With a groan she rolled from her stomach to her side. When fur brushed her back, she didn’t have time to brace herself before white chaos stole her vision. Aera flapped her wings like a wild beast, thrashing, and flailing as her horns dug into Emmery’s fingers, all while she slathered her face in kisses.
“Ouch,” Emmery hissed, her thin voice barely a squeak. “Aera!”
The fox yipped and tucked herself under her chin. Those big amber eyes overflowed with the same love that swelled in Emmery’s heart, too.
“I missed you,” she croaked. She scratched between the fox’s eyes. “What sort of trouble did you get up to in my absence, little one?”
Aera’s eyelids fluttered closed and she cooed softly.
Emmery laughed, but the empty sound squeezed from her tight chest.
She studied Destonne’s rumpled side of the bed. “Where did your favourite man go?” she asked softly.
Aera gave her a squinty snaggle-toothed grin.
As Emmery sat up and rested her back against the cool iron headboard, she pressed her palms to her eyes and tried to decipher Zyphira’s cryptic words, her abandonment, and the uncertainty of everything now.
The door swung open and her head snapped up as Destonne plodded in with a mug of tea clutched in his hand. He rubbed his eyes then dragged his hand down his face, too busy studying the ground to see her at first.
But as the door snicked shut, their gazes collided across the room.
His fingers slipped and the mug crashed to the floor. White shards scattered with the hot liquid, as his hand hovered in the air.
He froze.
Emmery stilled.
And Dez’s lips parted with a breath reminiscent of the phantom wind from Deimos’s mausoleum.
He blinked. Blinked again. She studied the shadows nestled beneath his bloodshot eyes, his tangled curls, and the thick coat of stubble on his jaw. But hadn’t he been clean shaven that night at Thirst? Her cheeks heated as she remembered skimming her fingers over his smooth skin.
How long had she been asleep?
Her chest cinched tighter, and Emmery willed her eyes to communicate what her mouth couldn’t.
The tea seeped into his socks, but his attention didn’t waver as if he couldn’t bear to look away. Emotion flickered across his face until she feared he would fall to the floor and shatter alongside the mug.
“Emmery,” he breathed her name like a song. A ballad. Three perfect notes that fell off his tongue with tenderness but also unfettered despair.
Overcome with confusion, she bit down on her trembling bottom lip. Because she couldn't deny seeing him felt like coming home.
His throat worked and Dez slowly stepped across the room until he stopped at the edge of the bed. His hands twitched at his sides.
She shifted to make room for him. He tore off his wet socks and perched himself beside her, though he wouldn’t meet hereyes now. Instead, he stared at her hands as if he wanted to hold them but made no move to do so.
“I like the beard,” she said, the heaviness between them unbearable.
He scrubbed a hand along his jaw and huffed a laugh. “Yeah? Should I keep it?”
His small laugh, though hardly joyous, soothed her soul. Emmery fiddled with the sheet’s hem as she braced herself for the question. And the answers.
“My mind's a bit fuzzy, but I remember everything up until—” She stumbled at the thought. “MyShadowheart.” The two words wheezed out like some forbidden secret.
He stared at his hands. “I carried you to the healing waters, but your vestige was gone. And you wouldn’t wake up.” He rubbed his eyes again. “You were unconscious for three days, but then you stopped—” He swallowed. “You stopped breathing, Emmery.”
Her world spun and she choked, her throat impossibly dry.
Dez retrieved a glass of water from the bedside and handed it to her. As she chugged it, reality sank into her bones. The frigid reality of magical Collapse. “I should be—” she wheezed. “I should be in the ground.”