Chapter 15
Before I can gather a response, he bends down, seizes my hand, and draws me to my feet. A fur is snatched from the bed and flung over my shoulders, and I hold to it wordlessly as Soren shoulders on the pack.
“Ready?” he asks.
“I have no idea.”
He very nearly grins at this.
Outside the tent, two of my guards—Boyd and Fuller—keep watch, though they don’t so much as glance my way as I emerge with the king. I’m looking at them and wondering at this sudden change when Soren sweeps me up into his arms, making me gasp aloud.
“What are you—?”
But I cut my own words short as great wings unfurl behind him, wings the deep scarlet of dark rubies, which might make me think of Princess Rosa just then and begin my spiral anew if Soren weren’t crouching down as if for an enormous leap.
His arms, already tight on me, press me closer to his bare chest.
He’s going to fly.
No sooner has the thought flitted across my mind than he leaps.
I clap a hand over my mouth as we burst off the ground. We’re higher than the tents, then the lake’s rim, and now I’m staring out in awestruck wonder at an endless ocean of sand, the crests gleaming in the moonlight, the moon itself staggering in its nearness.
“Soren,” I say, the only breathless word I can manage.
He does grin then.
“Look up,” he says.
I tilt my head back, my stomach swooping, my mouth falling open.
The stars.
I’ve seen them through my telescope, of course, seen their brilliance winking back at me, but this—I know it’s silly, that they’re innumerable leagues away—but this makes them seem near enough to touch.
“Soren,” I say again.
Wind listing through my hair, I cling to him and the fur as we fly. I have no sense of time or distance, only the beauty above and the warmth beneath, holding me secure.
At some point, we begin to descend, and the dropping sensation that comes has me tightening my arms around Soren’s neck, but we settle to the ground with the easy grace of a tern come to rest.
“When you said we were going to the stars,” I say, laughing as Soren sets me on my feet, “I didn’t know you actually meant to them.”
He shakes tousled hair from his eyes. “You liked it then?”
My gaze drifts back to the sky before returning to him. “I loved it.”
His mouth curls with satisfaction.
“Come,” he says. “Sit,” and when I do, he follows suit and begins to draw parcels from his pack, each of them wrapped in bright napkins.
“Is it cake?” I ask, fighting a smile.
“Of course it is.”
To my surprise, there are also some savory options, chicken, cheeses, and the like. We settle into a comfortable quiet as we eat and gaze at the stars.
“Selena won’t believe me when I tell her,” I say, “that we flew like that.”
“When she comes, I will take her as well, if she wishes.”
A swell of affection spreads through me, and I can’t help glancing at him, though I had been avoiding doing so for fear of blushing at his attire, or lack thereof. He’s still studying the sky, his wings like dark sentinels on either side of him.
“That’s very kind of you,” I say.
When we finish, we fold the napkins and tuck them back into the bag. It’s easy enough, for there are no leftovers.
“I imagine fighting like you do leaves one famished,” I say.
He leans back on his hands, a mischievous glint lighting in his eyes. “I’d imagine you’d know.”
I try to look perplexed, though I’m sure I fail. “What do you mean?”
“I saw the way you held yourself when I walked into your bedchamber the first night. That’s a grappling stance. Some would call it an island variant, but I’m well aware that grappling originated in the island nations.”
I sigh. I suppose there’s no use denying it. When he appeared from that hidden door, speaking of thanking me and which side of the bed he ought to take, my training simply took over, exactly as it was meant to do. “Mother insisted we girls know how to defend ourselves.”
He inclines his head at this. “A sound requirement.”
“I wasn’t fond of it,” I say, drawing the fur tighter around me.
“Would you consider it a flaw if you were?”
My brows lower. “Of course not. I simply…wished to be doing other things.” I would rather have been combing the beach with Selena or wandering the shoreline in my little canoe, not bruising myself and others in the training room.
Soren doesn’t answer, and I begin to suspect the question has a deeper origin, though I’m not sure how to venture further.
I shiver at a sudden wind. It’s little more than a breeze, but the desert night is cooling fast.
“Cold?” he asks, and I can’t help noticing how relaxed his own posture is. Perhaps dragons neither sweat nor feel the cold. I begin to wish I were one myself.
“A bit.”
He rises, and moving behind me, seats himself at my back. When he plants a leg on either side of me and pulls me snug against him, I believe my body delivers all my remaining heat to my flushed cheeks. His wings he wraps around us like enormous blankets, blocking all wind.
“Better?”
“Yes,” I whisper.
It’s heavenly.
A meteor streaks by, one large enough to leave a violet tail streaming after it, and my hand flashes out to point. “Did you see that?”
“I did,” Soren says, his voice low at my ear. “It’s likely a forerunner to the Andrames.”
Ah, the meteor shower he spoke of arriving at the month’s end.
The one preceding our wedding.
My breath catches as his fingers come up to graze my cheek, moving with extra care over the bruising left by Lord Lyken’s wing. He pauses.
“Does this hurt?”
“No,” I say, my heart in my throat.
Silence falls once more, but this time it’s charged and thrumming with nameless things I find myself aching to identify.
“Princess.”
“Yes?”
He presses his lips to my neck, the sensation somehow like a candle bursting to life in a dark room. “I want to ask you something.”
I swallow. “All right.”
He stays where he is so that his mouth brushes my skin as he speaks. “What do they say of me? In Vasna?”
The question perplexes me, but when he kisses me again, lingering as if he likes the taste, the words come whether I want them to or not.
“They say you are a fearsome leader. That you’ve brought great stability to Tirenth. That you’re known to be fair but that you’re never to be tested.”
“I see,” he says, and the urge to lean into his mouth is nearly unbearable. “Would they say I like to fight, do you think? Would they say I enjoy these challenges to my throne?”
I answer without hesitation. “Yes.”
My eyes flutter shut as his lips travel lower. “They would be right, but probably not for the reasons they think. There are many gifts in this world, Princess. There are gifted painters, and sculptors, and writers. Unfortunately, I am none of these. My gift lies in fighting.”
He pauses here as though he asked a question, and I hear it as if he did.
“Do you worry I find your fighting distasteful?” I ask.
“Perhaps. But I think I worry more about your peace, so I need you to understand, I haven’t lost a match since I was a fledgling. Challenges are unavoidable, but you have nothing to fear.”
I moisten my own lips. “Seltzen…Seltzen was so large.”
“Seltzen is a buffoon. I could have defeated him blindfolded.”
A small, breathy laugh escapes me. “His technique was rather terrible.”
“Abysmal.”
He straightens, and his cheek comes to rest on my own. “Your safety was never at risk, and I’m sorry that you thought it was.”
“I did not mean to offend.”
“I wasn’t offended.”
His lips return to my shoulder, continuing their path with maddening leisure. My hand comes up to tangle in his hair.
“We will learn one another’s ways, Serah,” Soren breathes. “We come from two very different worlds, yet love can’t be so different between them.”
My eyes, on their way to slipping shut, burst open.
Did he say…
Love?