wake hazy and exhausted. The events of the night before are as fresh as a hot summer’s rain on my mind. They’re as real as the heavy weight of Eldas’s arm around my middle.
Whatever glow covered my skin faded with the night that cloaked us. I wonder if it was my magic responding to his. Or perhaps it was my magic coming forward in a misguided instinct to protect me against my eternal opposite as he took me with fierce passion.
With a sigh that almost sounds content, I let my eyes flutter closed once more and I lace my fingers with his. He returns my grip but his breathing remains level. Even in his sleep, he reaches for me. His arm tightens, as if affirming the rogue thought.
I could spend forever like this. There’s no point in denying it. This prickly, awkward, and somewhat emotionally stinted man has become mine. And whether I intended to or not, I have allowed myself to become his.
But errant thoughts of what must be done—of my duty to this world and my own—finally pull me from the bed and that warm embrace. I slip out unnoticed into a gray dawn. Eldas murmurs as I grab my robe and tiptoe out of the room.
He finds me a few hours later on the terrace, overlooking the pools and the gardens. The journal he made a copy of for me is written in the old tongue. I can read it, but the words are stilted and grammar awkward, which makes for slow going. I’m searching for some kind of notion of balancing the two worlds. I can’t get that thought out of my head, even now.
But when I hear the door behind me open, I know that any hope I have of focusing on this lost queen’s journal has evaporated like the dew. A delightfully shirtless Eldas crosses over to where I’m sitting underneath the vine-covered arbor and sets down a steaming mug of tea.
Eldas sits in the chair opposite me and looks out over the gardens. I glance at him from the corner of my eye, but he doesn’t seem to notice. His focus rests solely on the mountain’s ridge. I can imagine him tracing the pathway that leads into the Fade. I wonder if he’s thinking of all the other keystones that need attending to.
“Thank you,” he says, finally. The words are soft and somewhat bashful. They bring a gentle heat to my cheeks.
“For last night?” I arch my eyebrows. “I should be thanking you for that as well.”
He looks away, eyes distant but expression relaxed, open, tender—all the emotions I never thought him capable of. “For allowing me to feel not so alone. For showing me every magnificent side of you. For giving me something I did not deserve but will cherish forever—not just last night, but our entire time together until this moment.”
When he brings his eyes back to me I don’t know how to react. My heart has swollen to the point that it pushes painfully against my ribs. I bite my lip, trying to stop myself from saying something foolish.
The world hasn’t changed. It’s still the same. My fears, my duties still stand in complement and contrast to his own. Yet, somehow, the world seems like it’s shifted, if only slightly. Like something finally clicked into place.
“I should thank you as well. Last night was exceptional.” I finally reach for the steaming mug and bring it to my lips. I know half of the herbs in the infusion by scent alone, and confirm them and identify the rest by taste. “This is good,” I interrupt whatever Eldas was about to say next. “Did you make this blend?”
“I wish I could take credit for it.” He smiles as well and any initial awkwardness following our first night together evaporates like dew. “But, alas, I cannot, and you would likely call me out for lying the moment I tried.”
I grin. “Maybe you’ve been keeping a secret green thumb and affinity for plants from me this whole time. You kept cooking from me, after all.”
“If I had such an affinity, you think I would keep it a secret when it might endear you to me?” He chuckles. “No, this is the last of some of Alice’s blend.”
“Ah.” I stare at the tan liquid in the mug. Mint, lime rind, dried strawberry, and camellia sinensis withered under a hot sun, all dance across my tongue. “It tastes like summer.”