Page 54 of The Crown of Moonlight
“Would you…could you roll over?”she asks, her voice so soft I’m afraid I heard her wrong.But it unravels everything I’ve tried to hold together.
I turn and pull her against my chest, my arm sliding around her waist as though it knows where it belongs.I would scarcely need to move at all to claim her lips.She can’t be so innocent that she doesn’t know she’s tempting me.
“Does that hurt?”She tilts her head back to look at me, and it takes a moment to realise that she’s asking about my wound.
“No,” I say, and it’s not a lie because it’s not my injured flesh that pains me.
Flora isn’t mine.She can’t be, and there are many days yet until we reach Muilean.One lapse of self-control could change too much between us.
I lie still and count her heartbeat until it slows and my hunger becomes an ache.
Chapter 22
Waking the Bog
Flora
W
e leave again before full dark.The Peathan Pass will be a hard ride, and we’ve spent nearly two full days on the road already.We have five days and half a night left to reach Muilean.
The glen is still, Loch Airceig an ink-black spill between steep braes.I switch horses, putting us both up on Bramble to give Eira a rest after she carried us most of the day yesterday.We hug the shore, the horses splashing through the shallows where trees force us to the water.I start to duck under a low branch of moss-covered birch, but Chyr catches it and pushes it aside for me.
When he’s sitting this close behind me, every one of Bramble’s strides rocks me back against Chyr, pushing a flush of awareness through me.I steady my hands on the reins.
There’s more strength in Chyr’s arms now, and he balances himself more easily on Bramble’s back, but I’m not sure how much of that new strength is due to my healing as opposed to the Veilstone rings.
He wears a Veilstone on each hand, and my body draws in the warm hum of magic as his arms wrap around my waist.It’s a constant tingle beneath my skin, vibrating through me like the low purr of Chyr’s voice against my ear.He knows, without my having said it, to speak to my right ear and not my left.The realisation that he has pieced that together himself pulls at something inside me with unnerving insistence.
Neither of us mentions the tension between us before we slept, but for a long time as I lay with my eyes closed and sleep eluding me, wanting him was an inconvenient ache that pulsed in time with my heart.
“What’s it like in Tirnaeve?”I ask, curious, but also tired of the lingering awkwardness between us.“Is it beautiful?”
“Yes and no.Not like this.”He gestures around at the loch and the braes that are growing steeper.“The shimmer of magic makes the colours brighter, the contrast sharper.The untamed places are glorious, but we only have a few small pockets of them left.Siorai like to claim things and change them for their own amusement.”
Wind skims over the loch, throwing up drops that hit my cheek.I try to imagine a place where the earth and water have all been tamed, and it strikes me as heartbreaking.
“What do Siorai build instead?”I ask.
I can feel Chyr’s smile as the muscles work in his cheek.“They shape their dwellings from living trees and crystal or marble or precious stone, decorated with cascades of water and flowers that never lose their blooms.Every home is a competition to see who can create the most magical, the most original, the impossible.And nothing is ever finished.There is always something new to copy, outdo, or create.”
“Do you miss it?Home?”
He’s quiet, as though it’s a question he’s never asked himself.“The Anvar’thaine and the other Riders have been the closest thing to a home I’ve ever had.Our barracks are part of the Palace complex, but we’re rarely there, and the place itself isn’t anything special.”
“And your family?Do you have sisters?Brothers?”
His breath snags and holds a moment before he lets it out.“I didn’t see my father often, and I don’t remember my mother.My uncle took me in when I was small.Maybe that’s where my appreciation for simplicity comes from.His home always has to be the most spectacular.”
There’s a bitter note to his voice that says more than words ever could.The arm banded around my waist tightens and keeps me from asking more, but I imagine a small, vulnerable version of Chyr, alone in a house made of gems and marble.A house that’s beautiful and heart-achingly cold.
The light drizzle that had been falling earlier has finally stopped, and the sky is clear.Above us, the brightening stars shine almost as bright as the moon.They press close as we reach the loch’s end and turn towards the Peathan Pass.
Wind stirs with the scent of peat and rain-soaked ferns, and fallen pines slow our path, but the chances of running into the queen’s soldiers on this rough-bound stretch of track should be diminished.The terrain’s a natural defence.
The moon is starting its descent by the time we come to a wide stretch of bog hemmed between a steep slope strewn with boulders and a wide, babbling stream.It’s a green trap of water and loose vegetation glowing in the moonlight.
“We’ll need to cross here,” I say.“The map showed a hard climb to the pass, so we should also let the horses rest.”
