By the time they leave their cave in the Forest and make their way to the world of red and orange and gold that is Sylva, nearly a month has passed. She never intended to be gone from him so long, to let so many days and nights slip like water through her open, grasping fingers. But when she returned to her parents bone-weary and a little broken, with a wound in her neck that threatened to force infection through the tangle of her thrumming veins, it was decided that they would go nowhere until she had healed. This time, this time, she would not disappear beneath their noses either, would not give in to the ache in her chest and steal away in the night. She could not bear to hurt them that way again.

But when they cross the outermost boundaries of the forested territory, when she recognizes the trees and the boulders scattered like haphazard marbles, she cannot wait any longer. The pain, the ache, the worry in her chest is almost unbearable, and when she breathes it is with the shards of lungs carved from windows and bottles, a million pieces of glass forced roughly together. She turns to her parents and touches their necks, pressing kisses into the waiting warmth and says, “I’ll come find you later, I promise.” They must know or guess, must understand the worry etched across her dark face because they do not protest and they do not try to stop her as she turns on her heel and disappears down a familiar path that sends her heart stammering in her chest.

She is breathless and shaking when the trees open to a familiar lake, the glittering blue reflecting slivers of sunlight like trapped stars in its surface. Her eyes are drawn like magnets to the cave, his cave, though she isn’t sure she would’ve found it so quickly if not for the dark shape standing silently outside it. He is alone on the bank, a detail that does not escape her attention, and his eyes are fixed forward and straight ahead, sinking like stones beneath the rippling blue. The trail opened up somewhere behind him so he hasn’t seen her yet, and for a moment she is frozen with an uncertainty that feels cold and dark, like winter trapped in her veins.

It had been so long since she had seen him last, so long since she had curled against his chest and he had warmed her with kisses pressed to the soft of her face. In this drawn out silence, this churning uncertainty, his low words come to find her again. Maybe you’ll come back to me one day. Maybe I’ll be waiting for you. Her chest clenches and knots and she wonders again at how much time has passed, wonders again if he had long since stopped waiting. But it is not enough to push her away, not enough to keep her from him, and suddenly she is picking her way across the sand to stand at his side. But she does not stop beside him like she should, does not pause to find out if he even remembers her, because she is selfish and she is greedy and this ache in her chest is threatening to undo her.

“Stillwater.” She breathes as she pushes against him, soft and sad and so sinuous where she folds herself against the black. She is breathless and aching, meaning to hold back and wait, but somehow she is beneath his neck and against his chest, with her face buried in the crook of that smooth, dark neck. She might be trembling or her heart might be cracking, but she is busy tracing apologies into the crushed velvet of his skin with lips that are soft and pink and flushed with heat. “I’m glad you’re okay.” She says, she whispers, and she does not tell him about nightmares filled with his ruined body and a wicked witch intent on cruelty. 

Pressing one last greedy kiss to the point of his shoulder, she disentangles and pulls away, lifting those dark, uncertain eyes to the ridges and planes of a face that is so achingly familiar. “Stillwater.” She breathes again, relieved, hesitant.  There is an ache in her chest that begs her to touch her lips to his face, to bury herself against the beating of his heart again, but suddenly she finds she cannot move. Her eyes darken and fall away from his face, away to his lake and that endless churning blue. When she speaks again it is just a whisper of sound, of stolen starlight trapped between her lips, “I told you I would come back.”

A pause and uncertainty steals the words from those pale, parted lips, But did I wait too long?

He does not react at all to the sound of her voice, to the pressure of her mouth against his chest, his shoulder, his neck. Even when she curls against the curve of his broad chest, he is as still as stone, like carved and gleaming obsidian against the wet gold of the shore. Doubt finds her immediately, tracing long, cold fingers down the length of her spine and deeper, peeling apart a network of veins that carry ice and uncertainty to the deepest parts of her soul. Had he forgotten her after all? Maybe he remembered that night like a dream, fondly and with the echo of a smile, though with no more weight than any other dream.

Her heart thrashed within her chest, caught and terrified like a small bird within the confines of that ugly bone cage. Of course he wouldn’t remember her still, wouldn’t bury his lips in her hair and soothe away the beasts that hunted her each night in her dreams. It had been just one night, one single lonely stretch of dark beneath even lonelier stars.

