Storm's Heart

TWELVE

You’re killing him.

The words were melodramatic, ridiculous. They made no sense. If they had come from anybody else, she would have lost her temper at the interruption.

But the words came from Rune, and they sent dread flashing through her system. She put her head back against the concrete wall and sucked in air. Her gaze darted around the room as she looked for danger. She found none. For the first time she took note of where they were. They were in a back storeroom of the bar.

Tiago angled his head to kiss her, his features flushed dark with sensuality, knifelike with need.

She jerked her face to the side. Somehow she managed to yank out the words. “We have to stop.”

He froze and looked stricken. He sank down to his knees, and she slid down the wall with him. The friction tore sequins off the back of her dress. They scattered on the floor around them, winking like fallen stars. He let her body weight settle on his lap, braced both forearms on the wall over her head and put his forehead against hers. He ground out, “Don’t do this, faerie. Not this time.”

Rune had better have one compelling goddamn reason for this, or she was going to skin him alive.

She whimpered, “I’m sorry.”

He threw back his head and shouted in silence as he drove his fists into the concrete wall on either side of her head. The concrete cracked, showering gray dust down on their carpet of stars. The breath left her as she stared at his agonized face. She was appalled at what she had done. She rocked forward and threw her arms around his neck. His head came back down. He laid his cheek against hers to nuzzle her even as he hissed at her, his face contorted. His fists were still planted in the scars he had made on the wall. She sat on his thighs, legs splayed wide and felt surrounded, eclipsed by his tremendous body.

“I’m so sorry,” she whispered again in his ear. She stroked his hair. He shuddered and remained silent as he struggled for control.

She couldn’t see Rune, but he had to be somewhere close by to reach her with telepathy, probably just down the hall. She growled at him, I just did a cruel thing to the both of us, so you start talking, and it better be good.

Rune said, Niniane, nobody will be sorrier than me if I’m wrong. But I’ve just spent the last few hours in Tiago’s company. He behaved like I’ve never seen him behave before. He lost control more than once, and lost it bad.

She listened to Rune’s rapid words, her body clenched as tight as Tiago’s. She cupped the back of his head protectively with both hands. He was breathing deep and hard and slow, like a runner in the middle of a marathon, his skin damp.

Nobody could blame you if you’re looking for an affair, Rune said. If you wanted some kind of comfort, something to hold on to for a little while before you assume the throne, and normally I would cheer you on. But I think Tiago is starting to mate with you, and you know what happens to Wyr when they mate. I hope to hell he hasn’t gone too far already.

She stopped breathing. Tiago, mating? With me?

How gorgeous, miraculous. How impossible and horrific.

Oh gods how I want it, and him.

I can’t, shouldn’t.

Several days ago the shocks had started coming. It had started with her uncle’s death. Over the years, the thought of Urien dying had gradually become something like a fantasy, a vengeful daydream of what might happen sometime in a nebulous future.

When Dragos killed Urien, it catapulted her into a different reality. Every time she thought the shocks might slow down or stop, another one came along and smacked her upside the head. She was beginning to feel buffeted, incredulous, like she had gone swimming at high tide and the waves had caught hold of her. They were tumbling her head over heels, and she only just realized she might be drowning.

She did know what happened to Wyr when they mate. Wyr mated for life. Living in Dragos’s Court, she had watched it happen more than once. The mating came from a complex combination of choice, sex, instinct, actions and emotion. All had to occur at the right intensity and time. Nobody fully understood when the mating became irrevocable. More deep than falling in love, it was a dangerous, often violent time. It was a rare occurrence for those long-lived Wyr known as the immortals. It was even rarer when a Wyr mated with someone who was not Wyr. All too often those pairings could have tragic consequences.

Pia’s mother had mated with a human. When he had died, she had managed to hold on to life long enough to see Pia raised, and then she had faded away. Niniane remembered another time, around 1835, when a Wyr had mated with a Vampyre. They had been together until the American Civil War when differing loyalties had torn them apart. The Wyr had starved to death when the Vampyre left him.

I love him, she confessed to Rune in a small voice. As she did so, she admitted it for the first time to herself. Her arms and legs clenched on Tiago, and she held on to him with all her strength. She started to shake. She felt like she was coming apart at the seams.

Tiago swore, wrapped his arms around her and held her in a tight, bruising hold. “Okay,” he said, his voice hoarse. “Don’t shake like that, damn it. It’s okay. Just tell me what happened. What went wrong?”

