19. Azaan
Azaan
She thinks she hides it well. She doesn’t.
I’m the one who feels things, always have been, since long before we ever got shut in that book.
Emotions come off people like weather off the sea, and Tabby’s have been storming for days.
Grief, which is Alex’s fault. Fear, which is Tabeitha’s fault.
And underneath both, quiet and corrosive, the one that’s nobody’s fault but the one that’ll kill her fastest if I let it fester.
She’s decided she doesn’t matter. She’s decided she’s the box the wine came in, and a box is a thing you throw away once you’ve poured it.
I’m not having that.
So the next morning, when Valerian wants to push straight on to the Palace and start planning the raid, I catch his eye over Tabby’s head and give him the look, the one that says, I’m taking her, cover for me, and to his credit he only sighs.
“Take an hour,” he says. “One. We’re on a clock.”
“We’re always on a clock,” I say, and steal our Queen.
I whirl us both off on the wind, just the two of us, before she can argue, and set us down somewhere I found weeks ago and have been saving.
There’s a ridge on the far side of the Palace where the fire geysers run in a line, and if you catch them at the right hour of the crimson dawn, they go up all together, a whole valley of them, gold and red and white, roaring towards the sky like the realm’s set itself alight on purpose.
It’s the closest thing to beautiful this dimension has, and I have been waiting to give it to her.
She stops mid-complaint. “Oh,” she says. “Oh, that’s...”
“Yeah.”
“That’s actually gorgeous, Azaan. You absolute show-off.”
“I know.” I sit us down on the warm rock, arm round her, and let her watch it.
She goes soft against me, and for a minute she isn’t the Queen or the vessel or the countdown, she’s just a woman watching the world burn pretty.
“I didn’t bring you here for the view,” I admit.
“Well. Partly. Mostly I brought you here to yell at you.”
She snorts. “That’s romantic.”
“You’ve decided you don’t matter.” I say it plainly, because she deflects everything soft and she can’t deflect blunt.
“Since that cave. Since he told you you’re just the box she came in.
You’ve been walking round with it written all over you, that you’re a means to an end, that we’d be fine without you, that the important thing is what you’re carrying and not you.
And I want you to know I felt it the first day I met you, that same thing, that you’d been taught you were nobody.
Alex didn’t invent that. He just used it. ”
Her eyes fill, quick and furious. “Don’t.”
“I’m going to, though.” I turn her chin towards me, gentle.
Green eyes on blue. “You matter, little one. Not because you carry a dead Queen. Not because your fire juices my magic. You matter because you crawled through a portal into hell and started making jokes. Because you learned all four of our stupid names and our stupid moods and you come and stand in our quiet with us. Because you die and you get up. Tabeitha never did any of that. Tabeitha ruled a realm and it still fell. You?” I press my forehead to hers.
“You’re the best thing that ever happened to any of us, and if you throw yourself away because a demon in a nice jumper told you you’re disposable, I will personally follow you into the afterlife and be extremely annoying about it. ”
She laughs, wet and cracked. “You’re already extremely annoying.”
“Imagine it worse. Eternally.”
She kisses me, then. Salt and heat, and the storm in her cracks open into something else, want, need, the good kind. I feel it swell up through both of us like the geysers going off.
“Show me,” she breathes against my mouth. “Show me I matter. Just you. Right now.”
“Kitten.” I lay her back on the warm stone, the whole burning valley at our feet. “It would be my absolute honour.”
I take my time. That’s the point of it, that there’s no rush, no others, no danger for one stolen hour, just me learning her all over again like I don’t already know every sound she makes.
I strip the leather off her slow and kiss down every inch, the two black claw-marks on her arm, the soft of her belly, the inside of each thigh, until she’s writhing and swearing at me to get on with it.
I don’t get on with it. I make her wait, work her with my mouth until she’s coming on my tongue with my name in her mouth, and then I do it again, greedy, because her pleasure is the whole point and I’m a control freak, everyone knows this.
“Azaan,” she gasps. “Please. I need you in me. Now.”
“Since you asked so nicely.”
I slide into her slow, all the way, and she wraps round me.
I brace over her and just feel it, the two of us, her heat, her breath, the bond humming warm and gold.
I don’t want fast. I want her to feel every stroke, want her looking at me the whole time so she can’t pretend it’s anything but her I want.
“Look at me,” I tell her, and she does. “There. That’s the woman I love. Not a box. Not a vessel. You.” I roll my hips and she keens. “Say it. Say you matter.”
“I...” She breaks off on a moan as I hit the spot that makes her arch.
“Say it, kitten.”
“I matter,” she gasps, and I feel it land in her, feel the corrosive quiet thing loosen its grip.
I reward her, drive into her deeper, faster now, until we’re both past words, until she shatters round me and takes me with her, the geysers roaring, the whole realm on fire, and her, my Queen, coming apart in my arms because she matters, because she does, because I’ll spend eternity proving it if that’s what it takes.
After, she lies boneless on my chest, watching the last of the geysers gutter out.
“We’re going to be late,” she says.
“Valerian can wait.”
“Valerian can never wait, it physically pains him.”
“Then let’s pain him.” I kiss the top of her head. “You matter, Tabby. Even when I’m not saying it. Especially then.”
She doesn’t answer. But she holds on a little tighter, and the storm’s gone out of her, and I count that a job well done.