Burned

“Her brain vanished when her body did,” Ryodan says to Barrons. “Apparently,” Barrons says.

I heard also that you believe this world you claim you can save is doomed.”
He does not answer, merely stands, enjoying the warmth of her body near his, the sweetness of her breath on his face.
She disparages, “You would deceive me for a single kiss.”
“I would raze worlds for a single kiss.”
“Try saving one, for far more than that.”
“The fabric of their Universe is damaged. Without the song, it is not possible.”
She says, “You are the Unseelie King. You will find a way.”
“That sounds suspiciously like faith in me,” he mocks.
“You see faith where only a challenge has been issued. Will you fail?”
He lowers his head again, until their lips are nearly touching. “Kiss me as if you remember me. Inspire this wild god as once you did. Incite poetry and fire with your passion and perhaps I’ll find a way.”
[...]
This time, unlike so many others, he doesn’t take charge, or seek to deepen the kiss. Merely stands after the agony of half a million years of grieving this woman, basking in his first moment free of pain. Breathes it, inhales it, allows the particles of his being the chance to become for a single glorious moment something other than drawn in tightly upon himself in a frozen, eternal shudder of denial and crushing loss. Regret is poison that kills the soul.
She cries out against his lips, draws back and looks up at him. “Such grief! It is too much. I cannot endure it!”
“If you believe nothing else I tell you, my queen, believe my pain. Consider the cause.”

In bed, I steal moments of tenderness when sex has finally exhausted me to the point where I’m too bone weary to fret anymore about the enormous capacity for evil that’s taken up squatter’s rights inside me. I touch him, put all those things I don’t say into my hands as I trace the red and black tattoos on his skin, the sharp planes and hollows of his face, bury my hands in his dark hair. He watches me in silence when I do, eyes dark, unfathomable.
I sometimes wake up to find he’s pulled me close to him and is holding me, spooned into my back with his face in my hair, and those hands that don’t speak like mine don’t speak move over my skin and tell me I’m cherished, honored, seen.
Out of bed we’re islands.
Ms. Lane and Barrons.

“We need sifters,” I say for the dozenth time.
“Wake the fuck up, Mac,” Ryodan says, “there aren’t any. Few of the Fae can sift, and we’ve killed most of the ones that can.”
“Maybe you should have thought of that before you killed the princes.”
“The princess refused to disclose their location until we did.”
“Dree-lia can sift,” I point out.
“Have you any idea where to find her, lass?” Dageus says. “None of the Seelie are responding to our summons.”
“We could go into Faery and hunt for them,” I say.
“Aye, and potentially lose years of our time trying to locate her,” Drustan growls. “Leaving Christian on the cliff, dying over and over. Bad plan.”

Against his lips she murmurs, “You’ll never kill me.”
Then Jada puts her arms around his neck and pulls him against her, melting against him until there is no space between their bodies. She turns her face slowly to the side and rests her cheek against his, her chin on his shoulder. Laces her fingers into his short thick hair.

She closes her eyes and for a fleeting instant every bit of tension in the fine muscles of her face vanishes. If pressed to define the moment, I’d call it basking, a cat soaking up sun on an icy winter’s day. Savoring something she’s wanted for a long time, and I wonder, did she think of him while she battled whatever demons she faced for the past five and a half years, lost in Faery? Did she hear his voice in her head during her darkest hours?