Page 57 of Stars Above the Never Sea (The Last Faeyte #1)

This is a familiar path. I have walked down these steps more times than I could possibly count. Alone, or with Nyx, or Celeste. With others as we made our way down to the cavernous springs that sit beneath the temple, in the very lowest level.

We reach the first underground level, the storage rooms where Esme found the dresses left behind by my sisters. I turn down to take the next flight, Callan’s fingers warm and strong around mine.

The tugging in my abdomen seems to lessen as our path deepens. The ticking of a clock sounds loud against the silence, hidden behind a door. I glance down the corridor before we turn away, taking the next flight. “I’m sorry to disturb you so late.”

His voice is low behind me. “What did you dream of?”

I pause on the steps.

“Darkness,” I say finally. Bleakly. “It was so very dark.”

I was made for the dark. For the endless depths of a night sky. The darkness has always felt like home to me.

But this darkness was something else. “I felt so heavy, Callan. As though there was a weight on my chest, pressing down. And the pain…,”

My voice trails off. He does not follow when I begin to move again. When I turn back to him, his jaw is clenched. “Memories?”

My head shakes. “I don’t know how to explain it. It felt so real . As if someone was drawing a knife across my skin, all over my body, over and over again without end.”

Digging into me. Picking me apart and stitching me back together in jagged pieces without thought or care.

My memories hold pain of their own, but nothing close to the despair I felt, locked in that darkness. “I couldn’t get out.”

My voice shakes, and Callan turns me, his hands on my shoulders as he searches my face. “What do you think it means?”

I lift one, trembling shoulder. “I don’t know.”

“But it means something.”

I swallow. “All my life, I was taught to look for signs. It has to mean something.”

But nothing I wish to consider tonight. Not when that darkness still lingers, waiting for me to close my eyes so it can drag me back under.

I force my feet to keep moving, even as I despise myself for my own weakness. My sisters would not falter. They would view dreams like this as a sign and work to interpret them.

Not hide away like a frightened child.

Callan gives me the space to wrestle with my own doubts as we approach the very bottom of the steps. A stone cavern stretches ahead of us, the echoing sound of bubbling; gently rushing water soothing the nerves that still shake my hands.

I inhale as we step inside, my fingers trailing against the damp stone arch that forms the doorway. “I had forgotten how beautiful it was.”

Callan’s face glows in the moonlight as he sets the lantern aside, glimmering from the jagged shards of adralite that stand from the ground at irregular intervals like the maegis inside my mind.

Steam gently unfurls from the deep blue pool in front of us.

It’s almost a perfect circle, interrupted at one end by the rush of water flowing in from the Falls beyond the temple.

A second opening directly opposite provides an exit, water flowing down and back out to rejoin the stream.

“I don’t come down here much. It’s normally too busy for my liking. ”

When I glance up, I note the way the tip of his ears has darkened with a flush, and feel a responding echo on my own face. He clears his throat. “There are robes over there.”

I look to where he’s pointing. Somebody has built a section into the stone, linens and robes folded and hung. “Not much use in the water.”

Our fingers still grip each other. I step away, and his fingers slip from mine. Feeling the heat of his eyes on my back, I step up to where the water laps at my feet. The stone beneath us leans down, creating a gentle incline to walk in.

“It’s not busy now.” I turn to look at him. Drinking in Callan’s face—the features that are slowly becoming more familiar to me than even my own.

I could find you anywhere , I think, in a sudden, almost giddy rush of thought, as though the waterfall behind me has pushed it free. I would know you anywhere.

My eyes linger on him. On the way his brows have drawn together, creating a deep v that I suddenly want to trace with my finger and smooth away.

Callan’s eyes gleam in the light, the bronze a shifting, molten mass.

My head tilts. “Are you casting?”

His eyes should not be so bright, not without the maegis. But he shakes his head in silent denial, standing still and letting me examine him, his hands loose and open at his sides.

His nose is slightly crooked. As if once broken, and never fully healed. His lips, the strong lines broken only by the scar that slashes a jagged line through them, lift in amusement as he notices my focus. “Sol and I had a fight when we were seventeen. He broke my nose, and I broke his.”

“Why?”

His grin spreads. “We had odds on when he would finally claim Matthias as his partner. Matthias won the pot, but the bet was my idea.”

I can’t stop the laugh that bubbles free as I imagine it. “I bet he was furious.”

But Callan doesn’t move. His eyes lower. To my mouth, I realize. The hairs on the back of my neck prickle. “Do I have something on my face?”

The amusement settles into something deeper. Hotter. “I was wondering how I could make you laugh again.”

“You’ve heard it before.”

“No.” He takes a small step toward me. “No, I have not. Not like that. But I would very much like to hear it again.”

I don’t know where to put my hands. Or my eyes. I inch back, feeling the water at my heels. Swallowing, I seek out something to lessen the heat in my body. Yet my response sounds playful. Almost teasing. “Then perhaps you should amuse me.”

His head cocks. Bronze gleams, his lips pursing. “And how would I do that?”

When I lift my shoulder, his eyes drop to the space where my skin is on show beneath his shirt. “I’m hardly an expert.”

Gods.

I’m hot. So hot that I feel as though I am burning. As though we’re standing in the embers of a hearth. Heated, almost dizzy as I watch him.

And he watches me. Callan’s eyes linger on the skin exposed at my neck, and I swallow as he turns back to me. “I have a new game for us.”

Exhilaration makes me bold. “Let’s hope you’re better at this one than the last, since I won.”

He grins. “That dress was a highly unfair advantage. I’ve never been so pleased to lose before.”

My lips clamp down on the laugh that threatens, but his cheeks crease. He points at me, and my teeth sink into my lower lip in the effort to hold in my amusement. “I saw that.”

I shake my head, swallowing it. “You saw nothing.”

Give me more of this. Whatever this may be, I want more.

Let him chase the darkness away.

Because whenever I am near him, all I seem to feel is light.