The earthen scent of rain prickled my senses. Pheolix caught it in the same moment.
Our eyes met, both of us thinking the same thing.
Rain again.
I brushed hair away from my eyes. “But your brother wasn’t with you in the mines after the night you…” I paused, unwilling to blame him for my capture. “After the night we met.”
“No, he was in Calder by then. With Thaan.”
“How did you make it through those ten years?”
He swallowed, flicking his luminous eyes to mine. “You.”
I gave a small start. “Me?”
Pheolix rubbed the side of his chin. His mouth parted, but he didn’t immediately speak, lashes lowering as his gaze dropped to the edges of my face. He tucked the lock of hair I’d impatiently swept aside behind my ear. “After graduating from the inbetween, drones aren't allowed to speak to each other. We’d wake. Train with our fists. Mine under the mountain. Train again. Eat. And go to our rooms. Without a single word. The guards left buckets for us. Soap and toothbrushes. We’d wash the day off, and the rest of them would fall asleep. I stayed up, pretending to talk to the girl I’d stolen. Fighting against losing my mind by sharing conversations with you.”
I stared at him, dumbfounded. “What did you tell me?”
He sighed softly. “At first, apologies. I was sorry I’d had a hand in your abduction, but I wasn’t sorry for what I did. For breathing for you so that Thaan couldn’t. I might have stopped there, but you were so easy to talk to.” He laughed shyly. “I found myself telling you everything. Anything I could think of. Stories about my mother and brother. About growing up in Rivea. About the inbetween.”
His voice trailed away, his mind drifting elsewhere. To words spoken into the dark to a girl who wasn’t there. I shifted my weight, turning to fully face him, calling his attention back. “Thaan can't dive underwater,” I said. “But he was in Deimos’s mind when he breathed for Ceba. Her first transition was violent and cruel. And she was never the same after.”
His brows tightened, his throat constricting at the mention of their names.
“But,” I said, smoothing my fingers across the shallow groove of his collarbone, “I’ve thought many times about the fact that my first transition was different from hers. That you were gentle and kind because you knew I was scared. That you took a punishment in order to give that to me, even if I didn’t understand what that punishment was. I could have easily been like Ceba, struggling to feel something for the rest of my life.” My voice broke, even though my throat hadn’t closed, and my eyes remained dry. “But I’m not, Pheolix. If I saved you from losing your mind, it's only because you saved me first.”
Something in his eyes wavered, as though the words were a balm to a wound left open for a decade. I leaned in, letting my lips close against his. Drinking him in with a slow, soft kiss.
The sun set. Shadows fell, and rain fell with them. The chirping of birds outside quieted, animals bedding down in their nests for the night.
It was muffled at first, the patter of it broken by the bed of soil and pine needles outside. But it gradually fell harder, tapping against leaves and stone, the hymn of the sky as it bathes the world. Pheolix slid his hand up my stomach, lancing the hard peak of my nipple with a thumb.
Flames immediately stirred deep in my belly, but he chuckled at the husky look I sent him. “Would you dance with me in the rain?”
A laugh escaped my mouth. “Naked?”
“Naked.”
I raised a brow.
His mouth quirked in a dark smile.
“Fine. Help me up.”
Pheolix pulled me to my feet then kissed me where I stood, deep and unrushed. The sun was down; night was here. We didn’t have time for such things as slow kisses and frolicking in the dark. But he raised my hand over my head, spinning me in a wide turn just to pull me against his chest.
We didn’t wander far from the cave into the dark. And it may have been ill-advised to drench ourselves in the cool mountain air for only the sake that we could, our bodies clothed in nothing but the rain. But we did it anyway.
It was the dance I’d thought I’d asked him to share in the midst of the Starlit Bloom Masquerade when the music was slow and I’d been brimming with anger. I laid my head over his shoulder. We spun under the rain.
He tucked his chin over my brow. I’d have liked to stay longer, tasting the rain on his skin. But he peeled away after only a few minutes, reluctance heavy in his eyes.
“We should go,” I whispered.
Pheolix nodded, gathering my hair away from my neck and twisting it over my shoulder. He followed me back in, our soft laughter bouncing off the cavern walls as we searched for our torn clothes and pulled them on. Buttons and frayed thread peppered the dirt floor. We left them there, shaking out our cloaks and fastening them onto each other. Pheolix fixed my hood before we left, setting it low over my eyes. Just a few hours until we found the lake.
Foundescape.
