I know what it is but I'm hoping that all is well
no harvest of green but it's still my heart to sell

The gold and white stallion had left as quickly as he had arrived. She hadn’t moved for several moments, but when she was certain that he had left, when she couldn’t smell him, feel him, she had begun to shake. Her entire body trembled with the fear—with the terror that racked inside of her—but she didn’t cry. Not now. She gasped for air as it finally expelled her body, the sound whooshing out of her as she struggled to find her balance, to right herself. The entire thing had been so surreal, so out-of-body.

Even though he was gone, she could swear she felt his breath on her skin.

How she got home, she wasn’t sure, but she didn’t search for Exist; she couldn't bear to show her sister the scars of her shame. She didn’t even extend her own healing powers toward it. She deserved to wear these; she deserved to feel the sting and the ache. She left the wound on her cheek, the flap of skin from her shoulder, gaping and open and ugly. She could have stitched, could have done away, but she didn’t.

She stood like that for hours, amber eyes looking out into the distance but not actually seeing anything at all. She didn’t hear him the first time he said her name or the second. She barely registered how close he had come to touching her. It wasn’t until she heard his command that her illusion of control shattered and she turned to him, dove into his side without thinking, her motion wordless. She buried her battered face into the curve of his powerful neck, the tears that she had held back finally flowing, racking her body.

“Dovev,” she moaned between sobs, closing her eyes and willing herself to not feel Zoryn’s body against hers, his mouth laying claim to her curves, his voice ripping apart her realities. She willed herself to not think about the hot roll of his breath against her jaw, the pressure of his teeth closing on her flesh, the sound her skin made when it tore apart. She shuddered and pressed closer to him, drinking in his warmth, ignoring the fury that rolled off him—that which made him so dangerous and so volatile.

Eventually—eventually—the sobs subsided. The earthquakes that rattled through her bones turned into minor tremors and then stillness, her silent tears slipping out the corner of her eyes and then drying. She took deep gulps of air, pressing her forehead into him, stealing the safety of his nearness. When she was certain that she had control of her breath, of her emotions, she whispered something quietly.

“You mean ‘Heal please.’”

It was enough of a memory that she dragged herself backward out of the fear, forcing herself to find her inner calm. For a moment, a second longer, she remained there, curled into his side, breathing him in, before she peeled away, loathing the distance even as it opened up. But she couldn’t be so selfish—not knowingly. When there was a foot or so between them, she took another steadying breath, and then found his gaze with her own, holding it, however shaky it might. “And I won’t. I can’t. I don’t deserve to heal.”

I put everything I had into something that didn't grow
like going on a wild hunt, shooting arrows without a bow

I know what it is but I'm hoping that all is well
no harvest of green but it's still my heart to sell

It was painful, to pull away from him, to feel the sting of the cold air against her open wounds instead of the warmth of his touch. She had lived within that ghost of a memory for but a second, soaked in the few moments of time stretched too thin—and then it had been gone, snatched from her very fingertips. She did not tremble, but she felt the quivers in her belly, the trembles in her bones. She felt the way that her body revolted against the space, her very cells dragging her forward to home, to him, to his side.

She resisted.

Despite the urge to drop her gaze, to study the ground beneath her feet, she forced herself to look him in the eye, to meet his rage with her calm, her expression smoothed over as if she did not have tumultuous sea of emotions bubbling and simmering beneath the surface. “Because I still want you,” she said quietly, her voice steady in spite of everything, in spite of the pain of her wounds and the fear she still felt after her encounter with Zoryn and, oh, most of all, in spite of the way she longed for him now.

“I know,” she closed her eyes and swallowed, struggling to form the words. “I know you have a child, a lover…a family.” Her voice broke on the last word, a gasp as if it was a dagger to the belly and not a word she had once considered so sweet. “I know all of that and yet, I stand here, and I still want you. I still ache for you.” She looked away for a second, breath unsteady, the emotions boiling up her throat and disrupting the white-knuckled grip she held on her control. When she glanced back, there were tears in the corners of her eyes, the surface of them shiny with emotion. “I still love you, Dovev.”

It was the first time she had said it out loud, the first time she had admitted it even to herself, and even though the words felt treacherous on her tongue, they felt right—the weight of them settling amongst the curves of her jaw. She shook her bleeding head. “I am a fool to feel this way.” Her wings shifted at her side, turning into that familiar onyx and ivory and constellations, holding her when he could not.

“I am selfish and foolish and I should bear these wounds. They are nothing more than I deserve.”

She could smell him, and part of her wanted to bridge the distance, but she restrained herself. He did not want her, not really, and despite the love that singed her breast, she did not want to be the one to ruin his family—to shatter his child’s chance at normalcy. She had grown up an orphan with her sister. She did not want to thrust any of that unhappiness onto an innocent. So the distance remained. Cold and infinite.

I put everything I had into something that didn't grow
like going on a wild hunt, shooting arrows without a bow

I know what it is but I'm hoping that all is well
no harvest of green but it's still my heart to sell

His hurt surprises her, catches her off guard.

She focuses in on the bewilderment in his eyes, the confusion, and the way he paces like a sudden animal. The way that his muscles jump under his coat, the blood that pools by his very bones, the armor that erupts from his flesh. It hurts worse than the flesh that peels away from it, it stings and bruises in ways that she never knew that it could.

The way that he ignores her proclamation hurts in way that Zoryn never could.

