Page 61 of Stars Above the Never Sea (The Last Faeyte #1)

“What are you doing to me?” With his eyes closed, they sound like a confession. “I need you to swear it—that you’re not keeping something from me. Because if they did touch you, I will hunt them both down.”

Truth. Raw, unbroken honesty, and it frightens me almost as much as it thrills me. “I don’t want you to do that.”

“Did they?”

“No,” I say gently. I find myself tugging his hands, stepping back over the doorway. “Show me this house of yours, Callan.”

Truth again. His hand brushes my cheek as he shifts past me, his breathing still heavy. Both of us are breathing heavily, in fact, as he strikes flint against a lantern that lights up the small space.

Turning, I take in his home, this space that feels so much more him than his empty room in the temple. The carefully oiled wood beneath my feet gleams like honey, covered with a mixture of brightly-colored rugs. “These are from Terrosa.”

“They are.” He walks over to a sturdy-looking, if small, wooden dining table in the middle of the open room and checks the pitcher on top. “In the early days, food was not such a priority, since the lichen hadn’t spread. I was more of a merchant then.”

“I see.” My eyes sweep past, taking in the shelves filled with knick-knacks, clay pots, and jars and basic cooking items. Behind that, tucked out of view is a neatly-made bed in the corner, and my cheeks heat.

We shared a room on Volatus . This is nothing. Yet I find myself swallowing against the sudden dryness in my throat. “I like this house.”

The air is lighter here than in the castle. And it is a castle. No longer a temple, but Petyr’s domain.

Callan takes my hand as he walks past, tugging me down beside the empty hearth.

There are pillows beneath me for lounging, jeweled in color and stitched with gold and silver thread.

Settling myself, I pull up my legs as Callan’s hands arrange wooden blocks in the fireplace, striking the flint and coaxing a flame from the sparks that appear.

He arranges an iron band over the flames that begin to flicker, hanging a pot that he fills with water and sprinkling some leaves into it. “Tea will warm you up.”

The light of the fire glows against his cheek as he turns to me, his eyes reflecting the flame. “Come a little closer.”

Unfurling myself, I shuffle forward on my knees. The warmth hits my skin, and the tension holding my muscles hostage softens as I follow Callan’s movements. The linen shirt he wears shifts, turning opaque against the light, and my eyes linger on the muscle beneath his shoulders.

He is well-defined, I suppose. Arresting, even. Enough that when he looks over his shoulder and catches me staring, my face erupts as if I’ve plunged it into the fire.

But I don’t shy away. “Why am I so drawn to you?”

Even now, I want to run my hand over those muscles in his back. To know how they feel beneath my touch. Is this how he felt, when touching my wings?

Callan stops what he’s doing, his hands hovering over the pot. “In what way?”

In every way.

My body has shifted, from ice cold to far too hot. I inhale sharply when he moves, twisting, and his hands wrap around mine. “Don’t.”

I look down, to where my nails meet the skin of my wrist. Callan’s thumb nudges them away, stroking the skin.

“Don’t,” he says again. Almost pleading. The breath almost leaves my body when he lifts my wrist, twisting it. Callan presses his lips to my scarred skin, searing like a brand. As though he’s marking me, indelibly and permanently.

My eyes travel over his face. Learning him.

It seems as if every time I look at this male, I see something new.

My gaze catches on the vertical, thin white scar that bisects both his upper and lower lip.

I reach for it, tracing it with my fingers, and my throat tightens at his breath against them. “How did this happen?”

He turns his face further into my touch. Both of us speak quietly, as if anything louder might shatter whatever this is. “My father did it with his ring, when I refused the Boreasan throne he offered me.”

Our gazes lock. “He offered you the throne? Over Petyr?”

I had thought they were half-siblings. Callan swallows.

“I was his wife’s son, but the truth was more or less not spoken of.

As far as many were concerned, I was his son too.

But I had maegis. Strong maegis, and not unlike his.

When Petyr did not emerge as Caelumnai, he was beyond reckoning.