She flushed, embarrassed, and then pulled away from him.

When he does finally break the stillness, it is not with words, not with lips pressed to the curve of her waiting jaw. Instead he drops his head over her neck and she is confused until she feels the heat of his breath against the mostly healed wound carved into the blue of her neck. Confused that he had found it so easily, so deliberately. Luster. He says and she flinches, startled by the sound of a voice she had been aching for, and she slips out from underneath him with reluctant ease. When her eyes lift to his face, they are dark and wary and full of bruises, enormous glass windows ready to break. How did you know? Those eyes ask, furrowed and uncertain, changed, though she wonders if he will notice.

He shifts to stand beside her, and for one long, glorious moment she is at home again, safe and content within the crook of his dark body. But doubt is ruinous and it is treacherous, and she only remains there for as long as it takes to find the will to leave him. He doesn’t remember you like you remember him. The thought is like acid on her tongue, fire in her throat and she is choking on the truth. She comes to stand a few paces away, close enough to reach out and touch – though she does not, and neither does he. Despite the agony within her breast, the bird that is still beating itself to death within the cage of her chest, her eyes are soft and round and tremulous when they settle apologetically against his face.

“I didn’t mean to intrude.” She says, so soft and quiet, in a voice like shattered silver despite the way she tries to be brave. “I just needed to make sure you were okay.” Her eyes drop from his face, from deep hollows and long lines of strong bone, a stoic expression she had memorized so perfectly she was certain she could draw it in the stars. It didn’t matter that he did not care for her as she had grown to care for him, that he hardly reacted when she curled against his chest and pressed kisses to his skin. It would not change her desire to stay and protect him – he, who is trapped inside and with no walls to keep him safe.

Her eyes return quietly to his face, soft and tentative and with none of the demanding that they had ached with when she first found him lost and gazing at the reflections in the water. “I needed you to know that I keep my promises.” A pause and she does reach out to touch him, traces those pale lips along the curve of his jaw because she is weak and she is broken and he is the best balm she knows. When she pulls away again it is with a quiet sigh, an aching sound, the sound a heart must make when it is torn in two as hers is now. But she hides it with the gentle furrowing of her dark brow, poorly, and with a smile that does not quite fit the shape of that pale, delicate mouth. She had meant to tell him that she would be staying, that Sylva was home, that morning would no longer be a thing that inspired dread. But it feels altogether unimportant now, silly, and so she locks the information away in her chest and turns to go. Then, hesitating, "It was good to see you again, Stillwater."

The longer she stands apart from him, cold and frozen and fissuring beneath the weight of a gaze that feels entirely unfamiliar, the harder it becomes to look at him at all. She is not sure when the shift happened, when it was that she had given her heart to him so completely, but she knows she must have because in his silence, in is assumed indifference, she can feel it trembling inside her chest. Her eyes ache to settle against that beautiful dark face, ache to lose themselves in every hollow and angle and ridge of elegant bone, but she denies them for fear of what he might find in her eyes, the very secret she battles with now at her core.

But then he moves, he frowns, and it has the same effect as spring does to winter, and she is thawing, melting, flying too close to a dangerous sun. She does her best to stop them, but those luminous eyes float to his face, to his mouth and up, higher, to where his brow is furrowed and deep with his quiet displeasure. This makes her smile, something small and maybe a little broken, the twist of pink lips, tremulous and shy because maybe he has not forgotten her after all. When she moves to touch him again, so greedy, always greedy, her lips eager and uncertain and delicate along the stretch of hard bone beneath his jaw, he softens again. The frown fades, his brow is smooth, and he closes his deepwater eyes with sharp and satisfied exhalation that she does not miss.

Luster, he says, and the word freezes her before she can turn to leave him be, to give him back the peace of his lake, his solitude. She is affected by her name in his deep, mountainous voice, affected by the threads of hurt that she is so surprised to find unraveling there. Don’t leave, Luster. A plea, perhaps, though nothing sounds vulnerable in the smoothness of his voice, and so she hears it as he intends it, a request, a command. She is his. He is at her side again before she has time to check his face for honesty, before she can confirm that the quiet ache in his voice is not just the echo of the matching ache in her chest. But she does not mind because his lips seek out her face, tracing the ridge of her nose up to her brow where they settle with a kiss beside her blinking eye.

