Soryn and Atheri had given them a small guest room on the upper level of the house. The walls were lined with woven rushes that smelled faintly of smoke, and a low bed stood near the window cut into the wall.
The scale lights glowed softly. Outside, the constant gentle hum of the wyrm beneath the valley had quieted to a slow and steady heartbeat.
They undressed slowly.
Lain lay on her back, head resting against the curve of Mallow’s hip. He sat up, one arm draped over his knee, the other moving absently along her leg with slow reverence, tracing the edge where skin met the wool of her thigh.
At first she was quiet, her ears twitching at every shift of his touch. When his fingers lingered longer, she stirred. “You don’t have to,” she murmured.
“I want to,” he said.
Her tail gave a flick. “It’s different,” she said after a pause. “Not pretty.”
He looked down at her, brow furrowed. “Who told you that?”
“No one had to. I can see myself.”
He smiled a little, the kind of smile that came from old affection rather than amusement. “You look like you were made to be warm. It’s lovely.”
Lain’s breath hitched. No one had ever said that any part of her was lovely before, not even Tanel. And Mallow said it like it was a simple fact.
He ran a palm from shin to pastern, slow enough that she felt the drag of each finger through the dense wool. “Every part of you looks like it’s made for comfort. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything more beautiful.”
Her throat ached. “Why would you say that?”
“Because I mean it,” he said. “I learned a long time ago that nothing about your kind is ugly. Just… misunderstood.”
Lain tilted her head slightly to look up at him, a question she’d had for days finally coming to the fore. “Why do you know so much about the Kelthi?”
He hesitated. His gaze went to the scale flame, and something in his expression dimmed, softening with memory.
“I knew someone once,” he said at last. “A Kelthi girl.”
Lain blinked. “Truly?”
He nodded slowly. “Her name was Mereth. Her family came east after the Dagorlind burned their village. They ended up working the farmlands outside Lethen Bay, near where I grew up.” He smiled faintly. “I was barely more than a boy, running errands for my father’s fishing boat. She used to bring her parents’ bread to trade for salt and kelp. I thought she was… incredible. The way she laughed, the way she never hid her tail, no matter how people stared.”
He stopped, thumb stilling on her knee. “There were many refugee families in Lethen Bay at the time. I didn’t know much about your people then. Neither did she, I think. I’m not sure her family taught her much about Heat. Maybe they thought it would shame her. Maybe they just didn’t know how to explain it to her after losing everything.”
Lain turned her face toward him, the warmth in her chest fading into something tender and hollow as she absorbed his melancholy through the Tuning.
“One day,” Mallow went on quietly, “we went walking. There was this field – full of redgrass, wind was moving through it like water. She kissed me, and I thought…” he let out a long breath. “I thought she’d chosen me. That she wanted me.”
The Tuning picked up a thread of old sweetness, tangy with the complexity of innocent yearning.
He shook his head. “It wasn’t like that. The Heat took her, and she was acting so different from normal, but I was young, and eager, and I thought… Well, I gave her what I thought she wanted. As much as she wanted. Next thing I know we’re gasping together in the grass and she’s saying she didn’t know why she’d done it. That I’d made her feel like an animal.”
Lain’s eyes stung. “Mal…”
“Her parents were devastated,” he said softly. “They wanted her to have her Choosing someday. They said she’d been robbed of it. I didn’t understand what they meant back then.” He looked down at Lain again, his eyes full of guilt and something deeper. “Now I do.”
For a long time, neither of them spoke. The shadows of their bodies merged on the wall.
Finally she whispered, “Did you love her?”
“I did,” he said. “But we didn’t bond, not the way you and I have. Maybe she came to her senses before we could reach that point. I’m sure that was for the best.”
“What happened next?”
He sighed. “I had to let her go.”
There was something untrue about that, another facet he wasn’t showing Lain. But she wouldn’t push him.
Lain found his wrist and pressed her fingers there. “She would have forgiven you, if she understood.”
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He smiled sadly. “Maybe. But I’ve carried it long enough to learn from it.” His fingers dug into the wool at her knee again, slow and careful. “That’s why I knew what was happening to you. Why I didn’t flinch.”
She looked at him, her eyes bright with unshed tears. “You were right to wait.”
“That’s not what you were saying three days ago,” Mallow joked.
She smiled a little. “Mal.” She squeezed his wrist so he’d meet her eye. “You never made me feel like an animal.”
He leaned forward, lowering his head until his brow touched hers, his voice hardly more than a breath. “You never were one.” Then he smiled. “Well, aside from this morning.”
They both laughed.
“And it’s not like I haven’t met others since then.” He glanced at her. “I mean, not Kelthi, of course.” She blinked at him, confused by his embarrassment. “I’m not – that’s not – well, I don’t want you to think I… chase that.”
“Chase that? Chase these wooly legs, you mean?” She gave a few playful kicks in the air.
He flushed, biting on a grin. “Lain.”
“You’re not some sort of… oh, I don’t know, a hoof hunter?”
“Honestly –”
“A tine toucher?”
He laughed, then brought a hand to the blue of her tines, the pleasure of it shuddering through her. “Just these ones,” he said.
He leaned in to kiss her quickly, but she put her hands to his face, and held fast, and he melted against her.
