Chapter Text
As the spell came to an end I looked down and was able to see the rose again. His hand was still clasped around mine and the rose stem. The ember orange glow of its magic faded before my eyes, and it slowly became a normal rose again.
The spell left me feeling raw and dizzy with so many different emotions. Silent tears rained from my eyes. I wanted to look up at Sarkan, but a sudden shyness crept in me. I felt like I had invaded his privacy somehow, as if I had watched him through a peep hole without him knowing. I had to give myself a private shake to remind myself he had willingly let me see so much.
When I did look up his face seemed blank. Only the shine in his eyes could hint at the emotional effect the spell had had on him. He caught my stare and I immediately dropped the rose and wrapped my arms around his neck. In that moment I realized, I could love him. That is, I could finally let myself love him. While he’d been gone, I had loved him too, but I never let myself dwell on the feeling too long, unsure if he’d ever come back. Now I could let the feeling fully flow through me and it felt wonderful, like a burden I was unaware of had been lifted from my shoulders. “I love you too,” I said against his neck.
“I know,” he murmured through my messy hair. I pulled away and narrowed my eyes at his rudeness. “Literally, I know. It was in your Summoning.” He didn’t say it but his eyes added, ‘you idiot’.
“I have one question,” I blurted out. I almost felt sorry for asking anything more of him, but I needed the air completely clear between us.
“Of course you would,” he stood up, getting a little annoyed and pacing the room again.
“Why did you try so hard to-”
“Let you go,” he finished for me. “Because I gave up, putting down roots as you would say, a long time ago. Agnieszka,” he sighed “the heart can only break so many times before it shatters completely and I have had over two lifetimes worth of heart breaks. I suppose I just didn’t want to take the chance anymore.” He paused while I gave him a solemn look, inviting him to continue. “I’m old enough to know that everything has an ending. There are no, ‘happily ever afters’ no matter how much the stories would like you to believe it. I wanted to let you go because I was afraid of losing you. You saw in the spell. I thought I did lose you," his voice became tight with emotion, something I'd never seen from him, "more than once. I can't...I don't want to ever lose you. And when I saw in the Summoning that you...felt as I did,” Even through the emotional moment, I could have almost laughed at how he still struggled with the word, love, “I had to leave because one day I will lose you, Agnieszka.” He gripped my wrists as if I was about to float away from him. When I looked up the shine in his eyes had dripped down into a single tear that fallen from his cheek and suddenly I felt tears of my own. We waited a moment before either of us spoke again. I think we were both just trying to rein in our emotions.
“But I’m a witch too;" I said finally "I’ll live just as long as you.”
“And contrary to popular belief we are not immortal! Arrows. Burning heart-trees. Corrupted wolves! And can you honestly say that in one hundred years you won’t find me to be an insufferable grump and I won’t find you to be a messy moron?”
“No,” I answered honestly. “But Sarkan, we don’t need, ‘happily ever afters’ we just need now.”
His face softened and something in his eyes told me he was laughing at himself. “Nieszka, you never cease to surprise me. Where were you hiding all this wisdom when I first met you?” he teased. I caught his eyes falling on my lips. He blushed a little at my catching him but he didn’t move away. Actually, he was standing quite close to me.
Our faces were already riding on opposing currents again. Our collision was inevitable but I had to know. “Sarkan,” I murmured softly, tasting all its fire and curling smoke. The subtle strength of his name hung on my lips. Something like a low groan escaped the back of his throat as he tried to pull himself out of the current long enough to listen to what I had to say. Our faces only inches apart. “If there really was some spell hidden away in a book that could make you forget me, would you still want to use it?”
He thought long and hard gazing at nothing. Then his gaze finally fell back on me. “No,” he answered honestly and I believed him. His voice barely above a whisper.
I grabbed fistfuls of his fancy jacket to pull him against me, to pull his lips to mine. I felt him gasp against my mouth in surprise. The last thing I saw were his wide eyes and open face. I loved that look. I loved it because in that moment he wasn’t the aloof, fearsome Dragon anymore, but just a surprised man with no thorns or walls to hide behind, just Sarkan.
His lips were a little slow to respond to my abruptness. But quickly, his surprised, frozen lips melted into the rhythm of my kiss. He kissed me back with measured accuracy. An intricacy he used in his most complicated workings. Every movement of his mouth seemed methodical. Every exploration of his hands seemed to have purpose. I responded to his purpose quickly, as I found my heart was pounding and my breath coming faster. I felt as though I was riding down a swift river, being thrown up and pulled down unexpectedly, but ultimately racing towards the edge of the falls.