The offer was made, and rejected, and Petyr remained the heir. We never spoke of it again.”

I think of Petyr. “Do you regret it?”

“Often.” My fingers still stroke the puckered skin. His lips shift beneath my touch. “But also never. I never wanted power.”

My voice barely makes it from my throat. “What do you want?”

His rough murmur speaks to something in my stomach, something that twists and flips like a heavy rock and yet impossibly light at the same time. “You know what I want.”

Friends.

That is what he said. That was the game.

Except this no longer feels like a game to me. And I wonder if perhaps Callan has been playing a different game this entire time, simply waiting quietly for me to catch up.

His eyes close, as though he’s in pain as my fingers travel over his lips, tracing them. And he breathes in, a shocked inhale, as I lean forward and press my lips to that scar, in the same way he did to mine.

As soon as my lips touch his skin, I know I have made a mistake. A grave mistake. One I can’t take back.

Because it is not enough.

Callan’s low groan has the rock in my stomach melting. It turns molten, hot and fluid and everywhere. His arm bands around my lower back, pulling me into him as strong fingers slide into my braided hair and rough words spill from his tongue.

“I don’t want to be your friend, Selene.”

His lips find mine.

We collide in a sudden, desperate need, the shocked noise in my throat swallowed by the sheer sensation that overwhelms me with his lips against mine.

At our bodies, pressed together. Callan’s hand grips my neck lightly, holding me against him as he pulls me closer still.

Our chests press together, our breathing mingled as I push back into him, losing myself in his taste.

My hands sweep up. They bury in his hair, gripping, my breath gasping from my lungs as he pulls back only to press his lips to the edge of my mouth.

To my cheek, the side of my neck. The barest brush of teeth against the sensitive skin tears a cry from my throat, and he takes that too, pulling my face back to his and devouring me again.

We chase each other’s lips. Each of us follows the other as if we’re dancing. The inside of my thighs squeeze his as he holds me on top of him, my body shifting in restless, aching need.

I did not know—

I did not know . That it could be like this.

That he would be like this. Fire, heat, and desperation. Now that I’ve found it, I am unbalanced. As if the world I knew has shifted, because now I know this. My hands tighten on him even as he lifts us, placing me down gently on those jewelled pillows and following me.

He hesitates, those bronze eyes alight with the glimmer of maegis, but my hands wrap in his shirt, tugging him down until he settles over me.

My legs are apart, Callan’s body braced around mine as I reach up and claim him again, my arm hooking around his neck as I pull him closer and lift myself into him.

Liquid, and lightning, and maegis. That’s what this feels like. As though the two of us are filled with it, engulfed in it.

I am trembling, shaking, undone for him. When Callan tears his mouth from mine, he looks almost dazed. “Selene.”

His lips press to the hollow of my damp throat. “ Selene .”

He says my name as though it’s a prayer. Reverence, and adoration.

There is so much to process that I am dizzy with it. With the rough abrasion of his linen shirt, with his weight against mine, with the rasp of his stubble over skin that has never felt anything quite so perfect. “Do not stop.”

It’s almost a sob. A plea, for I cannot lose this.

His face drops to mine, our foreheads pressing together. “It’s alright.”

But it’s not. Callan’s hand cups my cheek, stroking my face. “Gods. You’re…glowing.”

I force my eyes away from his face. Down to my arm. He’s right. My skin is shining, and not faintly. As though I’m leaking the light of the moon. It fills the room around us.

My lips part in shock. Callan laughs softly. His nose brushes mine. “I want to kiss you again. But there is much to discuss.”

He’s right. I know he is right. Still, my hand tightens in his hair, silent refusal at the thought of losing his weight against mine. My voice sounds throaty, low and husky. “I did not know it could be like this.”

There is so much more. Both of us know it, as our eyes meet. My core tightens, twists. “I never…I never wanted it before.”

I have never wanted a male as I want him. I want him to push the already bunched edges of my dress up. To run his hands over my bare skin, to run the roughened pads of his thumbs over my breasts.

