eating, Sarah began gathering the empty dishes. To stop her, I grabbed her elbow—gently, mindful as always of her delicacy, and gingerly, all too aware of how the skin-to-skin contact woke a different hunger than the one that had just been sated.
“Oh no you don’t,” I said. “We cooked, so Yvera and Kor clean up. That’s the rules.”
“Ben—” Yvera and Kor began at the same time, in nearly the same plaintive tone. Then glared at each other. I caught Sarah covering her mouth to hide a smile.
I raised an eyebrow at the two of them. “That’s the rules, and you both agreed to them. I can’t think of a single excuse you could have that would get either of you out of it this time. Yv, we’re safe enough for now; besides, this way, you can make sure you get your things back when they’re clean. Sorry about the cup; I’ll apologize to Mysha for you and ask for another one. Kor, the mysteries have waited a thousand years, and they can wait a few dek more.”
“Fine,” Yvera huffed, pushing to her feet. She grabbed the stack that Sarah began and glared daggers at Kor. “But you had better do your share this time.”
As I stood and stepped over the bench, Kor grinned lazily at her. “I always do my share. You just consider magic to be cheating.”
“Of course it’s unfair if all you have to do is—”
“Come on,” I told Sarah, putting a hand to her back to nudge her out. Silently, I added, This usually gets ugly. Best for us to get clear before they really get started.
“Oh, I’m all too familiar with that sort of ugliness,” Sarah whispered, but she followed me out to the center chamber.
She walked to the balustrade and rested folded arms on the top rim. My heart constricted in a painfully pleasant way at the contented smile on her face as she closed her eyes, turned her face up to the fading “sun,” and took a deep breath.
I should leave. She was, as I’d told Yvera, safe enough right now, and she’d get precious little time to herself once we left the shelter of this secret, isolated hold. And yet, I couldn’t make my feet turn around, and for much the same reason: the peaceful time I would have to spend with her like this, let alone in such privacy, was slipping away just as quickly.
If she asked to be alone, I would go. But until then…I couldn’t seem to tear myself away.
To keep things from becoming awkward, I searched desperately for something a brother might say—which, of course, would have nothing to do with how beautiful she looked with her dark hair falling back and the fading gold light illuminating her skin and delicate, exposed throat.
I quietly cleared my own throat as I joined her. “You don’t look nervous.”
“I’m not, which is unlike me.” She opened her eyes and chuckled. “Maybe it just hasn’t hit yet.”
She frowned at the cavern ceiling. “How are we going to tell when both moons are high, anyway?”
“I’ll know,” I assured her. “It’s nothing like the energy coming from the sun, but it’s something. I can feel one of them rising now.”
“I wish I could see it. That would be beautiful, coming up over the snow.”
I concentrated, gauging the rise angle and direction. It was a bit like trying to locate a sound, that unseen source of the faintest of energy streams to my flameheart. “You know what? I think you can. I think we might be able to see it from the window in the corridor.”
“Really?” she said with surprising excitement. To my shock, she grabbed my hand and pulled me in the corridor’s direction. “Let’s go see!”
Let’s. Far from wanting to be alone, she wanted me to come. That was as plain as her cool, small hand in mine.
My flameheart surged with that same painful pleasure, yet greater than ever before.
My instincts told me I shouldn’t go anywhere alone with her. In the center chamber, we were out of sight but not quite hearing of Yvera and Kor. Their faint bickering acted like a safety line for me. And yet I let that small hand lead me on until that tether faded to nothing. Worst of all, I felt none of the regret or warning I should have at its loss.
Only the thrill.
Fortunately, Sarah let go of my hand soon after we entered the corridor, and I kept just enough sense to stick my hands in my pockets and order them to remain there. The silence as we walked was companionable, and that was new, too. Unless Yvera was hunting or fighting, she hated silence. So did Kor, except if he was concentrating on some scheme or paper of his. But Sarah obviously felt no need to fill the corridor with chatter, and neither did I. It was enough to be together.
More than enough, in fact. In the focused task of walking, I didn’t have to worry about giving myself away with some uncontrolled touch or word. In the silence, I could focus on breathing her in, memorizing every subtle note of her heady scent.
I tried to think what her scent reminded me of. Of course, no person’s scent smelled exactly like a spice, a plant, or an element—we weren’t made of those things. But with no other closer comparisons, the mind was drawn to describing our scents in those ways, especially with the scents of magic-invested beings.