“Stillwater.” She breaths again, forcing breath and words around the billions of burr s sitting in her chest. It is so easy when she reaches for his face, when her lips settle warm and wandering at the far curve of his jaw, tracing the long bone to his chin and then up to his mouth where she can place a kiss like an apology in the soft hollow above the corner of his lip. “You didn’t – “ she begins and then ends just as quickly, searching for an explanation that does not sound quite as greedy as the truth. But she finds there is none, and so with a head that hangs just a little lower, a little heavier, drooping well beneath his chin and near his chest instead, she whispers, “I thought maybe you forgot about me.” A pause and she still does not look at him, does not close the small distance between them with the soft of those blue curves as she would like to. “I did not mean to be away for so long. But I got –“, hurt, she had been about to say, remembering the bone and black stallion, his teeth and his kisses and the weight in his chest, instead she says, “delayed.”

When he speaks again his voice is warm and needing, softer than before, and she cannot stop the shiver that races wildly up her spine. Don’t leave, Luster. She does not notice the bangle in his hands, cobalt and onyx and deepwater eyes, but that does not stop it from being placed around her heart, closed tight and firmly, locking her to him as the witch had locked Stillwater to the land. It doesn’t hurt, she does not notice its cold or its weight, but one day she will, and it will be far too late. “I won’t.” She promises, seals her fate, puts the key to the lock back in his hands. “I’ll stay.” Her voice is like starlight, silver and searching and filled with longing, lonely, but for the second kiss she presses to his dark, gleaming cheek.

Don’t you want to stay a while with me? His words fill her with warmth and with longing, and the ache in her chest swells until she is sure it will burst, until she is sure it will kill her. It feels like leaping into the dark, like hoping without knowing that there will be hands there to catch her when she lands, hands to pull her to safety on the other side. But she closes the distance between them anyway, soft and sinuous against him, small and hidden in the shadow of his body when she rests her cheek against the planes of a strong, dark shoulder. “I would stay for as many moments as you will give me,” she whispers, she breathes, she promises with a kiss, “I came back for you.” The confession feels heavier than she means it to be, and to spare him the weight she pushes a faint smile against his skin, lipping gently at the longest tangles of mane against his neck. “I intend to make Sylva home.” She says again to chase away the silence, though her voice is quiet and her words are soft, and silence clings affectionately to their edges. A small sigh escapes her lips, warm and tremulous in the air between them, uncertain when he eyes find his again. “Do you think anyone will mind me being here?” And for once she does not mean him, not her Stillwater. She means those who guard Sylva, those who lead and protect this land of tree and gold and stone. “I didn’t think to ask.” Her eyes are dark and worried against his face, uncertain to match the sudden tightness in her chest. “Am I trespassing?”

She notices him tense, watches the ripple of dark, sinuous muscle move beneath the black of his smooth skin. But she does not know why, does not realize that he is remembering something that should exist only in her memories – does not realize that she had already shared this with him. With a furrowed brow and dark eyes that are soft and round and lifted uncertainly to his face, she frowns, touches her lips to his cheek again, “Are you alright, Stillwater?” Her voice is softer than silk, softer than starlight, breathless and worried and she steps closer to press her shoulder against his, to soothe that tension away with the warmth of her lips as they wander absently across the hollows of his chest.

He softens, and she isn’t sure if it is her lips or her words, but there is a smile on her mouth anyway, faint and uncertain even though it tugs warmth at the edges of those beautiful, luminous eyes. He sighs and his nose finds the hollow of her back, brushing gently across the slope of those faded blue withers, and she leans even deeper, closing her eyes and losing herself readily in this almost embrace. She knows, she does, that this is not like what her parents share, not a bond that is so unbreakable that even time cannot pry them apart. She knows, too, that this isn’t love, it isn’t those soft eyes and secret smiles and kisses shared when no one is looking.