I just wanted a little time.

Rune’s harsh mental voice gentled. If you love him, then let him go, honey. You can’t live his life, and the Dark Fae will never let a Wyr share your throne.

She nodded but couldn’t trust herself to speak for a few moments.

Tiago’s head moved under her hands, his face turning toward her. “Faerie?”

Let him go, honey.

She dug deep inside, grabbed hold of her spine and straightened it. She forced her arms and legs to unlock. “Let me up.”

He pulled back and frowned at her. She looked pallid to his sharp gaze, the layered black ends of her hair disheveled. Moments before she had looked rosy, flushed with desire. Now she looked like she was grieving. Those lovely enormous eyes of hers were dilated and depthless. He said in a quiet voice, “I don’t think I should do that.”

She looked at him steadily. “Please let me stand up now, Tiago.”

His face clenched. He picked her up as he stood then let her slide down his torso, deliberately letting her feel the hard bulge of his erection, until her feet touched the floor. He watched the graceful slim line of her throat as she swallowed hard. She tried to pull away, but he took her by the elbows and held her to him. Every time he let her go something bad happened. He wasn’t making that mistake again in a hurry. “Now,” he said. “Explain what’s wrong.”

She put her hands on his chest and spread her fingers. There was not a spare ounce of flesh on him. He was all muscle, tendon and bone, his body carved out of an unimaginably long life spent fighting. She looked at her hands because it was easier than looking at his tight, concerned face.

She realized something that she had been picking up subliminally for a while. Dance music still pounded through the walls, but she heard nothing underneath it, no footsteps, clinking glasses, shouts of laughter, or any other sounds that normally filled a crowded bar. Aryal and Rune must have promised compensation to the bar owner and cleared the building, which was a measure of their sharp concern. The other sentinels would take watch and wait, guarding them and keeping everyone else away, because if Tiago was mating with her, right now he could be a danger to anyone else but her.

She wanted to say so many things to him.

Starting with I love you. Don’t say it.

“You said you’re not leaving,” she said.

He stood unmoving under her hands, as steady and adamant as bedrock. “I’m not.”

I need you. Bite it back.

“But you will,” she told his chest. “You have to. You won’t be able to help it.”

“I’ll stay,” said the thunderbird as lightning flared outside. “And no Power on Earth can change that.”

The intolerable pressure was building back in her chest. It goaded her on. “Dragos will call you,” she said, her voice brittle. “And you’ll fly back to him like a hawk to his wrist. Or another conflict will start somewhere in the world, and you’ll take off to go to war. That’s what you do, Tiago. You always take off. That’s who you are.”

He looked at her, breathing heavily, and said nothing. Pain blinded her.

She had not meant to tell him, but that pressure shoved the words out of her. “I am going to have to marry.” The words blazed like meteorites between them. “I need to start looking for a husband right away.”

His eyes flashed completely white. He enunciated, “Like hell.”

Her stomach roiled. She had known this was going to be hard. It was so much harder than she imagined. “He has to be.” She had to stop for air because he hadn’t moved an inch but his tremendous body clenched into a weapon and his Power turned violent and heavy, a pressing weight in the storeroom. He looked murderous. “He’s got to be Powerful and have influence—”

He moved faster than thought. He picked her up, whirled and slammed her back against the wall. She froze in shock. He shouted at her, “Like hell!”

She hit him. She couldn’t help herself. She punched him in the chest. “And he’s got to want the throne but not be able to get it by himself—”

Fury rampaged over his face. He sounded like a mortally wounded animal as he roared at her. “Nobody else can have you because you’re mine!”

Dignity, sophistication, civility, they were meaningless strings of syllables in this place of raw emotion. She shouted back, “I can’t be yours, and somebody’s got to hang around so they can keep me alive!”

“Shut the hell up,” he said, his voice savage. His features had reformed. He was a monstrous, merciless freak of nature, and she wanted him so badly she thought it would tear her to pieces from the inside.

She kept hitting him, the wild blows falling blind. “Will you get out of here, you son of a bitch? Go back to your life!”

She slapped him. She did everything she could think of to cause offense and drive him away. He took everything she dished out without a single flinch. He shook her once, a short, controlled snap of the wrist that rattled her torso, and he jerked her to him, his white eyes scorching. Then the monster’s mouth slammed down over hers, and he devoured her, heart and soul.

