Chapter 33
“MIN!” SOMEONE SHAKES MY ARM, hard.
My eyes peel open, and I groan. It feels as if a sharp, slender pick repeatedly gouges the back of my skull, carving straight through bone. When I attempt to shift my head, the pain spikes, and I’m forced to close my eyes until the queasiness passes.
The voice comes again, ringing like a bass chapel bell. “Zephyrus, get her some water.”
“Me? Why can’t Boreas go?”
Another voice, withered by cold, snarls, “Do what Notus says and make yourself useful for a change.”
“I don’t even know where the kitchen is!”
“Then you best start looking.”
The West Wind grumbles something about dictatorial siblings before his footsteps fade.
In the end, it is the sound of absence that drags me fully to consciousness. The sea, its thunderous roar, no longer overwhelmed by thundering skies. Just the feeding of its tides, those mighty fists hammering against eroded stone. The hum of drizzle, the ping of hail—that, too, is gone.
My eyes flutter open. Blue, its ample sweep, fragmented by wisps of white cloud. A feeble breeze nudges my cheek, and I gasp, clutching Notus’ arm as he leans over me in concern. “Where’s Eurus?”
The South Wind supports my back as I sit up, appearing worse for wear. “Near the cliff’s edge.”
Along the perimeter of the grass, a figure lies sprawled across the ground, the North Wind kneeling at his side. He doesn’t move.
I stare and I stare. My heart falters, wanes, shrivels into collapse. “Help me up,” I rasp.
My every limb aches, and my head throbs with excruciating agony. Boreas retreats at our approach, his expression somber, blue eyes dulled to murk.
I gird myself for the sight of Eurus, motionless. Eurus, broken, his wings crushed beneath him, black scales cast about. But the rise and fall of his chest is a ray of sun spearing through an endless fog. It casts all that was once gray in gold.
Relief weakens my knees. They buckle, sink deep into the mud patching the ground. I smooth back the tangle of Eurus’ hair with a shaky hand.
“Bird,” he mumbles. His eyes crack open, two slivers of darkness glinting beneath lowered eyelids.
And oh, I have never heard a more beautiful sound than his voice, that coarse rasp of two rocks ground together. My chin quivers. “I’m here.”
One of his large hands frames my face. My eyes sink closed, and I angle my cheek against the warmth of his palm. I have never been particularly devout, but if the Mother of Earth—Demi—is listening, I wish to thank her for keeping the East Wind safe. For keeping my heart safe.
“How are you alive?” I whisper.
“Yes, actually, we’d all really love to know that as well,” Zephyrus quips from behind me. “You destroyed Prince Balior with the entirety of your power. You should be dead.”
Slowly, I swivel my head toward the West Wind, glaring all the while. He holds a glass of water in his outstretched hand. “Do you mind giving us a little privacy?”
With a shake of his head, Notus drags his gregarious brother toward the manor, despite the West Wind’s protests. Boreas follows at a clipped pace.
I turn back to Eurus, who gazes at me with a depth of emotion I fear to dissect. “He has a point,” I whisper.
As the East Wind takes my hand in his, the air wavers around us, a softened swirl of salt and rock dust. It lacks a certain something, this wind. It is gentler, less turbulent, its nature at last tamed.
“The morning we departed from the City of Gods,” he murmurs coarsely, “I approached the council about my favor.”
I search his eyes questioningly. “What did you ask for?”
“I told them I wanted to live the rest of my days in the mortal realms—with you.”
I am warm. The chill of the muck sucking at my knees, the thin stream of sea air, it cannot touch me, cannot dive beneath skin.
I realize then how profoundly I’d hoped for this, but it was buried deep, all but entombed. I have been alone these last ten years, and I wish to be alone no longer. Knowing Eurus wants to share a life with me, it is more than I could have hoped for. It is everything.
I swallow once, hard. “You w-want to live with me?”
“Returning you to St. Laurent was always the plan. But falling in love with a mortal woman from Marles…” His throat dips, and if I’m not mistaken, color pinkens his cheeks.
“You love me?” I whisper.
Tenderness, I did not expect. Yet it is in his eyes, the tentative bow of his mouth where his scarring breaks the smooth line of his upper lip. And it is in the point where our eyes meet, a seeking of shelter, belonging.
“Is that so unbelievable?”
When I fail to respond, too overcome with emotion to speak, he goes on, “It did not happen swiftly, or easily, or even willingly. I knew what was happening. I did not want to accept it for fear of the power you would have over me.”
