Page 12 of Fate

Something soothed. Quieted. And she allowed herself to enjoy it.

“Lucian,” one of them greeted, and it might have sounded warm and friendly if not for the hint of mockery she detected at the edges. “I thought you said you’d rather be tied to a boulder and dropped into the sea before you attended another of these.”

Lucian grunted. “And I meant it, I assure you.”

The girl tried to peer around his shoulder, and he countered the movement with one of his own. “Who do you have back there? Midna? She always did say she’d get you in the end.”

Firen felt a flare of something far too near to jealousy and very nearly pushed her way beyond her mate’s protective stance in order to ask precisely where thisMidnamight be and that she most certainly would not be getting Lucian in any capacity.

Her heart was racing, and Lucian tilted his ever so slightly back in her direction, as if startled by the turn the bond had taken.

She felt properly abashed. Jealousy was nonsensical. He would never belong to anyone but her. That was entirely the point. Behaving in any other manner was petty and beneath her.

And if she needed three breaths to ensure she didn’t ask her query anyway, then... she was simply overwrought. That was all.

Things would settle down when they were in their new home. Unless... perhaps he had not procured one? He would imagine a man being very upset at finding his mate without a place to keep her. She would not have minded a family home. Not if hisparents were welcoming, and they had privacy enough between them all.

They needed to talk. Alone. Touch a little more. They needed that too. Steal the kiss she craved, and maybe then he would smile at her and hold her close.

Two of them broke off and made to push around him. The better to get a look at her.

And suddenly she found his large, black wings spread out, shielding her from view. “Be gone, the lot of you. I have... matters.”

They laughed again. The kind that bred from familiarity and knowing one another.

And there was that spark again. Hot and heavy in her chest, that made her grip the back of his robes even tighter—to hide for her own sake, and not simply because he had deemed it necessary.

“Enjoy yourmatters,” one of them called, but it was farther away than it had been, as if they were moving off. The sound of wings cutting through the still night air came next, and she wanted desperately for Lucian to turn. To tell her why he had not wanted to introduce her, if those were friends or something else entirely.

His wings settled back into place. Or tried to. She had to move out of the way, so close as she nestled against him, and she was reluctant to move.

She didn’t know herself. Not in that moment. Didn’t know him either.

And for once, his eyes softened, if only briefly. And his voice gentled as he reached for her hand. “Come along,” he urged, and that was better. It had been unexpected, that was all. A surprise for the both of them.

She did not ask him where. Did not ask him to tell her if it was a cottage by the sea where her sister now lived. If his tradewas in a craft or in food production. Or if he thought himself so important because he had so many flocks that he had hired hands to do the real work of it, and his days were spent pouring over ledgers and seeing the stock supplied to the market.

Everyone knew how to fly in tandem. It was a skill learned first with a mother’s pull, a father’s amusement—holding onto an ankle rather than a hand as they raced as fast a fledgling could manage.

So when Lucian ascended, when he kept his hand clasped about hers, she was not frightened they could become a tangle of wings and limbs.

This was her mate, after all.

And he would let no harm come to her.

2. Bond

Harm seemed to be a relative term. While she wasn’t hurt, she could not pretend that the hold he kept on her hand was entirely gentle. That the winds batting at her legs and reminding her of the reasons dresses were meant for walking on the ground to a neighbourhood fete rather than flying through the city itself.

A mate should be concerned about that, surely?

But he flew with a determination that kept her from making enquiries up further still. She’d thought the high towers all the same—and they had seemed it during her twining walk through the streets.

They were entirely different jutting up from the air, each bolder and more impudent than the last, the whites of the stone shimmering in the bright lights that burned out in seemingly eternal fire. Only the ones further inland were dark and quiet.

Not of use, her mother would say with a shake of her head and atskingsound. Pretty little eyesore was another favourite term of hers.

Yet Lucian approached as if it was natural. Like he belonged in one of these. Drawing her through one of the overly large windows, unshuttered and utterly impractical given the breeze that caught and chilled this high up.

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