Except, why, why does her heart hum like this for him, why does it grow wings when he smiles for her, why is she weightless with his mouth pressed to the hollow of her delicate back.

She opens her eyes again, still luminous, always luminous – there is too much light trapped inside her, too much bright and it must bleed from somewhere –  and they settle quietly against his face, tracing every curve and hollow and harsh, beautiful line before he has a chance to notice those eyes on him. She is breathless at once, shy and soft and sinking safely into those eyes when they finally do find her, but she sinks for only a moment before she blinks and turns carefully away for steadier ground. But the words find her anyway, the ones she had meant to save and swallow and hide from his ears, the words she tells him now with her face pressed so sweetly against the curve of his warm, dark neck. “I missed you.” Soft and uncertain, shy and silver and soaked in starlight. Then, softer, lighter, and with a note of quiet teasing as she reaches out to lip at the curve of his heavy jaw, “You must be something special.”

I understand, she thinks silently, I understand why someone would bind you to them indefinitely.
When she glances at his face again, quiet eyes and a quiet smile against a face carved from dark marble, she cannot help but wonder if he knows his immense worth, his weight in her chest.

He places a light kiss against her shoulder and her skin warms immediately, flushed with heat and pleasure and something richer, something more.  You said Sylva is home. You can’t trespass in your own home. He pulls her back against his chest and she softens so willingly, so readily, rubbing her cheek against the point of his shoulder. He laughs, a chuckle, deep and amused and she finds that she loves the way it feels when it rumbles against her skin. I’m glad you came back, and she is weightless, his neck across her withers the only thing holding her in place, and I’m glad you will be staying. His mouth is against her mane, his lips in her hair, and she is useless to stop the shiver that wanders curiously up her spine.

You’ve brought someone with you? He asks and she smiles faintly in response, testing his tranquility with teeth nipping lightly at the curve of muscle from throat to chest. “My family, “ she replies after a moment, that smile widening slightly – though he probably cannot see it with her tucked so comfortably against the strength of his chest, “your cave seemed big enough for all of us.” She pauses and her voice is thoughtful , innocent, but the smile is what betrays the truth in her words. She did not, in fact, plan to let her parents near the cave. Nor was she entirely certain he would continue to share it with her. But this levity, this light, this laughter trapped in her chest feels so much easier than the weight in her heart, the pit in her stomach. “That will be nice, yes?”

There is laughter in her voice now, pale and violet and warm when she slips out from beneath his neck to head further down the shore to his lake. But she is deliberate when she slips out from beneath him, pressing another kiss to the soft of his mouth, and then weaving beneath his chin so that his mouth brushes her withers, her spine, the point of a delicate blue hip, further. When she reaches the water and turns her head back over her shoulder to look at him, her eyes are dark and damp, bruised with something that she is struggling to identify. But she pushes it back, for now, quiet and less uncertain than she had been before. “Are you coming?” She asks, and it is so soft, so easy, not even a little demanding.

But then she turns back to the water and lifts her face to the sky, tracing gentle fingers across the power that thrums like electricity within the blue of her small chest. She is strong in this clearing, made stronger by the sunlight that soaks in across the lake, stronger still by the shadows that pool beneath the nearest trees. It the mixed essence of her ability, the plentitude of both light and dark and she absorbs it so easily. She throws shadows into the sky, a small dome of dusk that settles around them, a blanket of half-dark that softens the glow of the sun so that when she next looses a hundred flickering stars in the air around them, they are easier to see. “For you.” She says, light and soft and a little breathless with the adrenaline that still floods her veins in the echo of so much used magic, and she does not realize what it is she has done. Does not realize that this is the mirror of the memory that haunts him, still.

A small mare, slight and slender, peppered through with gleaming light and dark to match the colors on Lusters dusty roan skin appears at the shore by the lake. There is no sound, no smell, no way to touch what is only light and bright and the result of remembering. But it is there and it is quiet, and when it lifts its small, dark face to the night, there are a hundred flickering stars in that sky, too. Stars like sunken ships and lost fireflies, waiting patiently for a pair of deepwater eyes to find them.

