Page 75 of Stars in Mist

Your hands and feet are so strong they break the enemy

Your lips and tongue lead me along the path of desire

Your heart and soul are so deep, they’re a pool in which I drown

Your kindness and care

You are the triumph on the shoulders of men.

You are the King treading along on camel blankets

You are the green serpent with fearful eyes.

You are the warrior slaying thousands on one side

And tens of thousands on the other

Make way for my lover.

He is coming, he is coming,

Make way for the love of my life

For you are the risen sun and the early days of dawn.

His voice trailed away, its deep, low reverberation hanging in the air. He looked up, his gaze clashing with Élisa’s before she tore her face, hiding it away from him.

Not before he caught the glisten of tears and wet sheen in her eyes, reflected the moon and aurora above.

12

Tears Of Truth

ÉLISA

All day long, Élisa had been tormented by Ribau.

By his long, muscled legs, his nimble hands, and evocative essence.

What perplexed her was that his spirit did not match his appearance.

He had a coiled strength, almost like a serpent about to strike, watchful and never missing any detail or every little sound.

His eyes, too, were fierce and unfathomable, with navy dark and light depths that told of a lived experience that far surpassed the image he wanted her to believe of him.

She swore the energy around him shifted every so often, and a shadow lurked underneath his aura. One of another man—an achingly familiar figure.

It can’t be,she’d told herself.I must be projecting.

Riv Sable was so far in her past he’d become a fragment of her imagination.

While she kept just one image of them in an old-fashioned locket, she’d hidden it away and stopped looking at it. Unwilling to go through the keening pain that would engulf her for days afterwards when she did.

Ribau was a mystery, that was for sure. She was conflating her dreams and need for her one and only lover onto this rugged, much older Galician bounty hunter.

Yet the niggling suspicion would not leave her that Ribau was not who he said he was.

Her skepticism grew when he read from hisfokkin’ poetry book.

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