Rina’s brows tugged together. “I would have pulled it.”
“I know,” Ophelia said confidently. “But I’m not as skilled at healing as you are. Would it have been?”
“Not here, with the trained healers. But during a battle? With dirt and grime getting in the wound? Sure.”
“Interesting,” Ophelia considered.
Rina and I exchanged a curious glance, but I shrugged and she walked away.
“What was that about?” I asked once it was only Ophelia and me again. She looked at me, biting her lip, and my eyes dropped to the cypher stake in her hands again. “Alabath?”
Instead of answering, she pressed the hand holding her dagger to my chest and kissed me. And Angels, if that didn’t make me forget everything I was going to ask her. She moved closer, fingers curling into my leathers, and I swore something akin to Angellight sparked between us.
When she pulled away, cheeks beautifully flushed, I took a deep breath and tried to focus.
Leaning back on my hands, I lifted my eyes to the trees and waited for Ophelia to answer the questions I could barely remember. When she didn’t, I tried another distraction. “I’d never thought about why the cyphers are able to grow throughout the continent when others can’t.”
She tilted her head, studying the willowing branches. “What do you mean?”
“Why do the oaks and pines only grow in certain regions, yet the cyphers are in every territory?”
“Because of the magic within them, I suppose. How they pump the ether of the mountains into the rest of the world as conduits.” She brushed a hand along one draping limb, leaves returning from the winter and a few buds sprouting. “Perhaps since they contain an extra defense against the fae, they’re able to weather all terrains?”
I nodded. “All good explanations. I never thought it was odd until recently.”
“Sometimes we forget to question what we’re told is normal.”
Her voice was so fucking heavy when she said it, dipping with a weight I wanted to wipe from her shoulders, from the planet. Ophelia had been forging ahead for so long now, taking everything the Angels threw at us with only minor tremors to her facade.
And I was the only one she truly let see them.
As she watched our friends laugh and spar today,Iwatchedher. And while the infectious energy in the air made her smile, the pressure it was adding was evident. It swam beneath the surface, wormed its way into the small cracks in that mask.
To protect them. To find the solutions. To end this but have us all standing on the other side.
And the part that twisted me up the most about that? I didn’t have the answers. I didn’t know what to do to make her feel better. Whatever the fuck it was, I’d do it. Cut up my own arm and bleed across those emblems in her stead if it would provide some sort of clarity for whatever the fuck we were doing.
Sighing, I scooted closer to her, throwing an arm around her shoulder and kissing her temple. “I love you,apeagna,” I whispered. “Infinitely. You know that, right?”
She blinked up at me. “More than anything.”
“And we’re going to figure this out. We’re going to find the answers about…” I blew out a breath. The pegasus, Jezebel’s and her magic, the Storyteller’s revelations, the emblems…there were so many obstacles competing for our attention. “About all of it. I promise.”
With a sigh that seemed to curve her entire frame, Ophelia hugged her knees to her chest. “I love you, too, Vincienzo.” Based on the way her voice seemed a bit freer, it wasn’t fear that sank through her bones. It might have been relief. Likethat reminder had been enough to make her feel invincible once again. “Let’s take today to enjoy, though.”
“If you insist.”
And with that, I wrapped my hand around the back of her neck, tilting her chin up with my thumb, and kissed her more roughly than before. Damn everyone in his clearing; I didn’t care what they saw.
I slipped my tongue against hers and coaxed one of my favorite little moans from her throat, devouring her as I wanted to every damn time she was near me.
Only when she was absolutely breathless did I pull back and rest my forehead against hers. “We’re going to scorch the Angels, Alabath. Remember that.”
A vicious, beaming smile and dazed magenta eyes that only tempted me to do wicked things in her honor looked back at me. “Infinitely, Vincienzo.”
A throat cleared daintily beside us. Ophelia looked up, but I kept my eyes locked on her.
“Vale?” she asked.