He sat up once more, to cradle her legs, and bury his hands in the wool. He rubbed his cheek along her inner thigh, and she gasped and squirmed as his breath warmed her. He moved down, and down, kissing softly as he sank between her legs. She thought he would turn away and when he didn't, a flash of wild, confused panic flooded her. He froze, feeling her sudden worry, waiting for her explanation.
She blushed. “What are you doing?”
He met her confusion with his own, then a warm flush of surprised delight rose in him. “It’s a way to… ease you. Here.” He pressed lightly with his mouth at the juncture of her legs. “Like this.”
Her first instinct was to pull away, and she tensed, breath caught in her throat. “People don’t usually… touch me there.”
“Then they’ve been missing out,” he murmured. He buried his face between her legs again, to kiss her softly.
“Mal –”
“Shhh,” he said, bringing a hand up to cover her mouth with two fingers – gently, not harsh; she could turn aside if she wanted.
She didn’t want to.
“Let me take care of you, my wooly love,” he mumbled, and she lay back, gasping into his hand as he pressed and pressed with his mouth and tongue. When he recognized her reaction was pleasure, he allowed himself to sink into it, allowed his tongue the freedom to explore her, warm her until she bucked helplessly against his mouth. He moved in small circles and then larger ones, with care and precision, never too deep, never too quick, just enough to coax her loose.
Lain’s eyes fluttered half-closed, and it wasn’t long before that wave of thrill rolled up through her to fill her arms and ears and the soft scales of her spine. For a while neither spoke, only the sound of his mouth moving over her filled the small room, slow, methodical, like smoothing a song back into tune.
When that rising tide began its crest she grabbed his hair – she couldn’t help it – and he nodded fiercely, and put a hand upon hers to give her permission.
“Yes,” she moaned, as the world vanished from her thoughts and she fell into the wheeling white light his mouth had brought.
When she was finished bucking against his face and the world came back into focus, he pulled himself forward far enough to lay his cheek on her belly, stroking the hair of her thigh with one hand. “Nice to have these wooly pillows to cradle my face,” he said.
She laughed, coiling her fingers in his hair, then reached for his arms to tug him up. “You don’t think you're finished yet, do you?”
He climbed into her embrace, his hardness pressed against her already. “I thought the tea fixed the Heat,” he said.
“It’s not the Heat,” she whispered.
He grinned, and kissed her, and the taste of her flooded her own mouth, a little salten, a little sweet, new and strange and familiar. Lain invited him to plunge inside, claiming her on the night of her Choosing.
For a while there was only their movement and breathing, his body above hers, her tail curling around his thigh as if to keep him from ever leaving again. He moved with slow reverence, his eyes half-closed as though afraid he might break the spell cast between them.
Then he brought his mouth to her ear, and whispered. “I want to call you by your name.”
Her chest swelled at the thought, her eyes watering as if that feeling of fullness needed to expand fully from her body. She nodded. She never wanted to hear anything more than her true name in his mouth.
His lips caressed the place where her ear met her jaw. “Lhainara.”
He said it deftly, the way the Kelthi had spoken it, the way it must once have sounded in her family’s voices. The sound of it found her like a twin finds another during a game of hide and seek, recognition and belonging and promise and joy. He said it again: Lhainara, as if just learning it, as if drawing that twin into the world after having found Lain first. She was of two parts, two people. She was the singer, Bellborn Lain, the one who was meant to die as sacrifice. She was also Lhainara, the Kelthi girl that belonged somewhere. The one that was meant to live.
Their Tunings mingled, red and blue, lilac and gold, flaring and folding, until the hum of the wyrm beneath the valley pulsed in time with them. For a breathless moment she could feel everything – the life under the soil, the warmth of the air, the distant bells of Vaelun ringing somewhere deep in her veins.
When Mallow found himself anew in her, to empty into satisfaction, it all softened into unity, and Lain felt whole. Sister. Kelthi.
Let the flesh fall quiet. Let the breath be still. Let the shoulders release. Let the throat be open.
Mallow rested his forehead against hers, both of them trembling, the world quiet again except for the slow rhythm of their breathing. She reached up and brushed the hair from his eyes.
“You found me,” she whispered.
He smiled against her lips. “You’re the one who went looking. I'm just sharing the road.”
She smiled wryly. “To shared roads, then.”
He rolled to his side and threw an arm around her. They stayed like that for a long while, tangled in the warmth of the low bed, scale lights dimming to embers. Her ears drooped with drowsy contentment. Mallow’s hand found the curve of her collarbone, tracing idle circles against her skin.
“I was thinking,” she said softly.
“Dangerous habit, that.”
She chuckled. “I was just wondering what it was like for my mother to choose.”
He kissed her temple. “You already know what it was like. I think she must have been happy. Don’t you feel happy, love?”
She smiled faintly, the tears drying on her cheeks.
Outside, the valley slept. The faint hum of the wyrm rose once, then stilled again, a great creature sighing beneath the roots of the world.
Lain drifted into sleep, the scent of his skin and the warmth of his heartbeat anchoring her in a way nothing ever had before. For the first time since she’d been taken from the monastery, she dreamed fearlessly, of the field of redgrass, the sound of bells, and the lilac glow of two lights twining together, unbroken.