"But the dream, the echo, slips from him as quickly as he had found it and as consciousness comes to him (a slap and not the gentle waves of oceanic tides), it dissolves entirely. His muscles relax as the cold claims him again, as the numbness sets in, and when his grey eyes open, there’s nothing but the faint after burn of a dream often trod and never remembered." --Brigade, written by Laura
He would move the moon and the sun and the earth for her if he could.
He would find Gale and reduce him to ash if he could.
He would do anything it took to chase the sadness from her soul.
But this is the most he can offer her, this promise that he will protect her. And he means it with everything he has, though he could not fault her if she did not believe him. Because he had been meant to protect Tephra and he had failed at that. She has no reason to trust that he will not fail her, too.
Tephra has always been the most important thing in his life. But she is here, tucked under his neck, and he’s holding onto her hard and fast and realizing that there has never been anything in his life more important than her.
And it makes sense that they should occupy the throne together. Because she is a part of him and he wants to believe that he is a part of her, too. They are two parts of one whole. He smiles, his intense need to convince her that he is worthy of her slowly draining out of him, replaced instead by his old familiar softness.
He lets the words settle around them. This new truth. He will not have to be without her again and his heart beats out a strong, contented pulse. He wonders if she can feel it. He wonders if she knows how completely he loves her.
“You will never have to be apart from me,” he murmurs. “I love you,” he tells her and he means it so fiercely that his voice wavers. “Everything will be all right,” he adds, though it’s hard to know if this is the truth. Because her mother is gone and he knows that what he has promised her is not enough to bring the Archangel back but it’s the most he can offer her without breaking his promise.
YOU REMIND ME WHO I WAS AND WHO I WANT TO BE
YOU REMIND ME THOUGH NOT WHOLE, I’M NOT EMPTY
She does not know why she had been so afraid of this at first—of letting herself just be here with him. Two sets of twins, and several years of him showing her that he was not leaving and still she had been unable to bridge that small gap that remained between them. She had left it there as if that might save her from falling apart should he change his mind and decide to leave—as if it would ever be possible for her to turn and run back down the path that had led her to him in the first place. As if she would ever be able to go backwards and simply unlove him because he was gone.
Love didn’t work that way, she already knew that.
The path behind her did not exist anymore, a piece of it crumbling to dust with every day that passes and her heart only loves him more. There was nowhere for her to go except forward, and she was still too afraid to take that last step.
She knows, though, that if he ever decided to leave that space she kept between them was not going to save her; it was not going to keep her from feeling the devastating loss of him being gone.
Badden leaving had fractured her, but Savior leaving would be her undoing.
She exhales another trembling breath against his chest, and inside her own, her heart is swelling and twisting with the various emotions trying to overwhelm her: sorrow because of her mother, excitement at their new venture, and of course that all-consuming love that she didn’t want to fight anymore. “I love you, too,” she says into his skin, letting the last of her tension slip away with the words. She finds herself smiling despite everything else, pulling back just enough to brush her lips against his cheek and say softly, “You did turn out to be my savior.” And she was grateful that when he had found her that snowy day in the meadow she had followed the sparks she felt when she met him, and had not let her fear destroy this before it could ever begin.
He remembers.
He remembers the first time they’d met and he had introduced himself as Savior.
And she had looked at him and said, ‘we’ll see’ and she had smiled at him so sweetly that it had kicked all of the air out of his chest.
He had tried.
In all their years together, he had tried to prove himself. Though he never knew exactly what it was she needed saving from, if anything. They have never talked about the things she lost before their paths crossed in the bitter cold of that winter. Not because he does not want to know everything there is to know about her but because he could not stomach the thought of causing her pain in asking her to recount the dark things.
So they lie in the past.
(And how fiercely he wishes he could save her from the grief of losing her mother. How fiercely he wishes he could sink his teeth into the thing that took her, the thing that plunged Tephra into dark disquiet. But she’s pleaded with him not to and he has made a promise he intends to keep and together they will deliver Tephra back into the light and this will have to be enough.)
He kisses her head, his mouth lingering briefly against the sweet heat of her skin before he pulls away and smiles, a warm, slanted thing when he meets her eye again.
