I blinked down at our hands. He hadn’t let go.
“I don’t want to be nosy,” I said. “About your books. Or your… collection.”
“They’re not locked away,” he replied. “They’re here. For both of us.”
He slowly withdrew his hand, and I missed its warmth the moment it was gone. He unrolled a slender scroll near the edge of the table, smoothing it flat, though his eyes never dropped to the text.
“There’s one I thought of today,” he said. “When I saw those flowers blooming near the bathhouse steps. You know the ones—golden petals with pale tips, like they’ve been kissed by ash.”
I nodded. “They bloom in the warm seasons.”
“They’re called elyanthros,” he said. “After Elyon.”
I glanced at the scroll, expecting him to read, buthe didn’t. He spoke from memory. His voice quiet but sure, like a prayer not meant for the gods, but for me alone.
“Elyon once walked the earth in full form,” Auren said, “in the height of summer, when the days burned bright and the winds were lazy with heat. He wandered alone, radiant and terrible, wearing the light of the sky like a garment. And on one of those days, he came upon a youth sleeping in a field.”
His voice was slow. Hypnotic. I could see it as he said it—the field, the god, the grass shimmering with sun.
“The young man had no temple name. No station. Just a body lit by sweat and sky. He’d stripped to the waist to sleep in the breeze, one hand behind his head, the other curled over his stomach.”
Auren’s voice dropped a little.
“And Elyon—immortal, endless—was undone. He knelt beside the youth, leaned close, and whispered his name into the air.”
“Did he wake?” I asked.
Auren turned to me, smile glinting soft at the edges. “He did. Slowly. And when he saw Elyon as he truly was, it nearly blinded him. But he didn’t run.”
“What did he do?”
“He smiled. And he said: ‘I didn’t know beauty had a voice.’”
The words sank into me like honey through cloth.
“For such a fine remark, Elyon offered the young man anything his heart desired, yet the youth simply said: ‘What can my heart desire if not your fierytouch?’” Auren paused, his gaze moving over my parted lips and returning to my eyes. “They made love there, in the high summer grass,” he continued, his eyes never again leaving mine. “With the god’s radiance pressed into the young man’s skin and the earth drinking in their heat. And when they were finished, when the young man’s breath was slow and sweet again, a flower rose from the spot where they’d lain. That flower—the elyanthros—only grows in soil touched by joy.”
A long silence followed.
The story lingered in the air between us like incense.
I felt breathless.
Not only from the myth. But from the way he’d told it. The way he’d looked at me as he spoke. As if he weren’t just retelling something sacred. As if he were… offering something.
I didn’t speak. I couldn’t.
My eyes had fallen to his lips. They were close. Closer than they’d been all day. A sliver of heat bridged the space between us.
And still… he didn’t move.
He didn’t close the distance.
And I didn’t dare.
The hush that followed felt too fragile to break. As if one wrong word might shatter it. As if even a breath might betray that I’d hoped he would kiss me.
I looked down at the scroll. At the way his fingers still lightly touched the edge.