She couldn’t give either one of them to him fast enough. He dug into her mouth, his teeth and tongue hard, punishing. She clawed at his shirt as she kissed him back. She couldn’t get him close enough, couldn’t get the kiss deep enough.

Then he sank one fist into the hair at the back of her head. He forced her to look up at him. “Now you listen to me,” he growled. “It’s my turn to talk. I will not leave you. If Dragos or anybody else has a problem with it, they can take it up with me.”

“The Dark Fae will never accept you,” she said between her teeth.

“I don’t give a shit about what the Dark Fae accept or don’t accept,” he snapped. “There’s only one person and one thing that could make me leave, and that’s you. Look me in the eye, faerie. Tell me you don’t want me, and you better make me believe it.”

Tears welled up and spilled out the corners of her eyes. They streaked down her cheeks to soak into her hair. She looked devastated. She worked to form the words, her mouth trembling. Someone else might have taken pity on her, but he wasn’t a creature that knew much about pity. He knew a hell of a lot about fighting, though, and survival. He was fighting for the both of them now, if she only knew it.

She whispered, “I d-don’t want you.”

“What a bad liar you are,” the monster whispered back to her. “I can smell how much you want me. I felt your wetness and all I want to do is lick it up. Your desire is coated all over my fingers. It’s got me so hard I can barely stand up straight. You’re a twist in my gut I can’t unknot. I look for you when you’re not with me. After you sent me away all I could think about was how much time I should give you before I came back to you. I counted it by hours, by minutes.”

She stared at him, pinned and transfixed by his white eyes and the re-formed structure of his face. “That’s just sex.”

“Is it?” He showed her his teeth. “How bad did you miss me when you thought I went back to New York?”

“N-not bad.” When she had found out he had left the hotel, she had curled up on her bed, unable to move.

“You said you missed me so much. How much is so much?”

“Not much.”

He cocked his head. There was something almost plaintive about his ferocity now, a puzzlement that sliced at her. “Why are you still lying?” he asked. “Why can’t you admit the truth to me? Is it such a horrible thing, to want me? Do you wish you didn’t? Is that why you’re trying so hard to drive me away?”

He was a lord of war. He instinctively knew more about assault tactics than she ever would. He had to know how he dug away at the foundation of her walls. It was a two-pronged attack, as he came at her from the outside but also from within, for she was her own worst enemy. She crumbled and sobbed, “I want you so much it’s making me crazy.”

“Then take me,” he said. His grip in her hair loosened. He knelt in front of her, shocking her anew, and wrapped his arms around her waist as he laid his head against her breast. “Because nothing else matters.”

She cradled his head and bowed over him, wiping her damp cheeks with one hand. “We’re so different from each other.”

“We live a long time. It’s good to not be bored.”

“I like pink lipstick,” she sniffled. “And pretty shoes.”

“Much to my surprise, I find that I do too,” said the monster. His big hands moved up and down the shapely hourglass of her back, and cupped the back of her slender knees. Not once did he let the talons tipping his long fingers graze her thin, tender skin.

“I tried to think how I could walk away from the throne and follow you,” she whispered. “But it’s too late. Now everyone knows I’m alive. There would always be someone coming after me.”

“You need me, faerie. I’ll protect you.” He rubbed his face in that extravagant, silly, wonderful heart-attack dress, and tiny strings of sequined beads tickled his nose. He smiled to feel those little fingers of hers thread through his short hair. Some time very soon he would have those kitten claws digging into his back while he made her scream with pleasure. His voice deepened. “You know we’re good together. Even the fighting is fun.”

They were so good. She buried her face in his hair. She whispered, “Rune was right, the Dark Fae will never accept a Wyr as ruler.”

Rune? Tiago turned his head slightly away from her as he thought. He had known when the First had arrived at the bar, had heard when Rune and Aryal evacuated everyone, and none of it had mattered. That Rune had talked to Niniane—yes, that made sense. That explained it. She had been with Tiago all the way. Then she had changed so suddenly, he still felt mental whiplash. She had tried to drive him away, not for her sake, but for his. He was pretty sure he had Rune to thank for that.

Tiago would make a point of thanking him in person later.

But first things first.

“That dog won’t hunt,” said Tiago. “Because I don’t give a fuck about ruling or the Dark Fae throne. But you should know, they’re still going to object.”

