Page 106 of Children of Fallen Gods

Beautifully, mercifully still.

We stayed there like that, holding each other, for a long, long time.

* * *

That night,I slept as if I hadn’t in months. When I was traveling, night was a time of fitful rest and vivid dreams, interspersed with worries. But now, it was easy to fall into a rest so deep it was a vat of darkness. Wonderful. Dreamless. And what felt like a hundred years later, when I rolled over to see Tisaanah’s lightly-snoring face beside me, the awestruck relief just hit me all over again.

Her eyes fluttered open. I watched them blink away sleepy confusion, and then brighten with happiness, and then close again in contentment.

Tisaanah and I had never had the opportunity to wake up together, slow. And we did wake up slowly. We woke up with “Good morning”s murmured into each others’ skin, and sloppy embraces, and little kisses that started playful and quickly drew deeper. We woke up with our bodies intertwined, Tisaanah crawling over me and the two of us moving together, hands roaming over each other lazily. I tried to memorize the way she looked, with the morning light falling over her naked body. I decided I liked her this way.

Eventually, though, the world caught up to us.

By the time we finally dragged ourselves out of bed, my mind was moving on to the next order of business. One that I was sorely dreading.

I turned to Tisaanah as she finished brushing out her hair.

“I made some visits,” I said. “When I was traveling.”

She looked at me through the mirror. “Visits?”

“I tried to get some information about your curse. Whatever Zeryth did, or didn’t do.”

That got her attention. She turned. “And?”

I let out a long breath through my teeth. I couldn’t believe I was about to say this. “I think we need to visit Ilyzath.”

Chapter Thirty-Four

Aefe

That night, I drank.

It was not hard to find alcohol in Yithara — any town so built for travelers, after all, would have it flowing freely. It took very little wandering to find a little pub to stumble into. It wasn’t the shadowy, familiar embrace of my home, but the wine ran just as strong, the darkness just as sweet, the smiles of strangers just as welcoming. Two glasses, and the knot in my stomach was suddenly loosened, my attention transfixed on a handsome-enough man in the chair beside me, our conversations growing softer and closer.

This was good. This was familiar. Soon, I would be entangled in limbs and skin and moans, and a heartbeat that would carry me through the loneliness of the night.

The stranger was whispering softly to me, words that neither of us cared about, our noses nearly touching, when—

A figure in the corner caught my eye. A familiar figure, slumped back in the shadows, his own glass of wine in his hand. There was something about his stance that was unusual and concerning.

“What?” the stranger murmured, his fingers tracing mine, noticing my distraction. He was so close. It would be so easy to disappear into mindless pleasure. So comfortable, compared to the complications of everything else that surrounded us.

And yet, for reasons even I didn’t fully understand, I pulled away. “I have to go,” I said.

When I crossed the room and slid onto the bench beside Caduan, he barely looked at me. He swirled the remaining wine around in his glass.

“You have a bad habit,” he said, “of finding me when I would rather not be found.”

“Do you want me to leave?” I said, and he flicked a heavy-lidded gaze to me. Held it.

“No,” he said. “No, I do not.”

My eyes fell to his mostly-empty glass. Certainly not the first.

“What are we drinking to?”

A barely-visible smile. “A good friend’s birthday. One that he should be drinking to himself.”

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