Page 45 of Shadows and Flames
“Really? You nearly killed me with that thing, and you want to try again?”
This time, he chuckled, the gesture more movement of his body than sound, and he forced me back to my earlier sprawl. I tossed the tunic over side of the bed.
And we watched each other. So much eye contact couldn’t be good for a person, but all our acts of self-preservation had achieved in the past was heartache. Death.
So, we stared. I traced with my thoughts the hard edge of his jaw, the little bump at the bridge of his nose. His touch traced loops and patterns on my lower back, and I wondered what he was thinking. What he saw.
“Tell me something I don’t know about you,” I whispered, not wanting to break the trance of this moment.
His black lashes beat quickly, as if he was sorting through memories, snippets of him. I’d always reasoned he was far more than a sullen figure cloaked in leathers and scowls. But these past two days with him showed more than I’d expected, and I wanted to know it all.
“I used to have trouble speaking as a child.” I cocked my head to the side, asking him to continue. And he did, “A stutter. It was easier to not talk.”
I tried to imagine Elián unable to do anything and came up empty, but the sincerity in his words rang true. “Is that why you’re so quiet now?”
His shrug shifted my body with it. “Yes. It is habit. But I notice more this way.” I hummed, and this time, I didn’t have to prompt him to keep going. “My brother did not have that problem, so he would often speak for me. Even though our father said it just kept me from working on it.”
A fond, small smile spread across my cheeks. I imagined two tiny versions of Elián in child-sized fighting leathers. One silent and the other chatty to compensate. “And how did you shake it? The stutter.”
He closed his eyes a moment, sadness and love shifting. “My mother. I could hardly speak but had no issue when I sang with her. She practiced with me, over and over. And one visit with her, I was telling her of Leandro’s growing infatuation with a boy in the village.” He returned my expression with a somber smile of his own. “I’d finished the whole story, and only then did she tell me that I hadn’t stuttered once while I told it.”
Elián’s thumb wiped under my eyes, making me realize that I’d started to cry. For him, for her and his father, for his twin brother. “You miss them terribly.”
He sighed thickly. “Yes.”
This time, I initiated the meeting of our lips. I stretched and kissed him tenderly, but there was no way I could pour everything into the gesture. There was not enough time in this or any other world to tell him how much I wished they were here again, to tell him that I understood.
“Your turn, my queen.”
I blurted the third thing that came to mind. “I used to be afraid of the dark.”
To that, he chuckled, and if there was anything in this realm that I had left to be proud of, it was causing that dimple to appear. Both, if I was lucky. “You, Death Wielder, afraid of shadows?”
I scoffed. “Well, when you say it like that. Mat and Ajeh would tell stories of murderous Vyrkos hiding under my bed to eat me. At three years, of course I believed them.”
He sobered and reached for that spot on my back. Between shoulder blade and spine. “And do you miss him?”
Mathieu. After saving me, I’d not asked Eliánhow, but I knew he ended my brother after Mathieu nearly killed me. The giggles we shared as children, the helping hand he extended as we both learned the world. Those were all tainted by the last images I had of Mathieu. Ordering our uncle’s beheading, his sneers as he admitted to murdering those I loved.
“No. I don’t.”
After more silence, more staring, Elián spoke again. “Even so. I am sorry.”
“There’s nothing to be sorry for. He was willing to incite wars, drive more division between our kind and the Vyrkos. Cut down family all for the sake of power. I’ve done fucked up thing after fucked up thing in my life, but I would never do that. If I ever get to that point, I want you to kill me yourself.”
Elián rotated us onto our sides and took my face in hand. “You won’t.” I held back my arguments to the contrary. I’d beenhalfway there while living with Cal. To be complicit and support someone so evil was just as poisonous, maybe even more so.
He kissed me again, and we sank into the mattress, the moment. Our legs twined in a messy, languorous heap.
It was awhile before we came up for air, and I rested the black tips of my fingers in his dimples. Elián kept his smile there, soft to match the deep embers that watched me. His callused thumbs flicked the rings in my nipples, sending shocks down to my toes.
“I am looking forward to our time together, Meline.”
“Mm,” I hummed, “and how much time are you wanting?” I kept my tone teasing but held my breath for his answer.
“All of it. Em and El.”
This time, the laugh was genuine as he parroted my ridiculous words from a different lifetime. The twinge of sadness and doubt lurked underneath, but I could dream a bit longer. “Okay. Em and El.”