But suddenly he is turning and leaving her, walking away as if she had never said anything at all. She takes a stumbling step forward, a soft cry uncorking from her throat to spill out into the air between. "Wait!" Her voice was uneasy, broken along the edges, as she took another step and then dropped her head, a crease growing between her brow. She swallowed back the tears as they formed, the hurt that grew so steadily there.

For a long moment, she said nothing.

Could say nothing.

How could she explain to him that she was going to ask him to stay? That in spite of everything she just said, all of the truths that were on her tongue, she was still going to ask him to lie with her, to sleep? Self-loathing incinerated her veins as she looked away, disbelief at her own selfish desires, their greedy hands that continually reached for him.

He didn't even want her and she still threw herself before him. She placed herself on the pyre of her dreams, her own twisted memories. She had been nothing to him. She had been just a tryst. A distraction. A momentary burst of entertainment. And he? He had been everything. He had ignited things in her that she didn't know were possible. His touch had birthed passions she didn't know were possible. He lived inside of her now.

And she would have to endure that.

She would have to live forever knowing she loved a man who hadn't cared for her at all.

Still, all of that knowledge didn't stop her from lifting her head, from finding the depthless gaze, from forming words she knew she would regret. (Why torture herself with the truth? Why let him slip yet another dagger between her ribs?)

She had to know.

"Why..."

Her voice caught, breath unsteady.

"Why did you come to Tephra?"

I put everything I had into something that didn't grow
like going on a wild hunt, shooting arrows without a bow

I know what it is but I'm hoping that all is well
no harvest of green but it's still my heart to sell

And then, before she knew it, he was there again.

She was wrapped in him, submerged in his presence, his mouth on her shoulder, his name on her tongue. She closed her eyes and leaned into him, releasing whatever grasp she had on doubts and fears. She forgot why she had been telling him no, why she had held herself apart when this was so natural and so right. A low hum built at the base of her throat and then swelled in her chest, low and musical and full of fog.

“Dovev,” his name slipped off a drunk tongue as she curled her head into him, pressing her forehead first into the warmth of his thin neck. Then, she pulled back just enough for her mouth to find his jaw, tracing the edges of it as she had the first encounters, when everything had been so sweet and simple.

Except that wasn’t quite true, was it? Nothing between them had been simple. It had always been complex; it had been wildfires erupting across her flesh, hurricanes billowing into her chest. It had been the power and the majesty of a natural disaster from the very start. And this? This was nothing different.

His sweet tending to her wounds stung but eased the pain and stirred something else in her. Without her prompting, without thought, her own healing unraveled and sprung to life, the tiny threads of it reacting to his touch. Her wound began to close beneath his prompting, the flesh beginning to heal, the edges of it reaching for one another. With each touch, it continued, slow and steady like the waves upon the shore.

“Dovev,” she answered his warning with a submission of her own, uncaring about the darkness in his mouth; she had never cared about the edges to him, the way they pierced her flesh, the way the closer she leaned into him, the more her palms were singed. Her breathing grew slower as the pain eased in her shoulder, more steady, as she turned to him, as her mouth traveled across his jaw, skimming over the edges of the bone armor. “Dovev,” deeper this time, truths splitting apart there, honest spilling forth.

In some deep part of her mind, she knew she should stop—knew she should pull back.

But suddenly, with him there, she couldn’t.

And so she did the only thing she could: she lost herself in the flames.

I put everything I had into something that didn't grow
like going on a wild hunt, shooting arrows without a bow

I know what it is but I'm hoping that all is well
no harvest of green but it's still my heart to sell

Her breaths became shallow and heady, her body light from lack of oxygen, her veins expanding into her body so that she felt weightless. Thick lashes fluttered down to cover her eyes, her body melting into his hands. She was candle wax, and she was dripping down over the edges, her body turning pliant and soft against his hard edges, melding around him—softening the knives of his body, cushioning the blow. They were such opposites, fire and water, and yet, here they were, somehow colliding in the middle together.

She felt his gasp more than heard it, and the feeling of power was intoxicating—that sense that she was able to affect him as much as he affected she. Her head tipped back at the sound, and she drank it in, felt the sensation of it flood through her, tear through her belly, carve out canyons in her chest. At his words, she just shook her head, the crimson of her mane flying around to frame her face. “I don’t care,” her voice foggy, her eyes blurry with emotion. Her lips found the edges of his face again, and they remained there, tracing the whorls of his hair, studying the unique way the lines formed. “I don’t care, Dovev.”

She would touch him; she needed to touch him.

She had to.

Protests raised in the back of her mind, feeble attempts to remind herself that this was bad, that this was a terrible decision, but they all died as quickly as they lived. She couldn’t think outside of him, outside of the heat, the scorching pain rumbling beneath the surface that drew her further and further down. When he gripped her neck and pulled her toward him, she pressed hard into his chest and gasped as her power billowed outward, her wounds sealing completely and the tangles of it sweeping through Dovev.

“Say it,” she murmured it into his chest, her neck arched so that her mouth could rest against him, so that she could feel the unsteady pounding of his heart. “Tell me,” another demand pressed firmly into him, the words soft and hopeful. “Tell me you care about me.” She didn’t dare ask for him to say that he loved her but this—this she needed to hear. She needed to hear the lie. She needed to hear that he truly did care about her; that she wasn’t just some fancy, that she wasn’t just some foolish piece of entertainment.

I put everything I had into something that didn't grow
like going on a wild hunt, shooting arrows without a bow