“Yes, I do. Now prove it.” She smiled then, through the darkness that surrounded us, and her smile was the ray of hope that I needed.
I loved her, my lips tracing her body, my fingers stroking her until she cried out with passion, my breasts sliding against hers. As fierce as I was with Roman, I was gentle with her. For my Nerissa, I wore my heart on my sleeve, and had finally allowed myself to be as vulnerable as she needed me to be.
After she was satiated, we snuggled under the covers.
“The dragons . . . we owe them a debt.” She stroked my forehead.
“No, actually we don’t. They were repaying their debt to Camille. I wonder if they will help us against Shadow Wing. How could even he stand against a force of dragons? But then, they already gave us a tremendous gift.” I described the sights of the night for her—not the blood and death, but the beauty of the dragons as they overshadowed the stars. I told her about Vapor and Vishana, and about seeing Sharah.
By the time I finished, the horrors had pulled back into a soft murmur in the back of my mind. “How was your evening?”
“I played with Maggie. Bruce’s mother is one hell of a force. That leprechaun is an alpha bitch, let me tell you. But I was surprised. Do you know how much she admires Iris? She was talking about her all evening. The Duchess was actually telling the twins about how their mother was off riding dragons in a war and how proud she was of her. Of course, they had no clue what she was saying, but I have a feeling this is going to become a family story. A remember the day Mommy went to fight with the dragons sort of thing. I think Iris should know that. I know that she thinks the Duchess looks down on her.”
I laughed. “Sometimes people surprise you. Sometimes, they come through when you think they’re going to let you down.” I leaned back on the pillow, starting to feel the pull of the dawn. “The sun will rise soon and I will be sleeping. Please, have a good day, my love. And be safe. Just because we’ve managed to put a stop to the incursions from Telazhar’s side of the tracks, I don’t think that’s going to stop the hate groups.”
“I can handle the haters.” She pulled the blanket up around my shoulders, even though I didn’t need it. “I love that you let me tuck you in. I don’t get much chance to. I’m usually asleep when you come to bed.”
We lived in different worlds—she was the daylight, I was the dark, but we shared the space where we met at sunset and somehow it worked. In the darker half of the year, she rose before I went to bed, but summer put a longer distance between us.
I yawned and closed my eyes.
Vampires answered the call of the sun, rising at sunset, falling into the darkness at sunrise. We walked in our dreams, sometimes trapped in nightmares, unable to wake, reliving our own deaths, reliving the past. Other times, we wandered the realms of the Earth, our souls trapped forever in undying bodies, but reaching out with our minds to traverse the ends of the world.
I am what I am, I thought, snuggling deeper under the covers. Whatever I was, whoever I was, it would never be the Menolly who was first born into Otherworld. I had become a hybrid, standing somewhere between who I had been and who I was becoming.
And then I found myself drifting, and I was once again a young girl—joyful and into my maidenhood. I was running through a field, and Camille and Delilah raced at my side. The sun beat down on my face and I suddenly stopped, looking up to reach for it. Blinded, I closed my eyes, but then a flutter on my fingers made me blink. There, a butterfly flickered its wings, perched on the top of my hand. I watched it, breathing slowly, as the painted lady tickled me.
Camille and Delilah stopped, coming over to look at it, cautious not to startle it. And then—as we three stood there—a sudden rush swept up around us, and the air was full of butterflies. They had been resting in their migration on a nearby tree and now the sky was filled with the insects, a blur of beauty and color as they whispered around us.
The butterfly on my fingers rose and joined the lek, and they spiraled around the field, dancing around our heads as we could only stand in wonder, surrounded by the whirlwind of butterflies, watching as they rose into the sky. Camille whispered something—some spell—and we were suddenly floating in the air with them—only a few feet off the ground, but we still were hovering there among the living whirl of color and beauty. The next moment, we tumbled to the ground, but for a brief time, we had flown with the butterflies.