Page 83 of The Edge of Dawn

No. I just know I wouldn’t let you go to anyone else.

Oh. She didn’t mean to speak it aloud—in her head—but she did so anyway. It didn’t help that Dragek’s voice had turned slightly possessive, and the feeling of floating up and down on the waves of the frequency of the void or whatever was so… natural.

Am I asleep?

They’d been talking. She’d become distracted—by him—and had forgotten all about her trouble with falling asleep.

And now, she was.

She drifted on the waves, more accustomed to the feeling now and rather enjoying it. She looked up into the dark cathedral of her thoughts and saw inky blackness sprinkled with a small constellation of stars.

Just like the Universe all around them.

She really was dreaming, but she felt more conscious and aware than ever before.

Her body felt light and limber.

Her senses were sharper than ever.

She felt… powerful.

Where are you now, Dragek? She called out with her mindvoice. Every time she tried, it became easier.

But there was no answer, only silence.

So she had no choice but to follow the slow current of her flowing consciousness until she saw something in the distance.

It looked like…

An island?

There at the edge, on a crescent-shaped sliver of silvery beach, stood a figure.

And even though he was far away, she instinctively knew it was him.

Only… he looked different, somehow.

Anticipation shot through her, fuelled by a sense of urgency. Suddenly, she wanted to be there—to see him.

To understand him, know him…

Have him.

Since that fated moment in a dusty, disused mine, something had grown between them. It started off as desperation, became necessity, then turned into familiarity, and now…

There was something more.

She didn’t understand it at all, but what choice did she have except to follow it?

Thud.

And just like that, her bare feet landed in the softest, finest white sand.

She looked up and saw his face, and his expression was the softest she’d ever seen.

She never could have imagined he was capable of an expression like that, but in this place, anything was possible.

TWENTY-EIGHT

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