With a book and a cup of tea, he could make hours pass like minutes.
That was why he hadn’t expected the gaping hole of lonely, nervous energy that conquered Tauran’s place inside him when the two dragons disappeared on the dark horizon. It didn’t make his fear for Tauran’s safety any easier to handle. It lingered, despite Tauran’s reassurances.
Kalai climbed into Arrow’s saddle and strapped in, checking each buckle the way Tauran always reminded him to. It was so tempting to turn to the east and fly after him. Instead, he headed north-west, back to Kel Visal, Leyra following close behind.
As he landed in the garden of his old childhood home, he realized, with newfound dread, that he no longer had a task to complete. It had been his job to find a way to communicate with Ibi-shao while Tauran was gone. The task would have given him something to focus on so he wouldn’t have to think about Tauran trying to break a guy out of prison inside a facility run by a man who’d lied to, hurt and used him for years. Tauran could reassure him all he wanted, calm Kalai’s nerves with those bright, confident baby blues, but at the end of the day, Tauran was a reckless wild thing who wouldn’t hesitate to throw himself into danger for the people he cared about.
It was one of the things Kalai cherished about him.
It was also one of the things that frayed his nerves the most.
Kalai climbed into bed and lay with his eyes closed, listening to the rush of his too-awake heartbeat in his ears until the moon had tracked halfway across the sky.
He sat up. His bedroom was too quiet without Tauran’s heavy breaths, too spacious without his broad frame trying to wiggle closer to Kalai every half hour until Kalai either ended up halfway on the floor or halfway on top.
Grabbing his blanket, he went outside to where the dragons slept, curled against each other on the grass between Aunt Iako’s flowers.
The Sharoani winter nights were hot enough to sleep outside.
Kalai nudged Leyra’s wing off Arrow’s curled up body and climbed up, fitting himself in the crevice between them. He didn’t need the blanket. Leyra’s wing was plenty warm.
A distant boom and crackle made him flinch upright again. Colors lit up the sky, bright red and yellow, then faded. Not an earthquake, but a light show.
Leyra cooed nervously, and Kalai hushed her, stroking her nose. Sharoani was welcoming the new year at midnight. 1134.
Kalai sighed. With all the hectic stress of the past few days, he’d forgotten all about the new year celebrations. Slowly, he lay back down as more colors lit the sky. It didn’t make being alone any easier. He would have liked to share the night with Tauran. Staying up late, ending it in bed. Share each other’s bodies. They’d never gotten around to drinking that bottle of goldwine.
* * *
Kalai was up and in the kitchen at the break of dawn, doing last night’s dishes, putting them away, wiping down the counter and sweeping the floor. He even arranged the spice shelf until Aunt Iako woke up and took the drawer of kitchen tools out of his hands, picking the ones she needed to make breakfast.
He’d tried apologizing to her for arriving in the state he had been in, but she had wanted to hear nothing of it. He also felt bad he had been here for so long, yet spent so much of his time with his mind on other things, but she simply took his head in his hands and said, “It warms my heart to see you full of so much fire.”
Kalai rummaged through his saddlebags, retrieving the papers and documents he’d saved from the translations he’d done in Kal Valreus. He spread them all out on Aunt Iako’s dining table, which she didn’t seem to mind. She patted his shoulder, made him a cup of tea and a bowl of scrambled egg with vegetables, and left him alone.
He didn’t have any texts left to translate. Now that he no longer worked for Falka, there was hardly a point to, except maybe for Tauran’s sake, but Tauran didn’t like reading and much preferred it when Kalai read out loud to him, which he didn’t need written translations for. But Kalai craved something to occupy his mind, something to keep him from fidgeting, and maybe there was something in his already translated texts he had overlooked. Something that might