He found shelter next to the Shrine, what must be a pilgrim’s rest cottage in the spring. He shouldered the locked door open. The dark inside was a mercy.
He set her down on one of the cots that lined the cottage. “Stay with me,” he said. His hands were steady now, gentling the edges of her torn shirt, checking for blood that wasn’t his. “You’re safe. Can you hear me?”
Safe. The word barely reached her. What reached her instead was the comfort of Mallow’s body, his breath, his accent.
For a time he was gone, somewhere in the room but not by her side, and she thought about the Tracker, feeling his hand digging into her scales, his grip on her antlers, pulling her head aside. The way her body had betrayed her.
When next she opened her eyes Mallow had lit a fire in the cabin’s hearth. He’d found blankets stashed away in a cupboard, some of these moth-eaten but otherwise surprising in their cleanliness.
He slipped out of his cloak and his boots in the growing warmth. He returned to her once more, this time with an armful of blankets. He wrapped one about her shoulders. “Hi, Sister.”
He dropped to one knee before her, draping the blanket across it. He held out his hands.
She blinked, confused, sitting before him.
He slid his hand behind her ankle, holding her gaze for permission before lifting her left hoof into his lap.
As far back as she could remember, No one had ever touched her Kelthi legs with anything but the cord the Brighthand had bound her with.
Her whole body trembled as he dried her wool with the blanket, as he used it to clean out the pads of her claws, first one foot, then the other.
When he was finished, he set the blanket aside.
“Saw the frost building up in that wool of yours,” he said, voice gone hoarse. “Can’t have my traveling partner freezing to death on me.”
She gave a small sound that was nearly a laugh. “You always take care of me,” she murmured.
He hesitated. “Someone should.”
The fire popped softly. Wind pressed against the shuttered window, the sound low and endless.
Lain drew the blanket tighter around herself, but the chill had found its way deeper than skin. Her hooves had stopped shaking, but her hands hadn’t.
Noticing, he took her hands in his. “I’m so sorry I wasn’t there.”
The fear, the fury, and the Heat that refused to die down tangled together and surged toward him.
She reached for him.
At first it was the panic of a wounded creature mistaking touch for safety. Her mouth found his, desperate and shaking and cold. He caught her shoulders in reflex, too late to stop her, too human to deny her.
The kiss was Heat and teeth and the taste of snow and blood. The world narrowed to the space between them, the ragged sound of their breathing. The fire that had been meant to destroy her turned outward, wild and alive.
Mallow drew back, his hands on either side of her face. “Lain,” he said, quiet but firm.
She opened her eyes. For a heartbeat the world came back into focus. In rushed the sound of the storm, the crackling hearthfire, and him. The man who had fought for her. Who hadn’t abandoned her at the altar where she was meant to die.
He searched her gaze, looking for permission, for sense, for her. “You’re here,” he murmured. “Stay here.”
She swallowed, trembling. “I am.”
He caught her wrists to steady her. His touch was cautious, his gaze searching her face to ask the question that lingered between them.
The wildness that had driven her shifted, to soften around the edges. She realized she wasn’t fighting his wish to stop; instead, she was being met and seen, held in a gentleness that made her chest ache.
The weight of fear drained from her limbs. His hand moved once, tentative, brushing a lock of damp hair from her temple. She closed her eyes. It wasn’t hunger anymore; it was relief, the quiet of a body remembering what safety felt like.
She leaned forward. Then, soft, at the edge of his mouth, she kissed him. Slower this time. Choosing it.
He didn’t move, or take more, or even kiss her back at first. She ran gentle fingers along his jawline so he could feel her Tuning, and so she could feel him, his reserve, his confusion, then his understanding and hope. She coaxed him forward with true affection. She put her mouth to one cheek, to feel his stubble under her lips, to feel the quaver of his jaw. She ran a gentle thumb across his brow, put lips to his eyelids, and when the Tuning told her he wanted to join her in this, she brought her mouth back to his once more, and tasted the sweet warmth of him.
He made no move to join her on the cot, so she moved instead, legs on either side of his, sliding forward until her chest was pressed against his own. He caught the blanket that had slid from her shoulders and wrapped it about them both. He kissed her, and kissed her, and kissed her, rocking against her, whatever human Heat there was rising in him now, too.
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When he paused to breathe he brought his mouth to her jaw, her throat, the scales at her collarbone. Each of these places lit in the forge of her Heat, complex now, subtle, like oil glimmering on dark water. The high surge of his longing flowed into her as he finally let himself feel all he had been suppressing. She wanted his mouth everywhere, she wanted to taste him, she wanted his hands, the heat of his skin. All these feelings she projected into his and he lifted them like a breeze lifts a kite.
Mallow pulled Lain against him, hand firm on her waist, the other sliding up her wide slacks so he could caress her pastern and sensitive shank. Again her tail lashed, curled, flexed, and he reached around her to set it free. This time it coiled about his arm and he caressed, stroked her scales, brought it around her body so he could hold it more easily.
The tuft at the end of her tail hid a spur, which sometimes lashed against her whenever she grew too excited, sparking her further into a rush of feeling. Few people knew this; she doubted even Elder Tanel did.
But Mallow knew.
He brought his fingers into the curls of her tuft, and stroked the spine, pressing in a way that made her ache, that made her want to lash him with it, that made her want to lash herself. He had no tail, but some analog must have transmitted through her Tuning, because he gasped with pleasure against her throat, and rocked, his firmness pressing at her belly.
She stripped herself of her cloak. He pulled his shirt free.
