Page 56 of Echoes of Fire

Curious, I gently unfurled the scroll. My lips parted as the full scope of it came into view: a star chart, impossibly intricate, the precise marks of constellations spiraling outward from a central axis. I wasn’t just looking at a map of Volcaryth’s night skies—it cataloged movements and highlighted solar alignments with precision that should’ve been impossible for such an old artifact.

“This,” I breathed, running my finger just shy of touching the delicate ink. “This is incredible, Rath. How … how did you find this?”

“The archives beneath the Blade Keep,” he replied, his voice quieter than usual yet brimming with hidden significance. “Forgotten, abandoned in storage with documents no one cares about anymore—old star maps from times long gone.”

I swallowed hard, the enormity of it sinking in. “Why now? Why … why show me this?”

He didn’t hesitate. “Because I know your mind, Orla. Your eyes always watch fractured things—the cracks between stone, the marrow in what others throw away. You follow patterns no one else sees.” He crouched again, heavy gaze pinning me in place. “You’ll see more in this map than anyone else has for centuries. And I wonder what you might uncover.”

His words struck something within me, leaving me disarmed. I looked back at the star map, tracing its curves. Part of me wanted to devour it with analysis, to pull its meanings apart and piece them back into a constellation of discovery.

“It’s beautiful,” I said finally, my voice catching against the lump in my throat. My gaze darted upward. “You’re full of surprises.”

His lips tugged into a faint smirk, but his tail’s restless flick betrayed his satisfaction. “Only for you,” he said, his voice dipping into that dangerous warmth that had undone pieces of me before.

I couldn’t suppress the smile spreading across my lips as I carefully rolled the star chart back into its delicate form, gripping it tighter than I needed to. It was more than ancient parchment filled with forgotten starlore—it was trust, belief, and an unspoken promise etched in the gesture of giving it to me.

“Rath,” I whispered, unable to find words fitting enough for gratitude or depth. Instead, when I lifted my gaze to him again, every unsaid thing burned in the glance we exchanged, a gravity like twin suns aligning.

His hand reached out, the claws soft as they skimmed along my jawline. His wings arched outward slightly, the tension there not from threat but something raw. “I wanted you to have something worthy of your vision,” he rumbled, thumb brushing along the hollow of my cheekbone. “And let it remind you, I see in you what others cannot.”

My heart was thundering. Not from fear, though the intensity in Rath’s gaze could incinerate lesser nerves—but from the overwhelming sense of being known. Of being seen.

I swallowed hard, my tongue darting out to wet my lips. His thumb stilled on my cheek, the motion not lost on him. Of course it wasn’t. When I finally managed to speak, my voice emerged softer than I had intended. “You … you do that a lot, you know.”

His head tilted just slightly, his pupils narrowing in curiosity. “Do what?”

“See me.” My hand strayed upward, resting lightly on his forearm. “Really see me.”

His scrutiny deepened. “Because you are worth seeing,shyrarva,” he said, his voice dropping into something dangerously tender. “Worth everything.”

The air between us shifted, like the faint rattle just before a storm unleashes itself. My breath hitched, but there was no holding back the words now scrambling over one another to escape my throat.

“I love you.” The admission sounded almost foreign, like it had been sitting just under the surface of my skin, waiting for this precise moment to escape.

Rath froze. Not in shock. It was something quieter, something deeper. A pause as though the very world had stopped to allow his next breath to find its way into his chest. The tension in his jaw eased first, then his wings, which curled protectively inward as he leaned ever so slightly closer.

“Say it again,” he growled, low and rough, his tone making the space between my ribs tremble.

A strange, soft laugh bubbled out of me, more exhale than sound. “I love you,” I repeated, each word deliberately climbing its way through whatever walls still existed between us. And now that I’d said it, I found I wanted to say it forever.

His broad frame stretched taller, his shoulders loosening like some invisible weight had finally lifted. He sank to his knees in front of me, tilting me forward as his hands—which could shatter steel but touched me like glass—came to rest on either side of my hips.

Rath’s gaze burned, the liquid fire of his pupils expanding, engulfing every hesitance in their way. “And I—” His voice faltered, cracked like rock encountering a river, and he paused before adjusting with deliberate clarity, quieter now, but no less powerful for it. “And I love you,shyrarva. More than you understand.”

There it was. Plain, simple—except none of it was simple. It existed like an avalanche, unstoppable now that it had begun. My chest felt both weightless and bursting, filled by the thunder of his truth clasping itself to mine.

I smiled. “There’s not much I don’t understand.”

His answering grin was slow. “Good,” he murmured, his lips brushing my temple as he rose to tower over me, never letting his hands stray farther than my frame.

His lips lingered at my temple, the warmth of his breath sweeping over my skin. My eyes drifted shut as every sharp-edged worry fell away, replaced by a sense of boundless heat and safety. His hands, one resting on my hip and the other at the curve of my lower back, tightened almost imperceptibly, their claws careful crescents against my body.

“Shyrarva,” he murmured, pulling back just enough to match my gaze. His voice was a fire-fed growl, but there was no urgency in it this time—just depth and need. “Will you let me show you?”

“Show me what?” The question barely left me, not because I doubted, but because his intensity rendered words almost secondary.

His tail coiled gently around my ankle, claiming the space between us as his claws flexed slightly. “What it means to be mine.”

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