If there were a way to return her to her people, could I do it?
Would it hurt?
Merely thinking about it hurt, so I stopped. I focused on things I could control and make sense of in this very moment. Right now, all Suvi wanted was to leave this room and, blast me into the cursed stone sky, I could at least make that happen for her without losing my mind philosophizing about what it might mean or how it might feel.
As if to demonstrate my devotion to her will, I used my power to snap open the door that led into the hallway with a resounding thwack. The two guards outside jumped to attention and peered inside at us.
“We are taking a tour of the temple,” I told the two of them as I wrapped my arm around Suvi’s narrow shoulders and led her through the doorway. Though my tone, and frankly the words themselves, left no room for opposition or complaint, the blasted Mother’s Claws still found a way to try.
“But the Honoured Eye has not-”
“If Koltar has a problem with it, tell him he can seek me out directly to discuss it,” I interrupted brusquely. I was merely irritated by the guards; I was not yet enraged. But the way Suvi was already cowering back towards the sickroom, as if afraid that she was doing something wrong— as if afraid that these cotton-headed idiots had some sort of authority over her and she was breaking their ludicrous rules—was rapidly bringing me to that point. I tightened my arm around her, not allowing her to retreat any further.
The two guards eyed each other, then both jerked their snouts up and to the right in approval.
As if I sought such a thing from ones such as these.
I cannot wait to get out of here. I was not sure where we would go or what we would do once we left Callabarra, but as long as I had Suvi at my side I supposed it did not really matter.
“I have seen very little of this place and I do not know the layout,” I told her as we walked through the hallway. “We will be wandering.”
Despite my ignorance about the temple, I knew more of it than Suvi did. Her eyes were round as river stones as she took in the high-ceilinged hallway with its many tubes of light. I did not need her to say it to know that she remembered none of this, even though we’d been in this hallway before. She’d been too sick to notice any of it.
My fingers twitched against her shoulder. I could not think of that night, think of Suvi suffering, dying in my arms, without the demented, flapping wings of panic rising hard against my ribs. My breathing felt oddly tight. I forced myself to stay present in this moment with her. Last time I may have carried her through this place, but now she walked with her own two tiny feet, strong and steady beneath the safeguarding sling of my arm.
Not knowing what other path to take, I simply retraced our steps from our arrival. This led us through the main, pavilion-style entrance into the temple. Two children carrying armfuls of what looked like bandages stopped and stared at us, Suvi especially, before being prodded back to their duties by a voice calling from an adjacent hallway.
Suvi came to a jerky stop before the swaying curtains that separated this large space from the outer courtyard.
“Daylight,” she breathed.
I gave a growl of acknowledgement. A light, warm breeze shifted the curtains where they hung, letting in wedge-like shafts of sunlight so thick they almost appeared solid, like generous slices of Sionnachan butter on bread.
Sionnachan?
I could feel the exasperated tightening of my snout and jaw as I tried to remember what “Sionnachan” meant. It described a place, I was fairly certain. Apparently a place with butter.
When my mental toiling brought forth no new information on the subject, I gave up on trying to remember for now. Instead, I stood with Suvi and watched the wind sway white curtains, letting the light in. The curtain I’d torn down for my makeshift robe that first night had been replaced.
“Can we go outside?” Suvi asked.
I snorted. Of course we could. It was not as if a flimsy row of curtains could have locked us in. But for Suvi, it seemed like the curtains were a solid wall of stone. Like they represented a line she could not cross.
With a flick of my power licking outward like the breeze, I parted the curtains and led her through them.
Instantly she raised her hands in front of her face, scrunching her eyes shut against the sunlight.
“Paska,” she whispered. That was a word I heard from her somewhat regularly, but had not determined the literal meaning of yet. It often accompanied pain or annoyance.
Remembering how she’d needed shade before, I raised a hasty wing above her head, casting a cooling shadow over her. Once adequately shaded, she lowered her hands and then opened her eyes in stages. Fully shut to squinting, squinting to a narrowed very blinky sort of gaze, until they were finally open all the way.
“I mist suhn light.”
I only caught the first and last words of her statement, but based on the wistful way she sighed I assumed it was something to do with not having been outside in many days. I did not realize that would bother her so much. She had not seemed to enjoy the outside in our first days together. She got too cold, got too hot, and the sun seemed too bright for her skin and her eyes. But there she was, stepping out from under the protective rooftop of my wing, tipping her face up to the sky just so she could feel the light come down upon it.
Eventually, she lowered her face again and looked around. I did the same, feeling rather like a dunce for not taking note of our surroundings earlier. No one here posed any real threat to Suvi while I stood beside her, but I still needed to know who and what was near to us at all times.
“This is bue-tih-full,” she said.
“What’s that word? Courtyard? Yes, this is a courtyard.”
I hadn’t taken much note of the space before, but did so now. Sun gleamed on the river stone beneath our feet and drenched the massive natural pillars of the trees directly across from us. But there was more in the courtyard I had not seen before. Raised, curving garden beds interspersed with benches rimmed the rounded space. Greenery sprouted from the gardens, and Suvi wandered to the nearest one, bending down and resting her hands upon her knees.
There was nothing I could either imagine or remember that compared to the elegant curve of Suvi’s body when she bent down like that. Her hair tumbled forward over her shoulders in a pale river whose colour defied definition. Not quite gold, nor silver, nor any variation of white, but some shifting combination of the three, gleaming like liquid metal. Her spine created a graceful curve leading into generously rounded hips, hips that would be perfect for grasping so I could ease her backward onto my –
I wrenched my gaze from her backside and stared at the bright sky, fangs on edge and groin throbbing. Now that Suvi was no longer so sick and weak, now that she’d regained her strength and energy, it was harder and harder to ignore the way I wanted her. Because that want ran very, very deep.
I brought my eyes slowly back to Suvi, this time keeping my attention fixed to her face in profile. Her expression was relaxed, maybe even happy, as her grey gaze roved over the various grasses and flowers in the garden bed. Perfect, innocent little star. Completely oblivious to the dark, demanding heat pooling in the belly of the male who stood behind her.
We might have stayed like that all day. Suvi studying the plants while I ruminated on the effort it took to contain my cocks in my slit these days.