Page 45 of Fallen: Darkness Ascending, Vol.1

He bit back the sharp reply clear on his face.

She snarled, “You are much more courageous than that, Indrath. Say it! ”

His face ticked, shades of earth and fire roiling across his skin. “Saving our lives does not offset the sins which followed. It never did and never will. ”

“ What sins?!”

“Adri.” Indrath stopped. “Some boundaries should not be crossed. They crossed them, repeatedly and with righteous glee, and cared nothing for the fallout I witnessed. What they released cannot be put back in the jar.”

“It was all for the better!” she defended harshly, her feathers ruffling in the wind. “You saw what the Dragons did to our cousin! Using her as a fix that only delays the inevitable! You know they are failing, that their inaction to address real problems will destroy our entire world!”

“Your children came to me , Adri!” he roared. “Our family pleaded for protection from you and those parasites you call ‘blessed!’ They talked to me because you were blinded by a future which ignored their pain in the present!”

“Not true! I heard them protest your decisions on multiple occasions! They were too rigid, too extreme!”

“Because your solutions have no structure!” The gleaming ivory of his eyes tinted red. “How can you expect anything to last beyond a generation without a foundation? Without basic rules ?”

“Because I have faith in their ability to make their own decisions!” she barked.

“The children pass through us, Indrath, they don’t belong to us!

The world they inherit won’t be the same no matter what fences we put up to keep them tethered to us!

You waste so much effort trying to pin down the ocean waves.

I’ve never understood it except as an unwillingness to trust the flow you feel, though it’s as real as the rock you stand upon! ”

He growled, his skin sweeping through colors with the speed of a tempest. It made her heart leap, seeing that elemental strength, to meet force with force.

It always produced the best change.

She smiled. He will never give up.

And neither would she.

“Do not fear, beloved,” she said, opening her hands, palms up. “Greet those possible futures but let them pass through. We shall find the one, together . We’ll know it when it’s here as long as we trust?—”

“ Stop .”

Her voice seized up. Eyes flew open at the thread of ice wrapped around her throat.

Indrath took a deep breath, his skin shades calming down until he was light brown all over. “Adri. Do you genuinely not recall their suffering? Do the ends justify the means?”

His mouth quirked into an odd, teasing smile she almost didn’t recognize. The frigid knot in her throat thawed, vanishing as if it had never been.

“Indrath—”

“Tell me the name of one of our family. Any of them. Your choice.”

Name?

She sought through the sound of eons in her mind. “Jois. He had eyes like the sunset.”

Indrath laughed loudly enough abrade her ears. His fingers curled as if he had claws. “Jois? He was one of the ‘Blessed’. Your Trinity. Try again.”

She swallowed, a hollow needle piercing her chest as she began to doubt. Emmelil… no, she was…. Picsi? The winged Sovereign licked her lips.

Jois. Emmelil. Picsi.

They were the Trinity. Those who granted her the power during a catastrophe to save her people, to save all of them, but most especially this one standing before her.

He who was most important to her.

Always has been.

Angry as he was now, it was worth it.

“Um…”

“Yaraj,” Indrath said flatly.

The name took a hammer to her chest.

“My daughter?” she squeaked.

“Your first.” He paused, looking inward. “Though, not your daughter anymore.”

“She will always be.”

Indrath smirked as if keeping a secret to himself. “True enough. For better or worse.”

She ignored that. “Where is Yaraj? Does she live?”

“Yaraj lives,” he told her. “I’ll not tell you where, if you do not recall by your own memory.”

“Why?”

“Because your first child loathes you, and I agreed not to tell the next time I saw you.”

The hammer turned into a dagger.

“What?!” she screeched. “I don’t believe you! You always speak in absolutes, Indrath, deciding others’ feelings for them rather than letting them speak for themselves! And surprise, they don’t always agree with you, and often you are wrong .”

“Perhaps,” he replied with a maddening calm, “I see them with an uncluttered view that they cannot admit to themselves.”

It was her turn to laugh. “Uncluttered? Never that , my twin heart. We’ve been entwined since the sacred forests, you and I.”

He gazed up at the green canopy. “And yet… you have been gone, and you do not know for how long or how many times you’ve left. Even you must agree ‘entwined’ roots cannot be rewoven so easily when one plant is ripped away.”

She crossed her arms and sighed. “Blaming the Trinity again? Must I hear it three times in every conversation? I know how you feel, but I chose this, beloved, I wasn’t ‘ripped away.’ Unless you’re talking about the Dragon.”

