She felt nakmiliar c/div>
His hands fisted in her wet hair as her lips slid over his. He took what she offered him, gently, as if in awe of her touch. She wondered if her kiss did to him the things his did to her.
Even as she thought it, she nearly collapsed with the rush of his kiss. She felt the adrenaline flowing through her head as her muscles felt heavy and languid. And like a dream just stealing the mind in the depths of sleep, the slow, heavy pulse deep in her abdomen pushed her to new aching awareness of him.
She opened her eyes as she clung to his wet shoulders and his soft mouth trailed hungry kisses down her neck.
The pounding rain burst in glowing waves of magenta, gold, green, and blue as it fell around them.
She was addicted to him, and she didn’t care.
Lightning scorched the sky. What was she doing? Cyani’s nerves stood on end as the crackling touch of electricity sizzled around them.
Soren lifted his head.
They had to get inside before they both got killed. Soren wove his fingers between hers, and pulled her back toward the hut. They ran through the iridescent sheets of rain, before tumbling through the door.
“I’m sorry,” she mumbled as they reached the safety of the hut. She shook—she couldn’t help it. Her whole body trembled, but it wasn’t from the cold. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I’m acting like a lunatic. I’m not usually so irrational.”
“I like it when you’re irrational,” he teased, as if nothing had happened. “It’s the only way I can win an argument, and if you weren’t a lunatic, you would have given up on me a long time ago.”
She smiled, grateful that he was directing the conversation away from what she had just done.
Glorious Creator in the great center of all things, what was I thinking?
“Thanks,” she offered, wringing out her hair and letting it fall over her soaked shoulder. Her hands still wouldn’t stop shaking.
“For what?” He asked as he tied back his own hair.
“For being my friend. I don’t have many,” she said. Out of the forty Elite, and the fifteen or so in training, only one of the women had ever treated her fairly, but she couldn’t call Yara her friend.
“Actually,” he countered, pausing to rub Vicca’s belly, “you only have one, and I have no idea why she puts up with you.”
Cyani chuckled as Soren wrapped a blanket over her shoulder then began to unlace her bodice.
“What are you doing?” she asked, snatching his hand away from the laces.
“Getting you out of your clothes.” He shrugged and continued his work.
“Just because I admit I like you doesn’t mean I’m going to mate with you,” she protested.
“That wasn’t on my mind,” he said, his voice dark and defensive.
“Purple-eyed liar,” she jabbed. Why did the hut have to be so small? With the hammock and the bed on the floor, she had no place she could escape him.
“You need to get out of those wet clothes before you catch a virus that even the kiltii water can’t fix. I wasn’t going to touch you.” To prove it, he turned his back to her so she could undress.
“I won’t catch a virus,” she grumbled. nders. He was so beautiful, wet from the rain. And he was so strong. She felt like a coward compared to him.
She felt her heart stumble as she continued. “We were out checking traps near the sea cliffs. There are poisonous plants, and the felam beasts are very dangerous, but the cliffs are the best place to trap seabirds. I got separated from my brother when I noticed I had caught a fat groslin in a snare. They are a delicacy in the high cities, to catch one on the ground . . . It would have been like bringing my parents a little piece of the canopy, of their old life. I didn’t even think it might have been a trap for me. I was so stupid.”
“Cyani, you can’t do that,” Soren cautioned. His hands stilled on her foot.
“Do what?” She looked at him. His black eyes stared back with an expression she couldn’t read.
“You can’t blame yourself,” he stated with quiet authority.
“Trust me, I can,” she huffed. “Groslin don’t ever come near the ground. I don’t know what I was thinking. It was so obvious.”
“You can’t question why you ignored every warning you sensed. Why you decided to try to find the rest of your family instead of hiding, the way you were supposed to. Trust me, you can’t blame yourself. It will drive you mad.”
Cyani swallowed a lump in her throat as she realized he wasn’t talking about her. What had happened to him? And was it so different from her story?
“It’s funny the things you remember,” she mumbled, feeling suddenly connected to him somehow. Her words caught in her chest, words she had never spoken aloud, even to Vicca when they were alone in the dark. She looked down at her hands, the hands he had washed clean. “I fell in the mud, it was all over my hands.” Her voice didn’t sound like it was coming from her, but from somewhere far away. She pulled her leg back and tucked it close to her body.
“I was so scared,” she continued, “and my head hurt from where the high-hawk hit me. He ripped off the rag I used as a dress then laughed as I struggled to get my feet under me. I didn’t think—I don’t really remember anything but the mud on my hands, and the dark mark it made on his chest when I lashed out and landed a heart-strike. I had never done one before. I don’t think any of the other Elite can do it, kill with a single strike to the chest. How did I kill him? I don’t ever remember learning how to do it.” She looked at him. “How did I kill him?”
Soren reached out and took her hand in his.
“The bodyguards caught me. I was so shocked I couldn’t run. They beat me until I was just at the edge of consciousness. They even denied me the escape of passing out. Then they dragged me up to the Halls of Honor to face my execution for murder.”
“Did you have a trial?” Soren asked.
Cyani huffed under her breath. “People from the ground have no rights, least of all to a fair trial. No one cares—they don’t even think we’re human. It didn’t matter that my mother and father were both highborn. On my planet, I am worth less than nothing because I was born on the ground. You should have heard them chanting for my death, like it was a sport or entertainment. I had no trial, only another vicious beating that left me unconscious for two days and an ultare if he was her only real friend besides Vicca. She felt like jumping down and giving him a swift kick. She could fall asleep if she wanted.
She tossed on her side and tucked the blankets around her like a constricting cocoon. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath, determined to prove him wrong.
She didn’t know when she dozed off. She heard a boom in the distance. Bombs, they were under attack. She tried to move, but couldn’t. They hit her, she was down.
“Tola!” she screamed. “Get them out!”
She felt herself fall.
“Cyani.” Her name reached through her panic. “Cyani, wake up.”
Cyani shook herself awake and fought to stand up, but a strong arm wrapped around her bare back.
“Cyani, are you awake?”
“What?” It was still dark. She felt cloth, and
skin
. “What in the name of the Matriarchs are you doing?” she half shouted as she pushed herself up from Soren’s bare chest. She was sprawled out naked over him like a wanton lover.
“What am
I
doing?” he protested. “You’re the one who started shouting and fell out of the hammock.”
Cyani rolled off him and curled into a ball on the furs. Mortified, she took a deep breath while the cool night air kissed her bare back. Soren shifted behind her, moving closer. She tensed, but he pulled her blanket up over her shoulder.
“Do you want me to say you were right?” she asked bitterly. Why did he have to be right?
“No,” he whispered near her ear.
She rolled onto her back so she could get a good look at him. “Then what do you want, Soren?”
“I want to be an old ma He leaned in closer, his presence completely surrounding her. She didn’t flinch.
“I trust you,” she whispered.
He closed his eyes and took a deep breath as he leaned in and pressed his warm lips to her forehead.
When he opened his eyes, they swirled and glowed. She didn’t shrink away from him, but embraced the beauty of his power.