Page 65 of Enchantment of Silver and Sea
Then I woke up.
The first thing I felt when I opened my eyes was that all-consuming grief. The raw kind that only hits first thing uponwaking, too quick to steel your mind against. When you remember that your reality is that that special person is gone. I threw up those familiar mental walls against the storm of sorrow, stamping it down until it was this manageable thing that I could shove back behind its designated door.
As my eyes adjusted to the gray glow of morning, still hours before I needed to meet Brielle to walk to work, I reflected on the dream. I started to feel a new emotion, one that took me by surprise.
Gratitude.
Then I remembered who was sleeping next to me.
Sometime in the night, I had rolled back to my own pillow and was facing the wall. I wondered if Kieran was awake.
I didn’t have to wonder for long. Suddenly his arm snaked around my front, pulling me back into his warmth.
“How’d you sleep?” His voice was a lazy rumble in his throat.
“I slept great.” I couldn’t remember the last time I had slept so soundly. “How about you?”
“Same,” he said with a yawn. His exhale tickled my ear.
I remembered a time, a few years ago, when Brielle overslept and I had to hurry upstairs to her floor and wake her for her work assignment. She had opened the door groggy and confused. But the braid that she wore to bed was mussed in the most flattering way, with a few stray wisps here and there that looked like they had been deliberately styled that way. Her cheeks had an equally flattering flush from waking from a deep sleep.
I was wishing with everything I had that when Kieran had a chance to see me full-on, that that was how I looked this morning.
“I’m glad you slept well,” Kieran said. He sounded more awake now, and a bit like he was looking for something to say.
“I dreamt about my sister,” I replied, surprising myself with the fact that I wanted to share that with him. “I dream about her often, but usually not in a good way. I have nightmares where I replay the day she died over and over. But last night was different. It was a happy dream.”
Kieran was quiet. Listening.
“I think the reason I dreamt about her was because you’re here. Which sounds weird, but we used to share a bed when I was growing up. I haven’t felt this close to someone since she died.”
Kieran was still silent.
Suddenly feeling nervous about everything I had shared, I rolled over to face him.
His eyes were luminous in the morning light. Was there any lighting that didn’t make his eyes look absolutely spectacular? His dark hair had the Brielle muss—gently tousled bedhead— that only made him look sexier. The cuts and scratches on his face from the previous night did nothing to detract from how handsome he was.
“I dream about my family sometimes, too,” he said quietly. “I promise I’ll tell you more about them one day. I just…” He trailed off, then let out a frustrated breath. “I just really fucking hate talking about them.”
“It’s okay.” I wanted to touch his face, but my nerves got the better of me and I touched his arm instead. “You can tell me whenever you’re ready. No rush.”
He watched me for a moment, then inhaled deeply. “They’re from Oryx. My father’s people.”
I stilled. “Where is Oryx?”
“It doesn’t have a physical location.” He looked up as if searching for the right words. “I mean, it does, but it doesn’t. It’s hard to explain.”
It was my turn to be quiet now, waiting patiently for whatever he felt comfortable sharing with me.
“The Oryxians are protectors, in a sense.” He twirled a strand of my hair as he spoke. “The world that merged with the human world has its own circle of life. But it’s more fragile. More volatile. The Oryxians keep everything in balance. And now that ‘everything’ includes the human world, too. So they not only maintain the balance in their own world, but have to maintain it between the two merged worlds as well.”
“That’s what The Awakening was, then? Two worlds merging?” I could barely keep the excitement out of my voice.
He chuckled softly. “I’m not an expert on this stuff. You know more about magic than I do. I just know a few things from my parents.”
My excitement twisted into something more akin to dread, as further implications of what he had said dawned on me. “That explorer, Matthew. If an Oryxian interfered…if they killed him and his group…his intentions weren’t good, were they? That’s what you were hinting at before?”
“It was.” He smiled grimly. “It’s probably hard for you to understand, since you’re one of the only people in Cyllene who is allowed to really know details about magic beyond just ‘It’s out there and it’s scary.’ But your Council pretty much hates magic. They use it when they have to, like with the wards, butthey’re always searching for a way to shift things back to how they were before, Pre-Awakening.”
