Page 58 of Reflections of Silence

Her eyes glowed bottomless in the flickering lantern lights.

I smirked, catching her waist.Feeling left out?Her shove told me I rectified that error as I wound my arms around her frail frame. So breakable.

Fragile.

Her fingers traced across my stomach over my shirt in an intimate gesture that, anywhere else, would be frowned upon, socially. Here, we had forgotten the rules of society and lived amongst our own. A pity that soon we would have to remember them all again.

My mind brushed hers as she settled against me.Don’t get comfortable, Gella. I have a fantasy I want to play out with you.

Taking inspiration from our bayou witch, I concentrated, pushing my words along with the image of her pale feet fleeing through the maze, bare as her breath pants between pale lips. Her pulse rode hard under my fingers when I stroked her throat and I knew she got the message.

“When?” she breathed.

I looked beyond the darkness. “I’ll count.”

“To what?”

“I’m not sure yet.” I smiled when Dolion turned a quizzical glance my way and spoke directly into the most intimate part of her mind.

Run, Gella.

She leaned into me a second longer before her shoes slipped off and she pattered away on bare feet.One, two, three…

Don’t go too fast.Her little huffs accentuated her dilemma.

Stay, and see if my threat is good. Run, and find out how fast I can catch her.

Her internal debate might have been cute how she seemed to think sassing me would get her out of trouble, except that it won’t work.

Run faster, Gella.

The smile remained on my face as Dolion stared at me, turning Minette away despite her protests.

“Come, my love. I feel Sebastian and his precious woman want their time together now. And so should we, before the sunrises.” He nuzzled into her neck to the melody of her giggles, and I wondered if I need to have a chat about the birds and the stone bees with my gargoyle.

Then Gella’s ragged breaths distracted me, and my thoughts merged away from our friends as I hunted my wife like so much prey through the maze.

I’ll find you, Gella. Don’t bother hiding.

I hear her laughter, rather than experience in my head. I smile. She’s closer than I expected, probably planning on doubling back, the little minx. Smart creature she is.But sometimes clever is too clever.

Then stop cheating,she banters back, her voice drifting away.

Along with her presence.

I frown, heading for the center of the maze, toward the black poppies. “Gella,” I call aloud, remembering the abject fear that haunted her voice in my head the night she lost herself on these paths, and my inability to come to her. “Wait.”

The game quickly turned on me. I spun in a circle, focusing on her humanity, her mortal frailty that would draw not only a hunter like myself to her this night but any other in the vicinity.

This was a terrible idea.

I rounded the corner of the tallest walls, their hedges overgrown, reaching for me as I yanked at the wayward strands, pulling a hole in a section when I found myself penned in at a dead end, and no wife in sight.

“Gella!” my voice echoed through the still night.

“Here, Sebastian.”

I turned and there she stood, the single, pale form in a sliver of moonlight amongst shadows. Her dress pooled the ground at her feet as she stepped hesitantly from the muddle of material. Her hair hung long over her shoulders, unpinned. Those damned devices scattered the ground beneath her feet where sheripped them out, trailing the area. I’d be picking them out of my garden for weeks to come, but I didn’t care.

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