The humanness in Sarah was unmistakable to me by now. The greatest difference between her scent and any others I had smelled before was the utter lack of the molten undertone of heartfire, which even amón had to at least some degree. In its place was only cool stillness, like bedrock after a long, chilly night. That undertone should have been unappealing to me; instead, I found something restful, something soothing in it. Something I could lay my head down on.
I hurried my contemplation along before I could follow that thought any further.
Her high note was more lively, almost sharp with clarity, yet still cool and subtle. Like glacial runoff, wind through pines, or the whirling, silent power of falling snow.
It was her middle note that was the greatest puzzle to me, even though it was the strongest. And—if my mind wasn’t playing tricks on me—stronger than it had been this morning.
It was.…
Just when the word was at the tip of my tongue, we reached the window. Sarah strode in front of it first and inhaled in awe, and when I came to her side, I stilled.
The sun was setting behind us, on the other side of the mountain sheltering us in its heart, but the fading rays were lighting the sky a glorious gradient of deepening blue, and all below fell into cool shadow. All the more dramatic a backdrop for the large, white moon cresting the range in front of us, like a watchful eye beginning to open.
A beautiful sight, but I couldn’t help the regret and anxiousness that came to the heart of every dramá every sunset as the source of our very lives sunk out of reach.
In stark contrast, Sarah pressed her palms to the glass, heedless of the cold, and looked up at the moon with unmistakable excitement. Her lips were parted, and her eyes were round, shining orbs of their own, the warm browns fading to—
I inhaled sharply, and Sarah looked at me in alarm. “What? What is it?”
The rings in her eyes returned so quickly to brown that I wondered if I had imagined the shift. Yet I had seen them change to that color once before, and her scent swam in the air more strongly than ever, especially that enigmatic middle note. Just as a drakón’s did when.…
Ignoring her question for a moment, I tentatively put a hand on her shoulder. Sure enough, I felt great stirrings within her, as biting and powerful as winter winds. Even though my first impulse was to jerk away from the icy burn, I withdrew my hand slowly to avoid alarming her or hurting her feelings.
Sarah swallowed, no doubt coming to her own conclusions as she felt the beginnings of the storm stir within her. “Ben.… What is happening to me?”
I looked at her as calmly as I could, but my flameheart was racing. I scrambled to think of a way to explain the miracle I was only just coming to understand, in a way that would not frighten her. Even though it was terrifying me.
I kneeled and took her hand, ignoring the dual chills of skin and magic, and tried to not let fear for her plummeting body temperature show in my face.
I put her hand over my heart. “Sarah, what can you feel there?”
Her eyes widened, her fingers spasmed, and she inhaled. “You’re burning. Gosh, Ben, you’re a furnace.”
She raised her other ice-cold hand to my forehead and frowned. “You’re not as hot there. Still, you’re so.… Are you sure you’re feeling OK?”
“I’m perfectly healthy,” I hedged, and I brought down the hand on my forehead to also cover my heart. “Look past the heat and feel. Can you do that? Can you feel something there?”
If I had guessed right, then she should have had enough sensitivity by now to feel something else.
She furrowed her forehead in concentration for a moment, then her eyes—still warm and brown—went wide. “The heat. It…it pulses with your heartbeat. And with it pulses.…”
She raised her eyes to meet mine and whispered the word. “Power.”
“Yes,” I said. “What you’re feeling is my flameheart, the source of my power…and my existence. But right now, it’s nothing like it could be, Sarah. It’s fading.”
She inhaled sharply before I saw understanding return to her eyes, and she let out the breath more steadily. “Because the sun is fading. Like it does every night.”
I pointed at the wall across from the window. I made my face gentle and my voice soft. “Yes. It takes a tremendous amount of energy to even exist as I am, and the best source for me is a sun. Somewhere out there, I can feel this sun’s light being eclipsed by the turning of this world. I know that sun is still out there, and because it is and it’s close enough, I’ll still live, but with its energy blocked from me, I’ll have to rely on any heat source I can find and the meal I just ate to keep functioning until it returns.”
“I can feel it,” she said in distress, pressing her hands deeper into my chest. “Even in the seconds since I first felt it, I can feel the difference.”