Her breathing stilled as she tried to think. It was hard to do, with hope twisting her into a pretzel inside. Could they do it, could they pull this off? The thought of Tiago coming with her was such a game changer, she couldn’t compute the consequences.

Tiago tilted back his head to look at her. His white eyes had darkened to black again, and the lines of his face had returned to normal. He said, “Stop trying to think ahead to fix this. There’s nothing to fix.”

“But Tiago—”

“But nothing,” he said. “I don’t know all the answers. Nobody does; nobody can. Take hold of this, Niniane. Take hold of me, and don’t let go for anything. We just need to do this one thing. We’ll have some hellish fights ahead of us, and that’s okay. We can meet whatever the future brings us. You knew you were looking ahead at a tough road anyway.”

She touched his lower lip, studying him, her face grave. “You like to fight.”

His lips pulled into a slow smile. “And I’m good at it.”

It felt hazardous to her, but then everything did. Maybe she and Tiago would face a short life, but she was facing that possibility on her own already. With Tiago acting as her guard and protector, they would have a fighting chance, and she would no longer be alone. “You would be giving up everything.”

He gave her a small smile. “You would be giving me everything that matters.” Then his smile vanished and his face turned hard. “But if you take me, there’ll be no one else for you. I won’t tolerate it, faerie.”

She already knew that. He was far too dominant and possessive. She could have told him that he was everything she could have hoped for, and far more than she had ever dreamed she might actually have. She might have confessed that she was every bit as possessive and jealous as he was. She should have reminded him that all her weapons were still poisoned and she knew how to use a gun.

Instead her lower lip stuck out. She pouted at him. “I haven’t even had you yet,” she grumbled. “Here you are talking about forever and only, but how do I know you’re any good? I don’t think it’s exactly fair for you to be stomping and snorting about the possibility of anybody else yet—”

He glared at her in disbelief. “Who keeps stopping?”

Her mouth fell open. “I get to say no if it’s not right, mister.”

“Did I say you couldn’t say no?” he demanded. “No, I did not, even when it damn near castrated me. But it’s a little much if you say no, and then you start complaining about the results, Niniane.”

She narrowed her eyes and sneered at him. “Can I help it if I get cranky when I’m not sexually satisfied?”

The brutal angles of his dark face tensed, and his obsidian gaze grew vivid. His Power sharpened and turned predatory. He ran his hands up the side of her body. He stood. “Poor little faerie,” he murmured. “Are you sexually dissatisfied?”

“Maybe a bit,” she muttered. She blinked up at him. Good gods, he was built like a brick shithouse. He went long and grew wide, and he was looking at her like she was his newest favorite snack. She was doing much worse than teasing a tiger. She started to babble. “You’ve got to admit we’ve had some pretty frustrating moments in the last few—”

“Didn’t I tell you once to shut the hell up?” he said gently. He took her dress in both hands and tore it from neckline to hem.

Sequins exploded everywhere. They showered the room in sparkling silver lights. She gawked at the wrecked material that hung off her arms. Maybe she needed her head examined. Tigers were pussycats in comparison to this walking, talking holocaust of a male. Then her teeth clicked together as she found her voice. “How could you, you stupid man? I loved that dress!”

“So did I,” he breathed. He stared at her, transfixed. He had already removed her thong, and she wore no bra. She was as exquisitely made as his imagination insisted she would be, with round pink-tipped breasts in full, ripe bloom, a narrow rib cage and an even tinier waist, and a flat stomach that flared to trim hips. There, between slender thighs, was a small shadow of black hair.

He knew how silken that private, luscious tuft of hair was. He had stroked it so briefly not long ago.

And, good Christ, she still had on those four-inch stilettoheeled fuck-me silver shoes.

He met her gaze and said from the back of his throat, “I’ll buy you a thousand pretty dresses, a mountain of pink lipsticks and a queen’s ransom in jewels, and I will never let anyone hurt you again.”

Her pixie features shivered. The anger faded away to be replaced with things that were much more breakable and precious to him: trust and hope. She let her head tilt to one side, and holding his gaze, she slipped the ruined dress from her shoulders and let it fall to the floor.

He stepped forward, and it felt so right to pick her up in his arms. Pivoting on one heel, he carried her to the couch. He went down on one knee and laid her slender, curved body down on the cushions, then divested himself of his weapons, laying guns and fighting knife within reach on the floor.

