Chapter 10 The Myth Of Divinity
The Myth Of Divinity
When Sheba opened her eyes, the sun had crested the peaks, casting the hut in a mellow, honeyed hue.
She woke to the muted scrape of tools and found Idan standing at the long span of his leather-making desk.
She stared around her in shock. How late was it? Was it lunchtime or afternoon?
It’s late afternoon, and naam, you slept much longer than usual, Idan drawled, not turning around.
She jolted at his voice and drew a shawl around her shoulders.
Why didn’t you wake me?
You needed the rest.
Sheba blinked, taking inventory.
She felt more at peace, deeply rested indeed. More calm too.
Damn him, but he was right.
The long sleep had done wonders for her mind, body, and soul.
That’s when she noticed what he was up to.
She bit her lip, taking in all of his magnificence.
His upper body was bare, his muscles bunching as he worked a hide stretched tight into the beginnings of a tool belt.
Awls, burnishers, and stitching paraphernalia lay arranged on the bench beside him, his hands moving with practiced economy as he cut, pressed, and molded the pattern into life.
Firelight lit his glistening chest, illuminating his glyphs, gleaming over muscles as they flexed with each pull and strike, his sweat a muted sheen.
His hair was caught up in a rough bun, some of the long strands free and flowing over his back, lifting and settling with his breath.
She recalled how he held her until her shivering subsided, then slept beside her all night, her view of him tilting on its axis.
The men she dated in the past were loud, brash, and showy.
Her former dates and boyfriends paled in comparison to his resplendence; they now seemed performative and forgettable to her.
She wondered what she’d ever seen in them at all.
Idan, however, was different; silent, grounded.
With the raw gravity of a frontiersman, yet carrying the heft of an ancient potency she had yet to unravel, a man of hidden complexities that she wanted to explore.
Worse, he raised her temperature, stirred her desire, and got her freakin’ wet.
Starbane’s void, he got her heated up.
As if sensing her regard, he glanced up from his bench.
Their gazes locked with such impact that it shuddered through her.
Sheba’s pulse spiked, a frantic drumming against her ribs that made her breath hitch.
Damn this man.
She felt exposed, as if his stare were peeling back the layers of her soul.
He didn’t bother to mask the dark, heavy hunger in his expression.
His eyes raked over her, starting at the curve of her nape.
Lingering on the rise and fall of her chest, and tracing the line of her hips under the furs, before returning to her face with a searing intensity.
He made no effort to hide his physical reaction either; the air between them thickened with the sudden, heightened, raw attraction.
Hungry?
His neural timbre reverberated in her mind and her frame.
It wasn’t just a question about food; it was a sub-vocal caress that stoked the fire already burning in her belly.
She bit her lip because hell, she was famished, but not for the rations in his larder.
She wanted the friction of his skin, the crushing mass of his muscles on her, and the incandescent glide of his touch.
With an inhale, she pushed past the knot of desire in her throat and shot him an unsteady smile.
‘Naam,’ she whispered, her voice a soft, breathless admission.
The corner of his mouth twitched, a silent, knowing acknowledgment of the electricity crackling between them.
He set down his awl with a resonant thud, the sound echoing in the quiet room like a gavel.
He strode from his workspace to the kitchen and began to prepare a meal.
‘Can I help?’ she attempted.
His eyes sliced to her, and he smirked, shaking his head.
Soon, the scent of yeast and flour filled the timber hut as Idan leaned over the sturdy wooden table.
He pressed his knuckles into the soft dough, his muscles rippling under the gold sigils as he squeezed it into submission.
Unable to handle any more of his beauty and seductive kneading, she rose to the bathhouse at the rear and cleaned her face.
When she returned, she browsed his shelves of books and found a tome she could actually understand, an old Earth fiction book about the Greek gods.
She took it back to the bed, where she sat cross-legged and got lost in its pages.
Snow muffled the world outside, settling in a silent blanket on the roof of the secluded hut.
Sheba was struck by a profound sense of peace until a sudden itch on her nose made her shift.
The heavy volume slid from her lap and tumbled toward the floor.
Sheba reached for it, her hand grasping at empty air as she prepared for the thud of the book hitting the boards.
However, the journal never landed on the ground; it halted, suspended by an invisible tether.
She stared in wide-eyed wonder as the volume rotated and drifted upward, settling back onto her knees with the gentleness of a falling leaf.
In the kitchenette, Idan’s focus remained on the skillet.
He didn’t turn his head; yet he’d manipulated the physics of the cabin with a casual flick of his will.
