Luckily for her, she was in the middle of the tent, or the whole thing might have come down on top of us. At her height, her head brushed the top of the tent, but she could stand without ducking, a luxury I didn’t have.
“Well, some of us aren't planning to lie about all day. I'll give the company your regards.” With that, she left, leaving me blinking after her.
I couldn't think straight, but I forced myself to sit up and fix my hair.
Her lips had been so close to mine. I had kissed people before, of course, but no one fairy-enhanced, to my knowledge.
To them, kissing was more sacred than sex.
For a fairy-enhanced to kiss someone or to let someone close enough to their lips that that person could initiate a kiss, they would either have to trust them completely or know beyond a shadow of a doubt that they weren't the fairy-enhanced's true love.
Magic complicated love. Some of the fairy-enhanced had been born with magic in their blood, others were cursed.
There were rumors that there were certain rituals a common-blooded person could perform to become cursed, but the personal price was so high that I hadn't known or even heard of anyone who had been willing to try.
The only cure for the strongest curses was true love's kiss, so the fairy-enhanced were careful about who they kissed, since sometimes it was hard to tell if their magic was a blessing or a curse.
If they kissed someone, they were risking losing their magic, and most of the fairy-enhanced I knew weren't willing to risk it.
Astra either had to be sure I wasn’t her true love or that her magic was a blessing, not a curse. I wasn't sure, but the alternative, that she trusted me enough to know I wouldn't risk her magic, couldn't be true.