They clambered back to the cot, and when she rolled with a laugh and he caught her around the chest with his cold hands she flexed with him behind her, both on their sides. When his lips met the back of her neck, she arched to give him more reach and his hands tightened further on her before pulling away a little. Lain leaned back desperately before realizing he wasn’t leaving; he was sliding out of his slacks, and gathering up the blanket to lay it across them once more. She followed suit to disrobe, an odd sort of terror climbing in her at having done so.
When he returned, his bare skin pressed at her back. He eased her tail over his hip, and it coiled about him to stroke his exposed thigh. He ran his fingers lightly over her scales with ecstatic surprise and the Heat tossed its head, all want again.
“I need you to tell me something,” he said. “Do you want this?”
“Yes,” she said, nodding.
“Not the Heat.” He brought his face against her own. “Does Lain want Mallow?”
Lain’s rational self thought of their time on the road, of Mallow cutting the cords that had bound her. She thought of him rescuing her from discovery at the inn they’d stayed in, of the way he’d kissed her there. She thought of his hands on her claws, the way her tail coiled so sweetly about him. That he'd called her Little Hooves.
“I want you, Mallow,” she said. She took his palm in her hand, and kissed him, chaste, loving.
Lain had never touched a naked man before, nor had she ever revealed herself to be held, and while she knew the mechanics of things, at no point had any Glinnel explained what it was to be filled.
But her Heat knew what to do.
She lifted her hips and he slipped between them, feeling her wetness. He caressed outside her for a time, groaning, feeling the yearning as it built, feeling the cat of her Heat rubbing its back against his desire. He pressed just outside her entrance, then edged away, teasing her relentlessly, until she panted and moaned for it. He smiled into her hair, then let himself ease just a little inside her, holding her off of him as she arched desperately for more.
“Tell me you want me,” he said.
“I want you,” she said. “Just you. Please let me have you.”
“I’m yours, Lain.”
He eased inside.
The Heat was like a conscious will inside her. As Mallow engaged, it rose to greet him, a playful thing practically separate from Lain, encouraging and animal. It was a fire that burned through any shame or doubt. Mallow leaned into the joy of it, the ecstasy of engaging with her Heat as he rocked into her.
He put a hand to antler and pulled her head back so he could bite her ear.
“If you’d told me it felt this good, I never would have waited.”
She mumbled something unintelligible. Lain was almost entirely animal now, rocking in a rhythm older than humanity, spiraling back through generations of needful creatures that one by one had borne the life that inevitably bore her. The Heat drew Mallow down into that space. As he got closer to his own satisfaction, the wheel of creation opened like a spiraling star in a turning milky galaxy of light and fire and luscious giving. As the Heat carried them to the center of the world where all things are made, Lain’s consciousness folded into Mallow’s, his brow furrowing first in confusion then softening in understanding. His red flame met her milky blue one, his steady garnet to her chalcedony, until the color pulsed the shade of fragrant lilac, the wind carrying the scent of the early weeks of spring.
He rocked behind her, inside her, within her. When that rhythm sped toward its climax, he coiled his hand in her antlers. Light spilled outward from the contact, not blinding but alive in threads of blue and red. The sound that filled the room was both song and heartbeat.
Lain gasped. The Tuning, once hers alone, opened wider. She felt him through it, the shame of his being, the dry humor and guardedness and the weight of his years on the road. And beneath all that was the fierce tenderness he had never spoken aloud.
She felt it then, the choice.
A thread between them, drawn taut, trembling. He could let go. She would fall back into herself, alone, sealed again in her Tuning. She knew it, and he knew it. The space between their thoughts filled with possibility – his heartbeat against her song, her breath inside his lungs, the old symmetry of creation whispering that every bond must be chosen, tether tied twice.
His doubt rippled through her like a hand grazing still water. Are you certain?
Her answer rose in wordless affirmation. Yes.
Mallow’s own breath caught as though something inside him had turned toward her and refused to turn away. He rolled her to her stomach so he could burrow deeper, so she could spread her legs and lift her hips enough that when he finally emptied himself he was as deep as he could possibly go, gravity carrying his seed to the place that told her Heat it was spoken for. He panted and groaned and she nodded, held him inside herself, felt his flexing, his shuddering hips and gripping fingertips all feeding her desperate wanting until it was finally, perfectly satisfied.
Mallow collapsed upon her, then rolled them both to their sides. When Lain became aware of the room once more, she realized the fire had died down, the red coals still hot enough to keep them warm.
“I’ve never felt anything like that,” Mallow said, and shivered pleasantly at her back. “Is that what it feels like to be Tuned?”
Lain frowned, considering. “I don’t think so. I think it’s just the Kelthi that have this.”
“It was so beautiful,” he said. She rolled to face him, to wipe the tears from his eyes. “Thank you. For sharing that with me.”
She smiled. The Heat no longer felt like something to survive; it was only warmth now, diffused through her like emberlight. “Tonight. When I.” She swallowed. “Earlier. I thought you’d lost me.”
He nuzzled under her chin. “You’re a hard woman to lose.”
He laughed, and kissed her – playfully at first, then deeply, and the Heat lifted its dozing head again to press its face toward Mallow’s affection. She leaned into the kiss, put her hands in his hair, and the desire built, his mouth fuel for the low-burning fire. She put her hands on his bare skin. She stroked his stomach, playing along the top edge of his hair, then the curve of his hip, every place she touched a thing of reactive beauty. The weight of his arm anchored her to the world, proof that she was still here, still whole.
Sleep came slowly, and when it did, it found them both wrapped in the same breath of warmth, the snow hissing against the roof like a lullaby.