He laughs again and his lips are against her nose, her skin, soft and sweet and she leans into him easily. Ah Luster, he says, and she smiles as she always will at the way her name sounds on those dark, velvet lips, that might be you, not me. The smile fades a little, dimmed by her quiet uncertainty, but she manages to hide it from the hollows of her face so that he will not know her doubt. Instead, with a voice as soft and sweet as the pale lips that explore the hollows of his dark face, “Can’t we both be special?”

She won’t tell him that she knows she is not special – won’t tell him that she is certain he is.
She doesn’t think he will believe her.

The grimace darkens his face and she laughs as she kisses it, laughs again when his lips find her neck and she arches reflexively beneath them. But then those lips wander to the curve of her throat, warm and eager, and the laughter fades with the sudden thrum of her humming pulse. Mmmm, he says and she softens, her eyes wide and dark and different than they had been before, Sure.. But I don’t think they’ll enjoy it so much. They land on his face then, those luminous brown eyes, sharp and beautiful and electric beneath the weight of his gaze. Not when they see us like this.

“Stillwater?” She starts, breathless and aching, touching her mouth to his chest, his neck – teeth, against the hard curve of his cheek because she sees what these things do to him. But then she thinks better of it, flushed and uncertain, and she slips out beneath his chin. She has no right, no reason to expect these things from him. His mouth drops against her skin and she does not miss the weight of it, the ache in it. It is reflexive when she pauses so that those lips can find new hollows to explore in the curve of her back and her hips, new ridges of bone to press his teeth to. But she knows in her chest that this means something different to her than it does to him, something more and worse and fragile, and already she is breaking with it. So she abandons those lips, despite the ache in her skin and in her belly, an ache that urges her back and beneath him, and turns instead to the cool promise of his damp shore.

But it is too much to be apart from him, to be alone with her shadow, and she is relieved when he obliges her request and returns to her side. “Stillwater.” She says again, softer this time, though her eyes are still dark and rich and open windows to the ache he coaxes with clever lips from the deepest parts of her. She means to lay her cheek against his shoulder, means to find solace in the smooth and black  and away from those lips designed perfectly to undo her, those lips she wants to be undone by, but his nose finds the wound on her neck and she is, at once, still. His tongue pushes against it, against scar tissue and new flesh and she isn’t prepared for the shiver of desire that thrums instant and eager along the pathways of her veins. She blinks hard and swallows the quiet whimper, half moan and half exhalation, that catches in her chest. I should have been there. He says, a whisper, and his regret is so thick she can almost taste it.

His pain dims her.

She is gentle again when her nose lifts to his face, quieted when her lips follow the ridges of bone and the weight in his brow. She leaves kisses in the hollow places, smoothing the deep lines of tension where they dug furrows along his jaw, and uses her teeth along the underside of his neck to where it curves into his throat because she has noticed how he likes this, because he is hurt and he is heavy and it feels like her fault. “I should have been here.” She says finally, when her lips still and at last she does press her cheek to his neck, to the place that feels like home even though she has no right to it. “I should have stayed.” 

With you, she doesn’t add.

But then her brow furrows, deep and uncertain, and the harsh angles that carve themselves across her forehead and along her cheeks should make her darker, but they do not. “You knew.” She says, remembering how he had slung his neck across her back to find the wound half-hidden beneath soft tangles of dark mane when she first joined him. Her cheek parts from his shoulder so that she can lift her chin and watch him, so that those dark eyes can lay easy in the familiarity of his face despite the way her skin trembles with new hesitation. “It was the first thing you looked for.” It should be an accusation, or a question, but it is none of these things on her lips, and when she watches him she is quiet, distant. “But how. How could you possibly know?”

She doesn’t tell him that she meant to keep it from him, that he shouldn’t worry, shouldn’t care. She cannot say it because somewhere deep inside she is touched and pleased and warm at the implication of his concern. Instead she softens again, affected by his dark and his regret and the shadows that cling so stubbornly to his face, and reaches out to nose his shoulder with a smile that is shy and sweet and vulnerable on her lips. "Hey," she says, brushes her nose along the smooth black to hide the teasing way her eyes gleam, "if you aren't careful I might start thinking you care."