“But it wasn’t a rehearsal, was it? And you weren’t crying for joy, were you?”
“Well, obviously not,” I snapped. “But the Sionnachans don’t know that, so why does it matter?”
“I do not know why it matters,” he said in quiet consternation. “It shouldn’t. But I saw you standing there in my chamber, about to weep all over what will become your wedding dress and I... I found I couldn’t stand it.”
“You couldn’t stand it... So, you just left. Well, lucky you! There have been many things I’ve barely withstood here so far, and I’ve just had to endure them, not outrun them.”
“What about when you tried to get down the stairs past me the other night, and I took you outside for the sontanna ride? You were running then. At least away from your room.”
His fingers were winding in my hair, now. So slowly I almost didn’t notice him doing it, and I wondered if he even realized, or if it was some unconscious movement.
“Fine, I’ll give you that,” I said. “But I can’t go very far. You can fly off to a whole other world if you want to! And by the way, I’d like a thorough explanation of that phenomenon.”
“An explanation of opening a sky door?”
“Yes! What is that? How do you do it? How do you travel through space without any protective gear? How long does it take to get from one world to another that way? Is that why you didn’t come attack the ship for more than a month of us being here, because it took you a while to come back?”
“You have a lot of questions,” he murmured. He was still playing with my hair, winding it into a thick knot around one of his hands. I would have told him to stop, if not for...
Well, if not for how nice it felt.
“I do have a lot of questions,” I admitted. “I always have, since I was a kid. Questions about everything that’s out there. This is what I studied back on Earth. Stars. Space.”
“I’m not sure how much there is to explain,” Wylfrael said, as if opening a door into another corner of the universe was as simple as flipping the page in a book. “I fly high into the sky, turn the sky to stone, crack it open, then step through to wherever I want to go.”
“But how?” I pressed. “Is it literally like a door? You step in on one side and step out immediately on the other?”
“Essentially, yes.”
My mind whirled. I would have shaken my head in disbelief if not for the firm grip Wylfrael had on my hair at the nape of my neck. Turning the sky to stone... Somehow, he was transforming gas from the atmosphere into a solid material, and that material became a door?
The scientific side of my brain wrestled with the possible explanations while another part of me wanted to just shake my head and call it magic.
There were theories in astrophysics, of course, that could potentially help explain it. Like wormholes. But the idea that someone could just create something like a wormhole out of thin fucking air...
“Incredible,” I whispered. “And how do you direct the wormhole?”
“The what?”
“Never mind. It’s a human term to explain a phenomenon like a stone sky door. It’s been basically unproven until now, though. I mean, it’s present in the solutions to Einstein’s theories, but some scientists think they couldn’t exist because they’re too unstable. Although, if you’re only creating them for a short time...” God, the papers I could write on this...
“Wormhole...” Wylfrael muttered. “Such an ugly term. It’s a sky door, Torrance. Nothing to do with worms and dirt.”
“Whatever, just tell me more about it! How do you direct it? How do you know where it will open?”
“I use my power.”
“Very detailed response, thank you.” I rolled my eyes. “If you’re going to be married to me, Wylfrael, you’ll have to get used to these kinds of questions.”
I swallowed, suddenly nervous about what I’d contemplated in the room alone. That he was done with this whole deal.
“You are still planning to marry me, right?” There was a fucking quaver in my voice that shamed me right down to my toes. I was immensely thankful I was facing away from Wylfrael right now.
His fist tightened in my hair.
“Of course, I am. Why would you think otherwise?”
“Oh, gee, I don’t know, maybe because you abandoned me for hours today with absolutely no explanation and made me think this was about to all blow up in my face!”
Now I just sounded pathetic. I cleared my throat and adopted a business-like tone.
“Good. Alright then. I’m satisfied that our arrangement is still in place.” I’d almost said I was happy instead of satisfied and barely caught myself. “Now, if we could get back to my question about how you direct the wormholes – the sky doors – with a few more details this time?”
“I can only travel to places on my star map. I direct my power to that area of the map, then visualize where on the planet’s surface I want to land.”
“Your star map...” I’d heard that term before, when he was talking to Maerwynne. “What is that, like some sort of compass? A tool you bring with you that – holy shit.”
I turned, creating a painful tug at my scalp. Wylfrael flinched, then unwrapped my hair from his hand so I could whirl around to face him.
“It’s this,” I gasped. The space was so cramped with two of us in the tube that Wylfrael’s wings were folded tightly behind his back, so I couldn’t see all of it. But even so, I knew exactly what I was looking at now. It’s a map. A fucking map inked right into his skin. These weren’t just star-like points strewn across his body. They represented actual stars.
“Is this like a tattoo? Is the kind of ink important?” I mean, the ink fucking glowed, for one thing. I wondered if he was radioactive, if just being beside him would eventually give me cancer or some other horrible side effect. But even thoughts like that couldn’t stop me from reaching a trembling hand forward and tracing the little blue flames on his chest. His pectoral muscles visibly tightened when my fingertips brushed his skin.
“It’s not a tattoo. Stone sky gods are born with star maps.”
I could barely comprehend that. That his kind was born with the universe inside them. No wonder he’s so arrogant, I thought. How could you not be, when no matter where you are, you’re never lost? When you have the whole spread of the sky as part of your own body, like you own it? When you can go anywhere, absolutely anywhere, and always find your way home?
I moved my fingers slowly, almost reverently, across his front. Down his chest to his taut abdomen, skimming across the edge of the few remaining bandages, then over to his arm, where the stars webbed all the way down to his hands. I realized with breathless excitement that the stars felt different from the rest of his skin, each point slightly warmer and thrumming, a tiny buzz of energy in each light.
“Are you quite finished with your examination?” Wylfrael asked through his teeth, a certain raggedness in his breath.
“No!” I said. “Now I’m looking for Earth.”
I found it. At least, I found the milky way galaxy, on the back of his left hand. There was something oddly thrilling in the discovery, and I held his hand with both of mine, bending so close my nose brushed his knuckles.