Page 134 of Rogue Elves of Ardani

He didn’t answer at first. She felt him thinking. Reluctance. Fear. Yearning.

I’m not good at these sorts of things,he thought.

What things?

She felt him wordlessly come to the conclusion that, while he lacked the courage to show those things to her, perhaps it wouldn’t be so bad if she was watching while he happened to be thinking of them.

Fascinated and nervous, she grazed the edges of his mind, looking for a hint of what he was thinking—looking to see if it was what she guessed. She saw nothing but his doubt.

Her need to know overpowered her sense of propriety.

Growing more brazen, she dug a little deeper, and then deeper still—deeper than she’d ever dared to delve into his mind.

He went still as her mind gently but firmly pried into his, and for a moment she was afraid she’d gone too far, but she did not encounter the same fear and discomfort she’d often felt in him when she’d touched him. Something was different this time.

He was waiting. He was allowing it. But she knew she was pressing too far. She shouldn’t be doing this.

Tell me to stop, and I will,she thought to him.

He didn’t.

She let herself fall deeper into him. It was like sinking into a deep, black ocean. Bits of Vaara pressed in from all around. She was immersed in him—breathed him, tasted him,washim.

A current of images, words, and feelings floated past her in a never-ending river. She watched bits of memories race past, and stopped when she spotted Vaara’s brother, Zaiur, whom she had heard so much and so little about.

There had always been a simmering bitterness between them. Vaara thought Zaiur was too quick to open his mouth and even quicker to anger, always fuming about something, always clinging to grudges. He smiled too often and too broadly, in a way that always rang false. Zaiur thought Vaara too serious and too arrogant and somehow was still everyone’s favorite. Vaara was the respectable one. The better one.

They had fought constantly while they were children, but had eventually come to tolerate each other. They had both realized the importance of family, which was irreplaceable, as they’d grown into adults.

Crow let the memories of Zaiur pass by, and watched other people Vaara had known. An image of a woman appeared. An important woman. Liiva. Vaara had loved her, once. Crow avoided looking too closely at Vaara’s memories of her. That was more than she wanted to know, even now.

She saw Aruna when he was only a child. When they first met, Aruna and Zaiur had gotten into a fist fight over Aruna allegedly breaking the rules during a game, and Vaara had to break it up. As adults, they’d worked together occasionally, patrolling the forest in strange black armor and carrying narrow, vicious-looking swords.

She lingered for much longer than she’d thought she would over his memories of Kuda Varai. The forest itself, the Varai homeland, was astoundingly beautiful, filled with black-leafed plants and jewel tone trees, thick fog that glittered the same way nightshade powder did, and plants and animals that flashed or glowed with magic or natural phosphorescence.

Make yourself right at home, why don’t you?Vaara thought, oozing sarcasm. His voice, startlingly loud in this deep, dark place, drew her out of the memories.

If you insist, Crow replied sweetly.

She felt and saw his pang of nervousness in a synesthetic explosion: the color blue and a sour taste and the sensation of suddenly falling.

But still she didn’t sense that he wanted her to leave.

For once, it was gloriously simple to know exactly what he wanted. That was the benefit of being this deep in someone’s head. Not having to guess.

This was the furthest she’d ever delved into the mind of a willing partner. For once, she was not a pillager breaking into another person with the battering ram of her empathy. Now, it was something they did together, as equal participants.

There was a startling, delightful intimacy to it.

It’s a lot of responsibility, Vaara commented.

She didn’t know what he meant at first, and had to listen to his thoughts to understand.

Keeping track of a person’s limits?she asked.Knowing how far they want you to go? That’s not the difficult part.It’s easy to listen to what someone wants. But convincing yourself to respect their wishes—that’s where the responsibility comes in.

Is that difficult for you?

She couldn’t help but be defensive. Hadn’t she just asked his permission multiple times?

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