He has always regretted that his allegiance to Tephra has kept them apart, but those days are over now. They will be together now, completely.
And he laughs at her remark. “Well then, I’d say my work here is done,” he teases, resting his forehead against hers and exhaling a contented sigh.
YOU REMIND ME WHO I WAS AND WHO I WANT TO BE
YOU REMIND ME THOUGH NOT WHOLE, I’M NOT EMPTY
The warmth that spreads through her when he places another kiss against her skin is hotter than her own dragonfire, and she does not care if it reduces her to ash. But in the wake of the smoke that he leaves behind she feels the sorrow twisting like vines around her chest, and try as she might to swallow the guilt that has haunted her for years, she finds that she can’t.
She had avoided this for years, letting herself be consumed by fear and comparing him to everyone else in her life that had ever let her down, and still he had waited for her.
She presses back into him when he rests his forehead against hers, laughing quietly around the knot she can feel forming in her throat. “I’d never let you off that easy,” she tries to tease in return, but instead of a lilt to her voice there is only an ache. Her pale eyes close, and for several heartbeats she focuses only on the weight of him against her, letting the solidness of him ground her. “I’m so sorry, Savior,” she finally says softly, withdrawing from him just enough to break contact but not stepping away entirely. “I’m sorry that I made you wait so long, when I should have been in Tephra with you all along.”
Her blue eyes hold his for a moment, and she tries to think if she has ever even told him about Badden, or if that is yet another thing she has kept from him—another brick in her wall that she expected him to blindly tear down, an impossible obstacle he didn’t even know he needed to cross.
“I was so afraid of being left again that I thought keeping distance between us would somehow make things easier, but all I did was hurt us both.” She can taste the bitterness of the tears that are trying to find their way to her eyes, but all they do is burn behind them and in her throat, lacing her words but never actually falling. She wants to ask him to promise her that he isn’t going to leave, that he isn’t going to be like everyone else, but she realizes that she is the one that owes him the promise. That she has given him hardly any reason to believe she is not going to run the way she has her entire life, meanwhile he has proven himself to her time and time again. “I promise I’m not going anywhere ever again,” she touches her lips to his cheek, stepping forward to once again place herself against his chest, like he might feel the truth beating in her pulse. “Every part of me is yours.”
Together, he thinks, they can overcome anything.
Together, he thinks, there is nothing they cannot accomplish.
So he does not doubt for a moment that they will return Tephra to what it was, what it should have been all along. He does not doubt that order will be restored.
He does not doubt that they will be happy.
(How could he, when every moment he has ever spent with her has been so impossibly blissful? He has even clung to the memories of the bittersweet moments each time she had to return to Hyaline and he could not go with her. Perhaps this was the only time he ever resented Tephra for all that it meant to him.)
And he smiles something placid when she teases him in turn. Effortless.
But then she eases herself away from him and his heart lurches with the sound of her apology. His brow darkens in confusion because he cannot see anything that she should be apologizing for. Because she has never done anything but love him, even when he has not deserved it, even when he has pledged his allegiance to Tephra and has not been able to turn his back on it. (And he should have. She should have been the most important thing always. He should have been able to set the dragon in him on fire, torched it without remorse, in order to be with her.)
He wants to assure her that he’d have waited a thousand lifetimes for her, if that’s what it took. But he says nothing, if only to avoid interrupting her.
He knows precious little of the things she had endured in all the life she had lived before their paths had crossed in the cold. He does not know the way love has wounded her. But the strain in her voice sinks blades between his ribs and he shakes his head, embracing her when she returns to him again, holding her hard and fast against him.
“Don’t ever apologize to me, Casimira,” he murmurs, pressing his mouth into the tangles of her mane. “You are here now,” he continues, “what’s in the past is done, please don’t dwell on it.” Not the time they spent apart or those who’d mishandled her heart before him.
“It’s the future that’s important now.”
YOU REMIND ME WHO I WAS AND WHO I WANT TO BE
YOU REMIND ME THOUGH NOT WHOLE, I’M NOT EMPTY
