Page 125 of Curse the Fae

We move like the tide, fluid and synchronized. He inhales, and I exhale. His fingers steal out to graze my lips, and mine brush the damp strands of hair from his face. Like this, we explore one another, learning how to see each other.

I hover over Elixir while his touch travels from my mouth. Overwhelmed with uncertainty, his eyes close in concentration, and he resumes the usual manner of feeling me. As if making sure this is real, this is to be trusted, this is happening. He etches his way across my lips and traces my skin, my outtakes, and a single tear leaking down my cheek. Finally, Elixir peers at me, grasps my face, and pins our foreheads to one another.

“My light,” he rasps.

“My dark,” I whisper.

“You’re here.”

“I’m here.”

“And I see you.”

He does. He sees me the way he did years ago, except my body’s older, and my heart is changed.

Elixir’s eyes jump all over me, consuming each crevice, drinking in every detail the way I do him. As his complexion resurfaces, I feel the riveted brush of his gaze and the rapt heat of his attention. It’s new yet the same, like a resurrected memory.

As the billows swarm around us, there’s only me and him locked, our bodies trembling and tangled. I did it. I broke the curse, and I’ve survived, and I’ve won. And he’s still here with me. Who knows how long we have, but in this moment, we’re alive and together.

“I was drowning,” Elixir recalls, his bare chest heaving for air. “The saltwater.”

“But why?” I splutter. “How?”

“Because I’m of the river, not the ocean.” Shame cinches his features. “I never taught myself to swim with legs, much less to hold my breath for long spells in saltwater. After the Trapping, I was…I was too scared.”

Too scared. For all his magic, this viper can’t survive in saltwater. For all his experience with brews and the depths, this ruler had never learned to swim with his limbs or trained his lungs to endure. For all his knowledge, he’d never taken those precautions. For such a powerful being, fear had impaired him.

How very human. How very Fae.

“You saved me,” Elixir says.

“You saved me first,” I remind him, thinking of Scorpio. “How did you know where to swim?”

“I felt your temperature. I sensed your blood. I heard your pulse.” He wavers, marveling. “I could follow them again.”

The signs of my fear, my exhaustion, and my love.

Elixir felt those things. But he could only do that if…

He studies my expression and interprets my silence, the very sensation of it clogging my throat. “Could it be? Have I made you speechless?”

I half-laugh, half-sob. “Fables forgive you, but I think so.”

“And I think…I think I know what it’s like.” He seizes my hand and rests it on his heart, the pulse heavy and rapid, the tempo escalating when he looks at me. “This is love?”

I nod and choke out, “Yes.”

“Then it’s yours. Forever, it shall be yours,” Elixir hisses, barely finishing the sentence as his lips snatch mine. Our mouths part and slant. My whimper matches his growl, both thick and desperate as the kiss sweeps us under.

His tongue delves, flexing against me. I split my lips against his, catching the salted taste of him. Our mouths fuse, undulating in tandem. The kiss is hectic and deep and over too soon.

At the lash of a wave against the rocks, Elixir pries his lips from mine. His head snaps in the flood’s direction, his brows furrowing, his eyes once again unfocused. He squints, that gaze unable to land on any specific location.

My intuition surfaces, bringing with it all the adaptations that come with magic and spells. “Elixir?” I press.

When he swings back to me, his pupils sharpen. “I see you, but…” As he turns to survey the figures hunkering behind us, I realize my sisters and his brothers have been quietly watching us.

Puck holds Juniper from behind, walling her in from the deluge. Cerulean’s on bended knee, his splayed wings shrouding Lark from the billows. They fixate on us, waiting with mixtures of elation, amazement, and concern.

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