Chapter 33 #2
Some sort of madness made him turn back to the stars.
To do as she asked when he should’ve told her the truth instead: That the shooting stars were nothing but failed, expendable tools pinned in the sky that had once remolded this planet into something that could live.
That now, after years of neglect, they had no purpose left but to fall and burn into nothingness.
But…she’d seen an uglier truth—the one about him and his nature. And she’d stayed with him. Just for that, he could not ruin her hope.
Though Airik didn’t believe that atmospheric processors—or even stars, for that matter—possessed any life-altering magic, he knew the prudent thing to do, even in jest, was to wish for help to arrive immediately.
An insidious craving for something more forced him to press his hands together as Nora had, preparing to do something foolish.
But he didn’t shut his eyes as she’d done.
Instead, he wanted the stars to see him fully.
So they could pass judgment on what he was becoming.
For wanting to be left abandoned on a deserted planet, littered with a substance that had killed his progenitors and millions more.
To have more time alone with Nora, while the Veynari couldn’t see him.
Somehow he’d clothe her. He’d learn to hunt better to keep her well fed.
Because when Nora looked at him, she did so as if he were just a man. Not a morazir. Not the last Jortag heir. Not a living key to a vault filled with stolen artifacts. Not wild. Not anything but a man quickly falling into the depths of a woman he wanted more time to explore.
“Done,” he announced.
When he turned back, she was still watching him.
Of all the things around them—the vines with six-pronged leaves that he knew existed nowhere else in the universe and were quite beautiful, the red-flowering bush in the corner of the enclosure that glimmered in the moonlight, or even the shooting stars—he was the one she wanted to see.
Her cheeks deepened in color—a human phenomenon he now understood could mean many things.
But in this moment, he hoped it was the visual manifestation of the fire flaring beneath his own skin, betraying the terrible possibility that she wanted him as much as he was beginning to want her.
More than water. More than breath. More than he would ever be allowed.
“Sorry,” she said quietly, looking away. Taking her cue, he turned back to the stars as well, and for a while, their heads bobbed left and right as more processors fell.
Eventually the events of the day caught up to both of them, and Nora lay on the bedroll, pulling the blanket up to her chin.
The small greenhouse forced them close to one another, but tonight Airik didn’t hate it.
Nora’s blanket bounced over where her feet should’ve been. She peeked at him from just over the edge, mere slivers of her eyes visible between the fabric and her hair. Enough to see the moisture gathered on her lashes.
It was as though he’d come into possession of a fragile creature he had no right to have, one who had only just begun to wake to the world around her. He’d forced her to see him, bloody and ruthless, and she had looked upon him in fear.
Worse than that was how she looked at him now—like she didn’t quite believe he was capable of it. She made him remember what it was like to be afraid. To not want to lose something.
“What is it?” he asked.
“Um”—he heard her swallow—“I want to do something…wrong.”
Something uncomfortable twinged in his stomach. Was she afraid? Did she want him to leave her behind? Did she feel safer alone or with the ooshi than with him, now that she’d seen how he was made to be, how quickly he could slip into violence?
“Nothing you want to do is wrong,” he said. “Tell me. I will fix it.”
“Okay, then… Can I touch you? Just for a minute.”
His breath stopped. “What?”
She stared straight up through the glass roof of the house. “Never mind. That’s a weird request.” Her foot jittered rapidly.
All he heard was what she didn’t say—that she was afraid of him.
“Will touching me…fix you?”
Though her face was covered, her eyes smiled. “Probably not, but…I still want to do it. Just in case. It’s— I just want to check your heart. You know, like how you did to me?” She tapped her ear as he had on the striker.
The flutter had moved to his chest, and for a moment he wondered if maybe he wasn’t the fragile creature waking up to an unknown world.
As if under a spell, Airik dropped to his back. Using his sword, he pushed the blanket down her body, showing her face. “Touch me,” he whispered, hoping she wouldn’t hear the tremble in his voice. “Anywhere you want.”
Her brows drew together. “Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
Gripping the ground with all his might, he watched as she sat up, then placed a hand against him. Her delicate fingers curved to the muscle of the left side of his bare chest, hardly spanning a third of it.
Her eyes widened. “It’s beating so fast.”
Fearing she’d see his thoughts, he shut his eyes.
“Is this normal? It wasn’t so fast before.”
“Normal,” he lied.
She pressed her palm against his skin, his heart stuttering as if she had touched it directly.
“How long…do you want to do this?” He spoke through a clenched jaw.
Her hand twitched, then lifted. “Oh, I’m sorry—”
Without thinking, he pressed her palm back down, where he wanted it. What in Ulliel’s name was happening to him?
“Leave your hand where it is,” he said. “Let it be mine. For a little while.”
Her arm tensed, her fingers flexing against his.
But then, after a moment, without saying a word, she turned to sleep on her stomach, her left hand on the left side of his chest.
The heat where they connected burst like tiny explosions on the surface of his skin. The smell of iilas fruit surrounded him. Ed’un wasn’t supposed to have iilas, but tomorrow he’d search for them. He wanted Nora to taste them, to learn if she liked them as much as he did.
He kept his hand covering hers, deciding that maybe he’d report breaking the oath on his own. If he were branded, it would be in the shape of her handprint over his heart.