Page 76 of Callista and the Elf

I ran a hand along her arm in what I hoped was a comforting touch. “I don’t know. I… I don’t feel qualified to tell you my thoughts.”

She swatted at my arm and huffed a soft snort. “Tell me anyway.”

I wiped a lock of hair away from her face. “Bossy.”

“Please?” She didn’t look at me. “I need to hear someone’s thoughts besides my own.”

I swallowed. “I… I think you should choose to believe it was real.”

She tipped her head to look at me. “Why?”

“Well…” Hopefully this did not come out wrong. “Whether she really came to you or your mind created the dream—does it change the truth or the meaning of what she said? I… Just listening to you tell it made me want to pursue the good things in my life more. So why not believe it if it will make your life better? Wouldn’t that make it real?”

She dropped her gaze and snuggled against my side. “I think I’d just like to know that she’s still out there in some unseen world, aware of me, and that I’ll see her again.”

I turned so I couldwrap both arms around her while I swallowed fresh emotions of my own. “But we can’tknowthat, not really. Not with any proof. And…”

My own opinions on the topic were forming as I thought about her wish. “I think we have two choices. We can believe the people we love still exist somewhere, or we can believe they do not. If we go with the first, then we spend the rest of our lives happier in the hope that we’ll see them again. We miss them in both cases, but if we go with the second, we don’t have anything to look forward to.”

I tightened my hug around her, hoping my thoughts did not offend her. “If we’re wrong about the first, the only harm done is the years of hope we enjoyed, but we won’t even be around to realize the error. If we’re wrong about the second, we’ll regret the years we could have enjoyed with more hope. And I think I’d rather make the mistake of believing the first and finding it wrong than believing the second and finding it wrong.”

She chuckled. “That’s a very logical approach to it all.”

I kissed the top of her head again. “I apologize for my lack of spontaneous emotional reactions. I… I’ve been trying to control my more explosive emotions better, but it’s made me more thoughtful about… everything.”

She reached out of her cocoon of blankets, pulled one of my hands to her face, and kissed the base of my thumb. A fire of energy ran like sparks of lightning from where her lips touched my skin all the way to my heart, and the cursed organ tried jumping straight out of my chest to reach her.

“Firehawk,” I whispered, “you’ll burn my heart down if you do things like that.”

She gripped my hand and brought it close to her heart. “Don’t you dare apologize for being thoughtful,” she whispered back. “And while we’re on the topic, don’t apologize for a lack of emotional reactions either. You have the most beautifulemotions, and I love every moment you share them with me.”

I love you.She might have had other words in there too, but I only heard those three. My heart latched onto them as if she had given it permission to love her too.

But my head knew better. It knew how tired she was—how exhausted from the fire and an emotional dream—and I refused to take advantage of a careless slip of her tongue. She was not crying any longer, but she’d returned to her regular fiery self, so I turned and lifted her and her bundle of blankets back to the bed.

Her closed eyes flew open. “Are you leaving?”

No, never!my heart urged my mouth to answer, but my mouth had too much practice shutting down my emotions. Instead of saying anything right away, I cleared a few errant hairs away from her face and brushed my thumb on her cheek. “I think you need to sleep.”

She covered my hand with hers and pressed it against the side of her head. “I don’t think I’ll fall asleep any time soon.”

“What if…” My mind raced. Surely I could find an answer that would be honorable and responsible while offering her comfort and easing the ache that my heart insisted on presenting. And then I knew. “What if I played for you?”

Her eyebrows lifted just enough that I sensed her question. I bent down and kissed her forehead, then went to the wardrobe shelf and pulled out a case that hadn't been opened for years. I left the case in the wardrobe and took a lute to the armchair.

She sat up in bed when I started to tune it. “You play?”

I tightened the next string. Years of sitting on a shelf had not done it any favors, but it was a well-made instrument. It would play beautifully in a few moments. “I have the education of a prince of Hemlit. Of course it included music.”

She straightened and leaned toward me, waving a hand. “And all these weeks—months—that I've been trying to learn to play from a book?”

I moved on to another set of strings. “I wanted to help more than you could imagine. But it didn't seem appropriate.”

“Appropriate? Exactly what, Aedan, about anything in our relationship is appropriate?”

That question hit me like an anvil just as I finished tuning. I looked up to find her fiery gaze fixed on me like I’d said something wrong.What about our relationship was appropriate?Everything!

“Callista, I have burned my own desires to ashes to make sure I didn’t do anything inappropriate.” I refused to take advantage of the fact that she was stuck here, regardless of the feelings I had for her.

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