When she glanced anxiously at the darkening sky, I didn’t mention that her ice-cold hands pressed to my chest weren’t helping. The different warmth that her concern and touch stirred inside my flameheart might have been nullifying the negative effects, anyway.
“This happens every night, Sarah,” I soothed, as one would a hatchling.
That didn’t mean the loss wasn’t distressing to even adults. Every night felt like a kind of death to us, especially in times of danger. The vulnerability that night brought even me—or especially me, considering how much the consumed desired my blood and my death—was usually enough to make any sleep I got full of nightmares.
I hated sleep.
Sarah took a deep breath and withdrew her hands. “Every night,” she repeated to herself. “And we’re safe here. For tonight.”
“Exactly,” I said.
She shook her head and gave a shaky laugh. “How can you live with that…fading? Every night?”
I shrugged, trying to not make it seem like a big deal. “Lots of ways.”
“Like hot baths and wind tunnels, big meals and large fires,” she said with a faint smile.
“Now you’re getting it,” I said with a crooked grin.
Her smile faded, and she looked at the rising moon. She bit her lip. “But…Ben…if you are fading right now, then why am I.…”
She stared at her own two hands as if she had never seen them before. Then slowly pressed them to her heart. Her eyes widened again; then, to my shock, she grabbed my hand and placed it gingerly over her own heart. I worked hard to suppress a shudder, both from thrill and dread. Mostly dread. She was so cold—and what stirred underneath my fingers, colder still. For one moment, when her wide eyes met mine…the irises flashed an icy silver.
My flameheart thudded to a halt before restarting in a lurch.
“Ben.” Her voice hitched as she repeated, “What is happening to me?”
I hesitated. Then decided I had cushioned my answer for long enough. Now was the time to give her the simple truth. “I don’t know. The Moontouched were supposed to be like us. Even their drakón strengthened and faded with the sun, just like us. And yet, while I am fading.…”
“I am strengthening,” she said.
I swallowed. “Yes. I don’t understand how this could be happening. I’m sorry. Especially when.…”
I put a hand to her forehead, and it felt like touching ice.
I could resist the impulse no longer. Whether or not this was the way things were supposed to be, I pulled her into my arms and crushed her to me, fueling my flameheart recklessly to warm her.
“Blessed Flame,” I found myself whispering out loud. “What am I supposed to do?”
Don’t let me lose her, I prayed. Not her.
She shivered, but before I could wonder if I should let go, she put her own arms around me and pressed tightly to me. “You’re so warm.”
“And you are so cold. So cold.…” I swallowed again and closed my eyes tightly. Her scent was stronger than ever, its icy burn sliding down my throat. It drowned me.
I turned up the heat in my blood even further. It was a good thing I’d eaten so much, because I was burning through those reserves at a heedless rate, considering only the Flame knew what still lay in store for us tonight. Even more rashly, I scanned her with my power as deeply as I dared, drained and often repulsed by the frigidity of the stirring power within her. Even so, I felt enough to know it wasn’t illness turning her to ice. She didn’t feel ill at all.
She shivered again and echoed my thoughts. “And yet…I’ve…I’ve never felt this way before, Ben. I’ve never felt so…alive, not even when we first got here. So filled to the brim.… Your warmth is nice, but it’s not.…”
She released her hold on me and shifted back enough that I got the message. Yet it still was physically painful to let her go, to allow her to step out of the shelter of my arms.
She studied her hands again in awe. “Without you, I don’t feel cold.”
“Are you sure?” I asked in disbelief as I sat back on my heels.
She shook her head. “I’m sure. Not cold in the slightest. Or stiff. Or achy, or anything bad. At all. I feel.…”
She curled her hands into fists, and a faint shimmer, like moonlight over the ripples of a lake, ran over her skin. Her eyes flashed silver for another half second.
“Strong,” she breathed.
Her wide eyes met mine again. “Is this…what it feels like for you? After dawn?”
Slowly, hesitantly, I nodded. “Yes.”
I knew what she meant: that ever-increasing aliveness, wellness, strength. That power filling you to the brim so full you thought you might burst with it. This was all so familiar. And all so wrong.
Or was it?
In my fear, had I forgotten how the Tree had told me the order of things needed to change? Forever?
But change meant I didn’t know what she felt, or what was coming for her. And the fear that uncertainty evoked threatened to choke me.
Ahglen, krathen, even a lish were things I knew how to face and conquer, given the right circumstances.
But how could I protect her…from herself?