As he speaks, his fingers graze my chin. Gooseflesh ripples down my arms, and I shiver.
“But I could not ignore my body’s reaction to your presence,” he continues.
“How my heart would calm when your eyes met mine. How your touch did not incite fear for my safety. Over the weeks we spent together, I felt myself… softening.” His lips part as he traces my mouth in a hypnotizing graze of skin on skin.
“I was your captor, but you treated me with kindness, even when I did not deserve it.”
“You did test my patience a time or two,” I say pointedly.
He smiles. It completely transforms his face.
“And that is why my thoughts toward you began to change. I saw what I was previously blind to. Mortal or not, you were a woman, and there was fire in you, though you did not see it. I began to notice the fall of your hair, the shape your hands made as they clasped some object—gentle, even then. And your body…”
The tips of my ears tingle with sudden warmth. “Eurus.”
“Do you deny that I adore your body? That I wish for nothing more than to mark it with my mouth and hands, so that all will know you are mine?”
After how thoroughly he’d worshipped me… I delicately clear my throat. “I do not.”
His eyes crease with gentle amusement. “You cared for me,” he murmurs.
“I did,” I say. “Do.”
He continues to trace my facial features, his expression wonderous, as though he has never seen something so unexpectedly exquisite.
“No one has ever cared for me, bird. I grew up believing I was not worthy of love. So when you gave those things freely, it was difficult for me to accept that perhaps you truly did love me, as I had grown to love you.”
Now it is my turn to frame his face in both hands. “I love you too, Eurus. I love all that you are, and all that you are not.”
The East Wind pulls me close, captures my mouth with his own.
Our tongues flirt, and he molds the subtle curves of my body beneath my damp clothes.
If there were four walls, a bed, a shut door, I would climb onto his lap and allow pleasure to guide us.
Never before have I considered a life where I could have a love like this and feel worthy of it.
With a playful nip on his bottom lip, I pull away. “What did the council say? What about returning home? Reversing your banishment?”
He blinks, and his eyes clear. “They agreed to grant me my wish. But if I want to live out my days with you in the mortal realms, then I must become mortal, too.”
Surely he is not suggesting… but he is, I realize. The East Wind—mortal. “But you despise mortals. You think they’re weak—”
“Not all of them,” he corrects me. “Not you.”
“Eurus—”
“Listen to me, bird.” He captures my chin, angling my face down so I’m forced to confront every uncomfortable emotion splayed across his features.
“You have taught me more in a handful of months than I have learned in the many millennia of my existence. You are full of courage and resolve. You are steadfast in your morals, unfaltering in your beliefs. You fall, yet always you push ahead, no matter the obstacles in your path.”
There had once been a time when I would deny such claims. But I have weathered much in my relatively young life. I do not disagree with him.
“I have witnessed the gods struggle with simple tasks,” he goes on.
“They are given everything: health, riches, influence. Yet at the first sign of adversity, they collapse. But you, bird—” My cheek grows warm beneath his palm.
“You are so much more than I expected from a simple bane weaver. You are good. Too good for me, certainly. You have shown me peace when all I have known is suffering. You have provided me refuge when all I have known is threat. And I would be the realm’s biggest fool to let you slip through my fingers.
“I want you, bird. I want everything you’re willing to give me, for as long as you’re willing to give it.
For the remainder of my life, and whatever awaits beyond, I will do everything in my power to bring you happiness.
You wish for the moon? I will pluck it from the heavens.
There will never be a day when you do not know, with complete certainty, that you are safe, and loved. ”
The sentiment draws tears to my eyes. I yearned for such things. It was always in vain. “If you are truly mortal, what happened to your power?”
“Gone.” At my confusion, he explains, “I used every last fragment of my power to destroy Prince Balior. A god’s power may be drained, but it can always be revived, so long as a portion is left in reserve. But I used everything I had. There is nothing left. Not even my immortality.”
But his wings… those remain, curiously enough.
“Now that my power is gone,” he continues, “you will be happy to know that my hold over Ammara’s rains is broken. They will have already returned to the earth, where they belong.”
Gladness wells in my chest. Tucking myself against Eurus’ side, I rest my head on his shoulder. “What does being mortal feel like to you?” I ask him.
He rubs my upper arm for a time, deep in thought. “It feels fragile.”
“Life is fragile,” I point out.
He acknowledges my argument with a dip of his chin. “I suppose I will grow used to it, in time.”