“No.” His hand rested on the red ruby pommel of his mother’s sword. “The Dragon acted by his nature. You ‘chose’ long before that.”

She scoffed. “Perhaps if the Dragon had let us be, perhaps if you hadn’t betrayed us to him, it would have gotten better for all of us.”

“Never. Not with them having their way with us. I do not regret it. ”

“That’s not how it went.”

“ It was . You were blind, Adri. You missed so many signs.”

She drifted back from him. “Fine. Then unless something changes in your mind, can you refrain from dropping the same rock at my feet? You can’t break toes that have long since moved on.”

The Elven protector narrowed his eyes resentfully, his ear tips turning dark red. Abruptly, he picked up his pace. The meandering path down the mountain straightened out as he bulled through the thick forest toward the beach.

Unwilling to land, she could only rise above the canopy until he came into view where green leaves met pale tan sand. She scanned the sky as she waited. Nothing larger than a shore bird in view, and the space let her hear herself.

Is he right? How do I remember the island but nothing after?

How much time passed after molten rock and ash had seared it barren? What did Indrath mean by boundaries not being crossed? Whatever he felt, it had been necessary.

Boundaries would see us trapped and stagnant. Surely they saw that. We’d all be gone, and our world with it. We…

I saved us.

Everything she did was for the greater good! Whether or not they ever understood.

Indrath’s temper seemed to have cooled by the time he strode out to the forest’s edge. He leaned against the last trunk to loosen the ties on each brown boot before pulling it off by the heel.

Hello, what’s this?

His stockings followed, tucked inside before he laced boots together and left them hanging on the tree. A grin tugged at the corners of her mouth to watch him wiggle bare toes in the sand.

Cute. I thought he’d forgotten how to relax.

She expected him to stop there, perhaps to walk with unconscious formal grace to the water’s edge. She didn’t expect him to remove his sword. Or his belt. And set both at the base of the tree.

A gasp left her mouth when he unbuckled and removed his bracers, slipped out of his stiff leather armor, then pulled the ornate red and yellow tunic over his head, baring his body from the waist up.

Ohhh, goodness.

She had seen all of him before, of course.

Many times .

Her hand sought her smooth belly, fingers dipping until she confirmed the blonde curls crowning her sex and pouting labia underneath. She hovered in anticipation, until he left the shade of the tree for the open beach, still wearing his chestnut breeches.

Curses.

Nonetheless, he was an image to behold with dark red hair loose about his shoulders, colors of fire and earth ever-shifting across the perfect skin of his chest, back, and arms. She enjoyed it while she could, descending closer to the ground while he climbed a dune as if to meet her halfway.

Finally, he looked up into the sky. At her.

“Will you come down?” he asked.

She shook her golden head. “My dearest one. No.”

For the first time since they’d found each other, his eyes dropped her breasts, a hungry gaze at last acknowledging her comfortable nudity. Her nipples tightened and darkened like pink rose buds as if he had brushed them. Her chest flushed with warmth, with pride and eager desire.

“I never told you,” she said, “how beautiful you were every time you overcame your inhibitions.”

His face darkened aggressively, teetering between a blush and fury.

So delicious.

“You know, I’ve missed you,” she continued. “It’s good to return, and I’m glad you are here to welcome me.” She looked around, her smile all for him. “The Trinity isn’t here to watch if you’d like to ‘fly’ with me.”

The front of his breeches said he wanted to. The flash in his eyes and the twitch of his nostril said he wanted to fight.

“Indrath, I’ve done everything to help you , above all others,” she implored, relaxing her thighs, allowing air to glide between them. “Believe, else why would I keep coming back to you?”

He sniffed through his nose as if catching her scent, a dark red creeping up his neck. He chuckled, chewing on a sneer. “Are you certain of that? Or do you invent such claims in the absence of the contrary, as if its constant echo makes it so?”

“Fool. You’ve always been my anchor.”

“Yet I’ve searched for you every time you manifest,” he snarled above the waves. “You do not search for me.”

“You are still mortal, beloved, while I have my purpose?—”

“You say I am stuck in the past,” he interrupted. “You call it moving on? Adapting to change? I say you merely drop crucial lessons learned each time you come back. It will catch up to you, Adri. And soon.”

Each of their hearts raced; shining eyes fixed upon the other.

“If only you had joined us,” she whispered, hugging herself, celestial wings splayed.