Page 118 of The Tsarina's Favorite
“I’m so tired,” she said.
I gathered her up in my arms again and headed back to the demolished bedroom.The alcove in the wall where the sculptors had placed the ice garments upon the ice bed offered the only pretense of shelter.I carried her into it and arranged my wing and tail feathers so that she would not have to sit or lean directly against the ice.I surrounded us both with the other wing, containing the heat of our breaths and our bodies in the confined space.I barely registered the pain of their injuries, half-numb with cold and insensible to any discomfort that might impede my ability to protect Alaina.
She tucked her hands into my feathers under my arms and kept her slippered feet beneath my legs.She shivered and pressed herself into me.She nestled her face against my neck.
“I don’t know why I’m so tired,” she lamented.
“Sleep if you need,” I told her.“I’m here.I’ll keep you warm.”
Eventually, her grip loosened and her breathing evened.I shifted her so that I could get my damaged wings in a more comfortable position.The bells on my ankles echoed in the empty room.
This was it.
I dug into the leather band on my wrist, pulled out the wedding ring, and slipped it back onto my finger.
I was tired too.So tired.I would sleep like her.I just did not know if I would wake back up.
“Kaylay?”
I might have dreamed my name, whispered and light, the connection to wakefulness as fragile as crystalized breath.I sank back again into the welcoming darkness, no awareness of my physical being.I longed to put distance between us again.That’s where pain and emotions lived, where I had to have an identity and a purpose, where hardships awaited.Why would I want to go back?
“Kaylay,” she repeated, this time imbuing her invocation with urgency.She coupled the word with action, pressing her hands to my chest and shaking me.“Kaylay!”
Despite my desire to remain blissfully unaware of my state, her voice reminded me that she was still alive and well and, if she still needed me, then I should be present for her.I blinked frost from my lashes and groaned.
“Thank the Great Holy,” she murmured as she moved back from me to let me shift my position.
Moving proved more difficult than merely assuring her I was still alive.My left cheek had been pressed against the ice wall of the bed enclosure, and I could not feel it.My left hand too had been folded under me, and I could not move my fingers.My legs shifted, and pain shot up through my left knee.And the wings screamed with every small adjustment, their injuries now more apparent in the fullness of time rather than in the after moments of stunned horror.
“I thought....”She stopped speaking and shook her head.
Frozen channels of tears stained her cheeks, and I reached out for her with my right hand to rub them with my thumb.
“You’re not alone,” I assured her.
“It’s not about being alone.”She pushed my hand aside as she wiped at her eyes.“Don’t you understand?I don’t want to be without you.”
That certainly complicated my plans.
“You will feel differently when you’re back in Altania,” I said.“You have people who love and care for you there, and you won’t need me anymore.”
“I would rather die, here, with you, than face a future without you in it.”
Her sentiment silenced me.No one had ever given me such a gift as that.
I crushed her to my chest because I was beyond words.It spoiled my expectation of dying, but she needed to live.And if her will to survive depended on mine, then I would have to rally for that.It wouldn’t have to be long, just long enough to get her somewhere she would be safe.
“I love you, Kaylay,” she murmured into my neck.“Separation from you now would seem a crueler fate than any I can imagine.”
She said it.
She loved me.
I closed my eyes.I did not lament when nothing happened.The tsarina lied to me constantly, and it was no surprise that she had about this too.Or maybe I had thwarted whatever magics she invoked either by speaking and revealing myself as more than just some Otherland bird or by confessing to who I had been with Drook and Klessa.But it did not matter anymore.And Alaina loved me anyway.
“Kaylay?”
I opened my eyes again when I heard her confusion.