She slipped off her shoes and stroked up his muscled arm, watching him. When he was through, she whispered, “Now your shirt.”

He took a deep breath. Then he reached back, grabbed his shirt and dragged it over his head and flung it on the floor. He held her gaze as he unbuckled his belt and unzipped his fatigues. She felt herself growing drenched as she watched him undress, revealing, bit by bit, the massive architecture of his body. He stood, and the heavy muscles of his chest and arms flexed as he toed off his boots. He kicked off his fatigues.

It was the most beautiful gift, to feel this extravagant fullness of desire.

She gorged on the sight of his nude body. His strong, sleek legs went on forever, his flat abdomen rippling with an eightpack. His erect penis jutted over heavy round testicles that had drawn up tight underneath, unmistakable evidence of his own desire. She reached out and stroked him. He was so big she couldn’t close her hand around him. As she massaged his penis’s thick, broad head with her thumb, he sucked in a hissing breath and the muscles in his powerful thighs quivered.

She had enjoyed sex for a long time and made no apologies to anyone for it. She had bounced and shimmied through the 1960s with too much glee to be embarrassed or self-conscious now about their surroundings. But something had happened to her along that journey. She had grown, not indifferent exactly, but detached, unmoved by pretty men and frothy flirtations. Even though she loved sex, she found she no longer wanted any. She had stuffed herself on a banquet of dessert and walked away from the table unnourished.

This was the sweetest hunger she had ever known, leavened by the tenderness softening his hawkish face and how much she loved him. She caressed him, her fingers trailing along the huge velvet length of him, watching as sensual pleasure flushed over him and the tight clench of his body loosened.

He came down over her, and it felt more right than anything he had ever experienced to pin her down with his weight. He braced himself on one forearm and caressed her cheek and the side of her neck as he stared down at her. He was coming to a place he had never been before, a new and necessary place he hadn’t even known to miss. It had all started with those first steps he had taken toward her in New York.

She still wore that breakable, breathtaking expression. She whispered, “It’s been quite a while for me.”

He stroked down the delicate line of her throat to her breast. He drew around her nipple and watched the succulent little bud tighten. He managed to remember to suck some air into his lungs. She was beautifully built and so small, and he was a great, crude, hulking brute of a male. “I’m glad you smacked me over the head and slowed me down,” he whispered. “You need time.”

He shifted to one side, lying on his hip beside her, his heavy erection resting on the curve of one of her hip bones. She shivered as his long-fingered hand played down her torso, stroking, drawing circles, pinching gently at her nipple, tugging the slender gold curve of her navel ring before moving down to tease the plump, hypersensitive flesh between her legs. He found the fluted opening of her labia and stroked. Her breath started coming in light pants as the most intense pulse of need she had ever felt careened through her body and jettisoned caution out the window. She gripped his forearm. “I don’t care. Come inside.”

He looked at her with a quick frown. “I care,” he murmured. “We’re going to make you ready. Ease your leg up, faerie.”

She obeyed, bending her leg and propping it against the back of the couch as her gaze clung to him. He bent down to stroke her mouth with his as he eased a finger inside.

They both hissed at the sensation. Her stomach muscles trembled, and she whined high at the back of her throat at the sharp stab of pleasure.

Tiago started to sweat as that needy sound broke against his lips. He swallowed it down with greed. She was so sumptuously juicy and tight, her inner muscles clung to his finger. His cock jerked. Keep it slow and easy, stud. This is the most important thing you will ever do in your life. When her hand came down on his cock and she petted him, he thought he might explode.

He clenched his teeth. “Stop it.”

She froze, looking at him with uncertainty.

He managed to give her a tight smile. “Let me make this about you,” he gritted.

“It’s about us,” she whispered. She took her hand away from his cock and laid it against his cheek, and she lifted her head to kiss him.

His eyes closed, and he blissed out, kissing that ravishing sex kitten mouth as he fucked her so tenderly with his finger. Her hips moved with the rhythm of his hand, her liquid silk drenching his hand. He found the stiff little bud of her clitoris with his thumb and rubbed it as he suddenly drove his tongue hard and rough into her, and she gave a surprised muffled squeal and climaxed.

Shaken, he growled low and husky in her mouth. He licked at her lips and eased a second finger inside her dainty, tight sheath, and she arched her torso in response, stretching her body as she rotated her hips. “You’re going to kill me,” he breathed. “And I’m going to die so goddamn happy.”

