“For many reasons,” he said. “Reasons that we will not speak about tonight, however. Reasons that are difficult to explain.”
Fair enough, I thought but I couldn’t stop the disappointment from filling me.
“Maybe you should reconsider those reasons,” I found myself saying. Devina had wanted it, after all, right? And I was trying to help, though the words felt like blades on my tongue.
“Was that the end of the memory?” he asked, steering the subject back on course.
There was more, of course. What had come afterwards.
But I knew he would be angry and upset if I told him. Perhaps even disturbed. His dead twin sister, two halves of the same whole, had come to me in a dream—just like Lokkaru experienced with her father and perhaps even her mother, though she could not remember.
How could I tell him what I’d experienced when I didn’t even understand it yet myself?
Feeling a lump lodge in my throat, I said, “Yes.”
He looked at me carefully. “Why did it upset you so much? That memory? When you woke, I feared you had seen…” he trailed off.
“I—I don’t know,” I stumbled. “I just…sometimes I can feel the emotions from a memory. That memory…it felt sad.”
At least I could tell him that truth.
“I remember being irritated in that particular memory. Not sad.”
“Because of Jeva?” I asked, trying to lighten the mood. The female he’d apparently been ‘tupping in the forest.’ A female even his mother knew about.
A small scowl crossed his features. I gave him a small smile before I felt it even out.
“I…” I licked my lips, shaking my head. “I don’t understand it. This part of my gift, it’s all so new.”
A long breath escaped his nostrils and his chin tilted down again. I felt terrible lying to him, keeping the truth from him. But until I worked through this new manifestation of my gift, I wanted to keep it to myself, or at least ease him into the knowledge that his sister was still…alive in spirit. And lingering.
“Will you,” I began, “tell me about her now?”
“Not here,” he said.
His eyes slid over my shoulder again and I nodded, smoothing my thumb over his cheek one last time before I rose from his lap.
“You will not ask me why?” he asked, staring up at me, his tail curling around my ankle to keep me steady.
I already knew why but I told him, “Your reasons are your own. This is your story, after all. And hers.”
Slowly, his tail released me and then he stood. We dressed quickly, pulling on trews and furs in silence, though he watched me the entire time. His gaze made me feel shivery and strange…but protected. I realized that I felt protected with him and that knowledge made me freeze as I tied the laces on my trews tighter. I racked my brain and realized the last time I’d felt true fear for my life, fear I’d felt almost every day under the Dead Mountain, had been when the jrikkia had attacked us in the forest.
“What is wrong, leikavi?” he murmured, coming to me after sheathing his daggers to the x-shaped holster across his chest, daggers I’d rarely ever seen him without.
“Nothing’s wrong,” I told him. I shifted on my feet, craning my neck to meet his eyes. Davik was so tall, so broad. I’d noticed that the darukkars didn’t even have his level of strength, as if a Vorakkar had to be stronger than all of them.
My first instinct was to shield my thought from him. Then I realized I wanted him to know, to have it.
“You make me feel safe,” I said quietly. “That’s all. I realized it just now.”
A gruff sound bubbled up from his throat. His hand slid into my hair and tingles erupted over my scalp and journeyed down my spine, the sensation pleasurable and warm.
“It’s a nice feeling,” I whispered when he drew close.
Then he was kissing me…but it was different than how we’d kissed before. This kiss was untamed and raw, bordering on desperation and anguish. Before I knew it, tears had welled up behind my closed eyes and I clutched at his shoulders, fearing that if I didn’t use them to anchor myself, I’d fall away completely and disappear in a single moment.
He was consuming me. But I had the strangest sense that I was consuming him as well, taking him into my body in an entirely new way that had nothing to do with sex.