‘Page sixty-four was where you left off,’ he murmured, his timbre cutting through the sizzle of the meat.
Sheba blinked at the book, then at his spine. ‘You’re a show-off, you know that?’
‘Can’t help it, I was born this way,’ he corrected, glancing over his shoulder with a wink.
‘Still a freakin’ poser.’
He chuckled as he produced a simple, grounding meal: charred vegetables, salted venison, fresh bread buns, and a delicious dry red wine.
Later, after they ate, they sat on a mound of pelts, by the armchair, the fire crackling in the grate.
Idan poured her a whiskey from a rustic oak case. ‘It’s one I’ve been experimenting with, its base is infused with wild berries and herbs.’
Sheba’s eyes widened as she sipped it. ‘It’s delectable.’
‘Sante.’
He stretched out his legs before him, his gaze on her, then drifting to the book she left on the table beside the bed.
‘You like my books now, do you?’
She smiled. ‘Only that one, the rest I can’t read as I’m not au fait with Sacran.’
His lips curved as his eyes gleamed. ‘Then let me introduce you to our poetry.’
He rose, selected a volume from the shelf, then settled down next to her as she eyed him with wonder.
He opened a heavy, vellum-paged Sacran tome and read from it out loud.
First, in a resonant, sonorous Sacran lilt, the ancient words, so evocative and beautiful, stirred Sheba’s heart.
His growl was a timbred vibration in the small space as he next translated the archaic Sacran text:
‘The Spear-Bearer cast his crown into the void,
descending the celestial ladder until his feet touched the dust of the mortal plains.
He traded the immortality of the heavens for the lonely trail of the wanderer,
choosing the cold steel of the vigilante over the gold of the throne.
For he found more honor in the dirt of the wronged than the clouds of the indifferent.’
Sheba tilted her head, a faint trace of a smile touching her lips. ‘Your hero?’
‘Perhaps,’ he replied, his eyes remaining on the script.
‘I wish I possessed that strength,’ she murmured, thinking of the clinic assault. ‘To save all lives instead of just witnessing their end.’
Idan closed the book with a soft thud. ‘How are you navigating the emotion from the attack?’
‘It was and remains horrific,’ Sheba confessed, her voice fracturing. ‘Imani had a future worth living for. I feel guilty I didn’t do more for her.’
Idan’s gaze remained unwavering, his silver-gold irises on her.
‘You did what you could, and you saved others, Sheba. Though I regret not being with you sooner, the fact that I aided you gives me peace. The same for you, your defense of the staff and patients, and your tireless aid to them after is commendable; many got rescued because of it.’
‘Sante,’ she muttered, not quite convinced.
Sensing her mood, Idan raised his chin at her. ‘Go to bed, rest, I’ll clear up here.’
Thankful for his understanding, she nodded and retreated to the furs of the bunk.
Stripping down to her long-sleeved, long-legged thermal underwear, before curling up, hiding herself from the world.
Hot, silent tears trickled down her cheeks, yet somehow the certainty of Idan’s conviction meant she didn’t spiral into hopelessness.
Outside, the wind shrieked against the plexiglass as the fire dwindled to a scarlet pulse, the stormy night and flickering flames encapsulating her mood.
In time, Idan blew the candles and lamp out and slid into the bed beside her.
He wrapped his limbs around her, his body a furnace in the freezing dark.
Sheba shuddered into him as he pulled her back to his chest, anchoring her with steady contact.
His hand came to rest on the curve of her hip, his heat a shield against the ghosts of the massacre until she fell asleep.
The synth-steel axe bit into the cedar log with a resonant crack, launching shards of pale wood into the frost-dusted grass.
Idan wiped the chips from his hair, his back muscles corded and mapped with the shifting gold of his sub-dermal sigils.
Beside him, Sheba clutched a second hatchet, her brow furrowed in fierce concentration as she waited for her turn to drive the blade into the seasoned oak.
Idan had never encountered a woman so determined to master the mundane.
The aloof Sacran goddesses and pampered princesses of the High Court never deigned to lift a finger for their own comfort, let alone their survival.
Sheba, on the other hand, stunned him with the seamless way she was now a permanent fixture in his high-altitude life.
She spent her days by his side, helping him around the farm, at her insistence.
She hauled salt blocks to the upper ridges for the cattle.
Together, they mended the poly-wire perimeter fences, where the mountain ice had snapped the tensioners like brittle thread.
He hid a grin when she cursed as she wielded a heavy iron mallet to shatter the frozen crust on the water troughs.