To know what it might feel like when he settles between my legs to soothe the building need that feels relentless.

And he wants me too. I can feel it. I shift experimentally, watching his eyes close as my hips move. His moan sounds more like a growl. “Selene.”

He sits up and grabs my hands, his lips pressing to my palms. “Not tonight.”

I might die if he doesn’t assuage the ache that cramps my lower body. But he’s saying no. I struggle upright, my cheeks flushing with humiliation.

His lips meet mine again, so swiftly that it’s the faintest graze before they vanish again. “Look at me.”

Silently, I shake my head. I am out of sorts.

“Selene.” A true groan, this time. I can’t pull away when he takes hold of my face, cradling it. “Look at me, love.”

My chest flutters, and I swallow as I raise my eyes.

Callan searches my face. His lips press to my cheek. My forehead. “I want all of it. Everything.”

His hand lowers. He presses it over my dress, over my heartbeat. It thumps unsteadily. “And I want this .”

His words act like cold water against my skin, and I flinch away. “I cannot give you that. You know that.”

What he talks of is not possible for me. And as I look at him, rumpled and warm and real, I wish so badly that it were not the case.

If I could love, then he would be my choice.

It hurts, a grief I never expected to feel.

Because if I feel like this now, as if I will die without his hands on me, what would it be like to love him?

“I don’t believe that.” Callan shakes his head. “I don’t believe that anyone who cares as strongly as you do lacks the ability to love. I think you’re falling in love with me, Selene. The gods know I’m falling just as hard for you.”

I can’t breathe. “You think you love me?”

His words are not a want, but a need. I grab for them, hold them close. When he tugs on my hand, pulling me closer, I shift, unable to resist being closer to his warmth.

His arms wrap around me. I bury my face in his neck, in that crook that I’m rapidly learning is my favorite place. As if nothing bad can happen when he holds me like this.

After so many years of feeling unsafe, I am safe with him.

My hand curls into his chest as his low words echo between us, and I drink every single one of them in as though they’re nectar. As if I need them to survive.

“I fell in love when I saw you ready yourself to fight on the day of the Shift. With no weapons, no armor, flowers in your hair. You made me so unsteady that I followed you, and when I thought I had failed, I spent ten years mourning the loss of who you might have been.”

Beneath my cheek, tears trail down his skin, his neck.

“And then I found you again.” His hand cups the back of my head, comforting even as his words break and tremble.

“As if fate had placed you back in my path for a reason. I have never given much concern for fate, Selene, but you make me believe in something bigger than us. Because I found you again, and every dream I thought I had shattered beneath the reality of you.”

His words hurt, almost as much as they light up every scarred, broken part inside me. My sob is swallowed by his skin. “Gods, Callan.”

“I am not done,” he says roughly. “I do not know what fate holds for us. But I know that when our time comes, whenever that may be, that my soul will seek yours out, and I will spend eternity by your side. Any other outcome is unacceptable to me. I refuse to be separated from you. Never again. But if you do not feel the same, I will respect your decision.”

He buries his face in my own neck. “But I think you do. I think you love me, Selene Amaris, but I’ll wait as long as it takes for you to realize it, too.”

When he shifts, pushing to his feet with me still in his arms, my legs tighten around him. “What are you doing?”

“It’s getting late.” His voice is rough with emotion. “We’ll stay here tonight, but you need to rest. You don’t have to say anything.”

He pulls back the covers of his bed, settling me down in the soft sheets. “I’ll stay by the fire.”

Silently, I shift back, making space. “Stay here. With me.”

I know that if he stays over there, with distance between us, I will not sleep. Callan’s eyes flicker, his fist clenching at his side. And then he toes off his boots.

The bed dips as he climbs in beside me. My wings brush against the wall as we face each other.

His expression is raw. As if he has given me everything, and there is nothing left to hide. I shift closer, just a little. Until we’re sharing the same pillow, until his warmth soaks into me.

Callan’s lips press to my forehead. “Sleep. We’ll talk more tomorrow.”