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I wanted everything in her. I wanted every part of her. I wanted to protect all of those shaking nerves that she hid behind that smart and powerful exterior. I stepped closer, my thumb moving over her jaw, closer to those red lips that I was sure were quivering.
Before I could move any closer, she turned, that sharp bark of hers making a return.
“Lie down, Caspyn.”
I did as I was told, the bedroll cold and hard, but bathed in her scent in such a way that I could have been lying on the softest moss.
“This may hurt,” she whispered as she rolled up her sleeves, lifting her hand to her head, her fingers twisting around the long strands of her hair before she pulled a single strand.
“What are you doing?” I tried to sit up, but as she always did, she placed her hand on my chest, her frail arm pushing me back down with ease. This time, however, I saw the faint glow of a word printed above her wrist. I should have known.
“I am placing the words on you,” she said as she pulled another hair from her head.
“With your hair?” I tried not to laugh, but the nervous chuckle found its way out, stopped only by a sharp look from the woman hovering above me.
“Fae hair is an interesting conduit,” she whispered, inspecting the hair before she placed them on my chest, her hand again lifting as another tattoo glowed.
This one, I recognized.
Ohrya.
As her hand dropped, the long points of her ears appeared, the shimmer of her hair moving from the mousey brown to bright blonde I had seen in every one of them. Her eyes could have glowed as much as her hair, as much as the sun.
“Stop staring Caspyn or I’ll flatten your nose. I am more deadly in this form, I promise.” I didn’t doubt that, not in the least.
But that wasn’t what I was staring at. Her hair had changed, and her ears, yes, but it didn’t matter. She was the same. Seeing her like this was a slap to the face of what I had missed before.
She wasn’t just home.
She was everything. I didn’t know what was floating between us, some bind I couldn't understand.
“It’s just–” I had to force the words out.
“It’s just what?” She snapped, her eyes flashing dangerously as she turned to me.
“You’re beautiful, Lyani,” I whispered, fighting the urge to reach for her, knowing that she would probably punch me in the face if I tried. But I didn’t stop. I took the risk. “In every way I’ve seen you. You’re beautiful.”
She pressed her lips into a flat line as she turned away, the tent silent except for the sounds of others as they packed up.
“Don’t forget your promise, Caspyn,” she whispered before turning back to me, her eyes bright with threatening tears. “Come home.”
I didn’t get a chance to answer before she placed her finger against my chest, before whatever magic she had in her embedded her long hairs into my chest. All I could do was stare at her bemused smile as I howled in pain.
“You are such a baby, Caspyn.”
Chapter 44
Elara
We had been traveling for days through a winding road surrounded by long grass fields, a thick line of forest in the distance. The long stretches had been broken up by villages and farms made of houses of sod and sticks, but other than that, it was all the same. Our carriages had lumbered along with the forest on one side and the bay in the distance on the other, those fabled Qits somewhere beyond that. It was all beautiful, but it was all nothing compared to what rose over the horizon as we crested the last hill, the white stone blossoming out of the ground as though they were clouds against the red skeletal trees of the Forest of Ok behind.
The vermillion trees were spines of red lightning that forked up from the ground, their branches bare save for the tiny buds of the golden leaves that hadn’t unfurled in centuries. The forest had been barren since the Black War, when the Goddess vanquished the Sister and the Fae.
Knowing that, and seeing the red slashes of bark in the dark, should have been horrifying, but there was something about it that was calm, made more so by the temple that rose up before it in a tower of white stone.
All of it, the calming clearing, the graceful beauty, it was all in opposition to the frightening black knife-like spires of the Runturin we had left behind.
The Runturin looked as though it was going to carve a line in the sky. The Temple of the Sister looked like clouds and fog of white stone billowing out from the reedy forest.
