Page 43 of Star Bright
“Good night, Addah.”
Vash pulled the door shut behind him and leaned against it for a moment, his beast providing no strength to his knees in the moment. He had to rally himself without it to make his way across the hall to Yadira’s room. He knocked lightly and waited for her permission to enter.
She was sitting cross-legged in the bed, staring up at the snow gathering on the arching windows in scallops like icing on the tarts.
He lingered in the doorway. “I left a monitor in your brother’s room so he can call to me if he has any needs. Shall I leave one here as well?”
Still looking at the sky, she gave a head wobble and shoulder wiggle that meant nothing to him in any language, neither rejection nor assent.
He started to retreat, then hesitated. Reversing course, he went to the bed and sat at the corner. “What is it, Yaya?”
The tilt of her head stayed stubbornly averted upward, but her green gaze drifted toward him. “Can I ask for my beast like a gift?”
He let out a slow breath. “That’s not how it works.” But when she took a sharp breath, he reached out to put a hand on her knee. “The beast is not a gift because no one gives it to you. Itisyou. You know this.”
She flinched away from him. “Then I am nothing. Because my beast isn’t coming. All my friends—” She gave her head a violent shake. “No, I don’t even have friends, not anymore.”
“Yadira, I’m so sorry. If I hadn’t put us in stasis and—”
“No. This isn’t about you. It’s about me. I thought after I helped Darcy on the wall and I was nice to Atsu and—” She beat one fist on the bed, though the mattress just yieldedaccommodatingly. “I told you I didn’t mind coming here to Earth because I thought maybe I’d find my beast somewhere along the way. I haven’t. What if I don’t ever? What if I’m broken forever?”
He wished he might half shift, to wrap her in arms and wings and promises. But since he himself hadn’t come out of their sorrow and cryo unscathed, he could only give her a one-armed hug and a murmur of consolation. “Just as we don’t force eggs to hatch too soon, you mustn’t ask the beast to come before its wings unfurl. You are not broken. You are a song still putting your notes into place. Your time will come.”
“I can’t wait another hundred years,” she wailed. Then she collapsed in his arms. Since he couldn’t very well tell her that he would happily keep her another hundred years under his wing, he just held her as she cried. The storm passed, and she sniffled a few times into his shoulder before angling away again.
He brushed back her silky curls. “I made a pillow fort for your brother. Would you like one?”
“I want to see the sky.”
So he just tucked the blanket under her chin. “You are my gift, Yaya, in all shapes and times. Now sleep and dream and know your beast is with you always.”
She rolled her head on the pillow to watch him go. “Good night, Addah.”
He slipped out into the hall and again paused to steady himself, as if he’d been blown astray by terrible winds. Maybe he should be more worried for Yadira than he’d let on. A drakling was a drakling regardless of its skies, but what if…
Distracted by the chaotic thoughts buffeting him from all sides, he realized he’d walked down the hall, not to his own room but toward Darcy’s.
“You are not so sneaky,” he told the beast.
It chuffed at him.
But maybe he did need to see her and speak to her. No, not touch her or taste her, as his beast was vehemently suggesting. Just to talk, because she was kind and smart and had her own special ways that soothed beasts, his and his fledglings’.
Lengthening his stride, he turned the corner toward her hallway…and crashed into her.
His beast had warned him half a heartbeat before the collision, so he was able to catch her in his arms before she rebounded and fell.
It could’ve warned him an entire heartbeat before.
It only chuffed again.
Her hands were spread flush across his chest, so he knew she must feel his pounding pulse, as if he’d run all the way to find her. “Vash?” Her dark gaze flickered over his face.
He kissed her.
Too hard, he knew it, but then she raked one leg up the outside of his thigh and anchored him closer, wrenching at his tunic to break the seal.
He spun her against the wall, lifting her higher. As he sank his fingers into her backside, which he’d almost done when brushing the snow off her earlier, her other leg went around him in a glorious lock. The scent of her arousal teased him, just the faintest whisper of sweet musk, but he’d been primed, imprinted.
