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“Is this what a human heart looks like?” I asked. I held the pay-pur between us, in front of her chest, trying to imagine it in there.
She swatted it away.
“No, of course not. It’s just a symbol.”
“Hmm,” I said, bringing the card back close to my face once more. I traced the writing with my sight stars, imagining Fiona working on it in secret, where I could not see. It felt... intimate. That she’d thought of me. That she’d shaped my name with her odd human ink.
“Did you really make these cards for everyone?” I inquired, a little more sharply than I’d intended to.
“Yes,” said Fiona. “We didn’t want to leave anybody out. We even have some for Gahn Thaleo’s tribe.”
I scowled at her instant response. I rubbed my thumb back and forth over the little flower on the card. It reminded me of the markings on her arm, as well as the bloom I’d carved for the Halloween contest.
“Did you draw flowers on all of them too?” I asked, more softly this time.
Her answer was hushed.
“No. I didn’t.”
I sent a triumphant look over at Oxriel. He did not have a flower from Fiona on his pay-pur.
No other male did.
No other male but me.
“Thank you for this card,” I said solemnly, already thinking of the safest place that I could keep it. Somewhere its edges wouldn’t get bent and its ink wouldn’t fade.
“You’re welcome, Dalk,” Fiona replied. “Happy Valentine’s Day.”
“Are there any other Valentine’s Day traditions?” I barely allowed myself to ask it. I was a fool, but I could not stop myself. Hope rose in me like heat in morning. A stupid emotion. But there all the same.
Her slender brows puckered with a frown.
“What do you mean?” she asked.
“Like New Year’s Eve,” I explained thickly. My heart gave an odd lurch in my chest when the pink colour returned to her cheeks. And then it lurched all over again when I remembered the tiny burst of soft pressure that night, her lips on mine, dizzying as a dream.
“Oh!” she squeaked. “No. No, not really. Nothing I can think of.”
“Well,” I said gruffly, carefully folding my card, “if you remember any more traditions like that... any that require the participation of a male... I suppose that I would not mind... obliging you.”
“How very generous of you,” she said, her voice oddly breathy.
My blood felt hot in my veins. I wanted to tell her that it had nothing to do with generosity and everything to do with the slow constriction of desire I felt for her, winding tighter and tighter every day, until it felt as if my ribs were not large enough to house my lungs. I wanted to tell her that I’d thought of that little, luminous kiss multiple times a day, every day, since it had happened. That I’d dreamed of it and dreamed of what could have happened afterwards if she had not immediately bounded away to rejoin her human friends.
I wanted to tell her that I’d stroked myself to climax remembering it.
But I didn’t. Because that would be ludicrous. Absurd in the extreme. And really, I groaned internally, rather pathetic. What kind of male panted and pined after a woman who was not even his? What sort of warrior would admit to spilling seed freely outside of her cunt – always considered a bad omen in the Sea Sands – just because she’d had the nerve to touch her lips to his?
Fiona’s attention was wrenched from me then by Oxriel asking her a question about the writing of his name. As she explained something to him, pointing her slender finger at Oxriel’s pay-pur, I stared at her profile, simultaneously relieved and miserable that she was no longer looking at me.
This would not do. This attachment was growing beyond my control. I had to sever it somehow.
I should throw the card away.
But as I ran the pads of my fingers over the delicate thing Fiona had made especially for me, I already knew I wouldn’t.
CHAPTER TWO
