throbbed deep in the core of him at the prospect of bidding farewell to a beauty he had hardly known.
I will attend to it now.
With a twist of his will, he left them. It was too much to hope he would find her where he had before, and yet that was the first place he looked. Camael matched his appearance to what she had seen before; otherwise, how would she know him? The river had risen since his last visit, which signified rain. How much time had passed? He stood quietly, listening to the water tumbling over the rocks. The trees were a little thinner, somewhat less green, and the air carried a chill. This was the dying season, when the leaves fell, and the world spun toward winter.
It was too cold for bare skin and he thought clothing into existence to cover himself. Not because he felt discomfort on any crucial level, but if another traveller came upon him here, they would call him demon or worse, finding him tarrying so. For the first time, it occurred to him he did not know how to find her. While he could focus on her essence and port to her, it might prove awkward if she were in company. He did not want to cause problems for Rei, or offer trouble she could not explain away.
And so he sought shelter in a cave not far from the river, where he built a fire. It was easy work, a matter of laying wood and willing it to kindle. He could have had fire without fuel, but that too would alarm human travellers. Camael wanted to blend in as best he could. Once he had created a tolerably comfortable space, he sat and sent the call. If Rei felt anything for him, she would be compelled to seek him out. The delay gave him time to accustom himself to her world. This time, he would not be helpless and overwhelmed by so many physical sensations.
On the third day, she found him. She looked different, less girlish. He had no way to gauge the passage of time here.
“It’s you,” she breathed. “And you have aged not even a day.”
He’d wondered if she remembered. He had wondered if he ought to come and tell her there could be nothing more. Perhaps she already knew. But his conscience would not permit him to share such intimacy and then offer only silence thereafter.
The right words – words of farewell – trembled on his tongue and yet he did not speak them. “Did you miss me?”
“Yes,” she said softly. “But when I did not quicken, I thought I dreamed you.”
Would that were so – then he would not feel the awful sensation of being torn in two. He carried Ezekiel’s orders like a weight in his heart, but for the first time, he struggled against them. Camael did not want to obey. He craved a few more moments with her.
“I cannot get you with child,” he said, instead of good-bye.
“Because you are truly not of my world.”
He inclined his head.
“Then it is safe for us to be together.” Before the fire, she began to disrobe. “I relived that afternoon so many times. Nothing ever felt so good or so right.”
This was where he must tell her. But instead, he admired the curves of her body, no longer sylph slim, but rounded and succulent. “Rei . . .”
“You make my name sound like singing. No one ever did before.”
When she threw herself into his arms, he was lost, oh, so lost. Camael wrapped his arms about her. He had not touched her thoughts as he did with the host, and it mattered not at all. He knew her. The ache he hadn’t been able to explain before intensified into longing, and then he recognized it.
“I missed you.” Such longing for an absent person; it was wholly new to him.
Six
“And I, you.”
It had been almost five years since she’d first felt him watching her, nearly three since she had lain in his arms. Yet she had never been able to forget him. Rei wondered now whether she was mad. Her father had at last broken down her will to refuse the marriage, and in two weeks’ time, she would become Kenzo’s bride. An alliance between the two villages would improve life for all
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