A Court of Whispers and Song

Chapter 25

Warmth greeted Gwyn as she roused from the deepest sleep she'd ever experienced. So warm. The dull radiance of peach-tinted haze greeted her as her eyes cracked open. Faint puffs of air on her collar. A band of steel around her middle.

An...arm.

Her body braced, trembling like a leaf in a vicious storm. Someone was behind her. A male, she discerned in dread, as something hard and long pressed into her backside.

Gwyn's eyes slammed shut. Her hands curled into fists to her chest. Only then did she realize she clutched a hand in a death hold. Her shaking fingers blindly traced what she held. The callused hills and valleys of the palms. The mottled whorls of the fingers. The wrinkled tautness of the dorsal side. The pleats and raised planes of the wrist.

Azriel.

Not any male—Azriel.

Priestess. As a mother would soothe a child, a cool air caressed her forehead.

Azriel. Her savior.

Azriel. Her...

Shhh, Priestess, whispers stroked fondly over her skin.

"Azriel."

"Hmm? Gwyn? Gwyn...?" he murmured, voice full of gravel and sleep. "Shit." He tensed from behind, cursing again before he removed his front from her back. "Shit. I'm sorry."

Her whole body folded around his arm, pressing his hand to her mouth. A solid outcropping in a turbulent sea.

"Priestess," the shadowsinger said, his voice cracking. Her heart twinged. "It's me, Priestess. It's me. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."

"I am the rock against which the surf crashes. I am the rock against which the surf crashes..."

Nothing can break you, Priestess.

She repeated her mantra over and over until her mind cleared, until her body loosened. And Azriel could liberate his arm from her vise.

Rolling onto her back, she wiped tears from her face. Azriel was there to greet her, half-sitting upright, facing her, full of regard.

"It's me," he whispered, apologizing again. The thumb on the hand she'd clung to so fiercely stroked down her cheek.

"I know." Now. "It's all right," she assured with a tight smile. The best she could rally to allay both their worries. "I'm not sure what happened. I'm—"

He cut her off, his eyes piercing into sharp slits. "Don't. Don't apologize. Please, don't." It's my fault left unsaid, sprawling in the space now dividing them in the bed.

Gwyn reached for him again, bringing his hand to her cheek. "I woke up and didn't realize where I was. Or who was... behind me." Azriel's beautiful face twisted in pain, and he tried to tear his hand away. But she wouldn't let him. "Then I felt your hand. Your hand. This..." She halted to brush a light kiss on his scarred fingertips. "Is how I recognized for sure... I wasn't scared of you, Azriel."

She glanced around as she held onto him, belatedly noticing why the world was a coral hue when she'd first opened her eyes. Wings covered them like a tent. The sunlight filtering in highlighted the mauves and grays she never perceived among the black. The strong bones and a web of veins. A story of battle and valor etched into each pale streak knick.

Her fingers yearned to reach out. To stroke them. But she knew her manners when regarding Illyrian wings. Look, but do not touch unless granted privilege. They could be sensitive, per Emerie.