Page 104 of A Song of Air
Weylyn’s hand cupped her cheek, and she felt his long hair curtain around her face, tickle her skin.
Bryson was to blame as well, she thought. She’d let him get the best of her. She’d let him push past her walls. She’d enjoyed his touch, far too much, and in doing so, she’d betrayed Everette.
That palm met the side of her thigh, sliding to the underside to lift and hook it around his waist. Her limbs complied, wrapping tightly around his lithe body within the confined space. He pressed closer like he belonged between her legs and would make a home there for eternity.
Everette was at fault too, though, Bryson reasoned. He’d been treating her abhorrently for quite some time, his jealousy becoming a monster that changed him and the way he treated her. He’d shoved her. He’d pushed her inside a portal to the Unseelie.
Everyone was to blame, and if she went over it again and again in her head, she would find nothing but an everlasting circle, a wheel that turned and turned and turned and turned and...
Weylyn’s lips neared her own and she gasped, swallowing his next breath. She curved her body up into his, tilting her head up like she would to accept whatever he meant to give her. In this moment, she didn’t care if it was weak. Sometimes it was okay to let your strength wane, she reasoned, so long as there was someone there to shoulder whatever evil came.
And Weylyn, she knew, would cleave apart the world to protect her.
“Open your eyes, little mate,” he whispered near her mouth. “I want to see you.”
They fluttered open. This close, she was met with few details. The outline of his sharp features, curtained by long strands of darkness. Like he’d undone his braid in the night and let the tresses hang free. His eyes were the brightest thing about him. They glittered and even through the haze of her vision she could make the burn of them clearly. Clearer than anything she’d ever seen. Brighter than they’d ever been. The thin line of his mouth curved up into a smile she had memorized.
“There you are,” he whispered, like he’d somehow lost her within the void and had found her after years of searching.
And for someone who had lost everyone she’d ever loved, the concept of being searched for when she thought she had no one?
It was everything.
Bryson’s hands lifted into the dark strands of his hair, playing with the ends, pushing them over his shoulders. He shivered at the contact, at the simple gesture of her playing with his hair that made a low growl rumble through his chest.
Her fingers itched to brush through it and separate the strands into braids. It was maddening, these urges. She could feel the bond like it was a living thing. Different from her bond with her familiar, more visceral, more pounding. It bled between them like a string forcing them together and wrapping around and around.
Weylyn’s palm slid over her thigh. He was gentle as he pushed her leg back down, unwrapping it from his waist. He leaned up and away from her, putting distance between their bodies, taking away the heady, honey-thick air with him. She could breathe again.
But a part of her didn’t want to.
She wanted to suffocate. Todrown.
“Up, little mate.” He sat back on his haunches, his body tense. “It is morning, and we must find a way out of here sooner rather than later.”
Instead of sighing in frustration, Bryson curled her stomach, heaving as she sat up and met Weylyn’s chest. He didn’t linger a second before he was pulling away from her and tugging her with him out of the hollow of the tree.
The air was still thick with iron, yet everything around them was silent. The sunlight was bright, streaking against Bryson’s eyes. She squinted against the pain of it and her temples throbbed. She groaned, shoving her crusted hair behind her ears.
“Are you well?” Weylyn asked.
She turned towards his voice and form. “I’m fine,” she told him, though her voice was hoarse with the pain of iron. She felt it all around her. Down to the roots of the trees, like it had eroded and refused to leave. “My skin itches, though.” She had to fight the urge to rake her nails across her body.
“It seems the iron the humans left behind in Seelie made its way here,” Weylyn observed. “It was worse in Seelie. We traveled through the Iron Mountains, and it was far too embedded within the earth. It would be better if we left quickly before iron sickness sets in.”
“How are we going to do that? Jump into another circle?”
Weylyn let out a noise she couldn’t quite decipher. “Absolutely not. Circles are far too unreliable. We could step into one and easily end up in the Seelie Court or worse, in the middle of a monster-infested ocean. There is no guarantee where we might end up. I am not willing to risk it.”
Bryson took a breath, a sudden thought gripping her. “Then how did you end up here?”
She couldn’t see his expression clearly, but she could feel the way his body stilled. He didn’t make a single move and she wondered if he was about to invade her mind before he answered, “I jumped in after you.”
After everything that had happened, Bryson wasn’t sure how she could still find it within her to be surprised. She’d known he’d ended up here somehow, but given all that had happened since she’d fallen through the circle, she hadn’t questioned Weylyn’s presence until now. She’d only been grateful he was there at all.
“Why would you do such a thing?”
“Because you needed me.”