She gave a sexy whisper of a giggle, the long heavy lids of her eyes shuttered. His keen predator’s eyes picked up every detail about her in the shadowed room, how her pale skin flushed dusky with arousal, all the way from her cheeks to her breasts. Her glossy lips were parted. He watched as her small white teeth dug into her plump lower lip as he began to rub her clitoris again.

When those fabulous eyes of hers flared open and she met his gaze, he felt a profound shock of connection. He took a step closer to that necessary place.

“I want to come with you inside me,” she whispered. “Please.”

He muttered something, he didn’t know what, and rose over her.

She opened wide to him as he settled between her legs, looking down his torso as he carefully positioned his penis at her entrance. He braced his weight on his forearms, pushed the wide, warm head in and held rigid, panting.

It burned just like she knew it would. He felt so much better than she had imagined, like velvet-wrapped steel, and he was being so freaking careful it was driving her insane. She braced her feet on the couch and drove her hips upward, impaling herself on him as she raked her nails down his back and growled, “Come on.”

She totally unzipped him. His beast came roaring out as he slammed into her. He pulled almost all the way out, looking down at her in incredulity, and then he slammed back in, and it was such a tight, liquid slide back, and he felt such a sweet tiny trail of fire along the skin of his back where she had scored him with her nails, just as he had fantasized for what seemed like forever, and she let her head fall back and, good fucking hell, she bared her throat to him in submission—how did she know to do that—and he went hurtling headlong into a climax.

He shuddered, gushing into her, taking her along with him as he ground his hips against her pelvis. She clamped her thighs against his hips as her climax rippled through her, deeper and richer than the first one. He slid a hand under her ass to hold her tighter to him as he rocked in her, his face buried in the slender stalk of her neck.

She stroked the edge of his ear, kissing his temple. I love you. Was it all right to say it now?

His head came up. He looked severe, desperate. He shook all over. “I’m not done,” he gasped. “I’m not—I need—”

Oh gods, she had heard of this, what a Wyr was like in a mating frenzy. She grabbed him by the chin and made him look at her. Her eyes blazed with their own fallen light. “I need everything you have and everything you are. Don’t stop.”

He growled, withdrew, and flipped her over so fast her head spun. He yanked her body into place so that she was kneeling on the floor, bent over the couch. Then he knocked her knees as wide apart as they would go and shoved into her from behind. She shrieked into the couch cushion at the invasion. At this angle he felt bigger than ever, and when he drove in, he went in deeper.

He froze, bent over her, his heavy thighs pressing against the back of hers, his chest pressing against her back. She could feel how his heart hammered in his chest. His voice shook. “Are you all right, faerie?”

She turned her head to nuzzle at him. “I couldn’t be better. I’m small and noisy; I’m not breakable.”

He slid one arm underneath hers to spread his hand at the base of her throat. His fingers spanned the width of her collarbone as he ran his lips along the line of her jaw. “You could have fooled me,” he muttered. He couldn’t hold still any longer and started to move again. “You are so mine, young lady.”

She caught her breath at the gorgeous sensation. “Yes, I am, aren’t I?”

He closed his eyes, and his face tightened as he picked up the pace. She was a fever in his blood. “Mine,” he growled.

“Yours,” she told him.

He covered and surrounded her. Soon he drove into her with long hard powerful thrusts. She flung out her hands to brace herself. “Mine,” he whispered into her ear.

She whimpered, “Yes.”

He gripped her by the chin and turned her to look at him. His eyes blazed white-hot as he slammed her into the couch. He bared his teeth at her.

There you are. Her lips formed the words but she had no breath. He was so deadly, so beautiful, so sexy, so everything.

“Mine,” the monster hissed.

Oh my God, yes.

A look of wonder came over his face. The climax blasted up the base of his spine. It was like riding the lightning, channeling the storm. His Power roared over her as he convulsed and spent himself. She screamed as it catapulted her into a climax with him. She clenched on him with everything she had and shook so hard she thought she might shatter into pieces, and for a few moments she thought she knew what it must be like to be him, for she felt like she was flying.

He wrapped both arms tight around her and crushed her back against his chest.

Here was the necessary place. Now that he had reached it, he said, “Of course. Now I understand.” For the first time in his very long existence, Tiago knew what it meant to come home.