But then something happened. A broken cog in his intricacy. A stumble in his method. He swayed in my arms for a brief second. I would have barely noticed if he hadn’t took his hand off my thigh to brace it against the wall to steady himself. I opened my eyes to check on him but he was already kissing me again, his lips scorching a trail down my jaw.
As his lips delved down lower, my hands slipped under his shirt roving over his bare skin. His skin was soft and silky under my palms. I touched his chest and moved down lower towards his belly. “Agnieszka,” he growled. His breath in my ear made me shiver. I hooked my leg around his hip, able to feel all of him. He moved with me as his burning kisses played near my cleavage. I huffed out an unsteady breath, almost sure he was a real dragon trying to catch me on fire. His slender fingertips traveled up under my dress, almost-.
But as I began to push his dragon embroidered jacket away from his shoulders, it happened again. He swayed backwards this time. So much so that I nearly had to catch him from falling. I immediately stopped to see what was the matter, but as soon as he found his balance he made to kiss me again. He had hardly seemed to notice that he had almost fainted!
“Wait,” I said, holding him off. “There’s something wrong with you.”
He stopped with his lips half puckered and his eyes half closed. Abruptly, he opened his eyes and righted his face back into its natural scowl. He looked at me almost offended. “I can assure you there’s nothing wrong with me.” I could have sworn I saw his eyes dart down himself for a brief second. Checking. I would have laughed if I wasn’t a little worried in that moment.
Then, I took him in. I mean really took him in, without my bias loving eye. He looked awful. I think I had noticed all night, but I just didn’t want to think about it because I had been so happy he was back. When I thought about what I had seen in his spell, I realized why he didn’t look well. The whole time he was away in Kralia he had made himself ill denying his feelings, unable to sleep for even a few hours. I also remembered him begging me not to make him use magic when I had locked myself up here. He loved magic. He would never complain about having to use it.
I thought about how much magic it must have surely taken for such an intricate working. I was reminded of the ember orange glow of the rose, its peculiar warmth to the touch. And then I thought of Sarkan; his unusual warmth, the ember orange glow that seemed to radiate through his skin when the vines in the grove had let him go. The rose wasn’t only a part of the spell, but I suspected it held a piece of him as well. I was sure he had over spent himself making such a complicated working and also exhausted himself not sleeping. No wonder he had nearly fainted! I almost felt guilty remembering how he had tried to heal my bruised knee.
“You need to sleep,” I said in a rush.
“You kiss a man like that and then you expect him to want to sleep?” He raised an eyebrow at me. “Fine,” straightening his jacket. “It is getting late. Meet me back here tomorrow and we can begin repairs.” He was about to begin his transportation spell.
“Wait!”
“Yes. Well, you didn’t expect I’d be sleeping in this hovel? I’m staying at the inn in Olshanka should you need me.”
“Would you like to stay with me?” I blurted out.
“Nieszka, I don’t think your parents would appreciate-”
“No. I have my own place.”
“Well, I don’t think-. What are you doing?” Before he could protest any further, I grabbed him by the crook of his elbow and pulled him into my transportation spell. When the world opened up around us again we were standing in the Wood, feet from my cottage.
“Have you lost your mind you, intolerable lunatic!” He looked wildly around himself as if he were expecting to be attacked, immediately realizing where he was. I felt his hand tighten around mine.
“Sarkan, do you remember anything I told you about how safe the Wood is now?”
“Well, I didn’t expect you were living in it!” He paused a moment, looking around. “Well where is it?” His hand was still gripping mine, almost painfully, as if he were ready to take me and run. I realized, as I looked at my cottage, in the moonless night it was barely visible. It looked no more then some large bush under the shadow of an oak. With a flick of my wrist I lit the candles and the hearth, bringing the cottage to life and into view from the heavy darkness that surrounded us.
“You live in a tree!” he said, outraged.
“It’s not a tree. It’s a cottage, made from a tree.” I said proudly.
“Are you deranged?”
I pulled him over the threshold, humming Jaga’s calming spell and patting him in like a spooked horse. His breath hitched when he entered as if he were taken by surprise. While I was getting an extra blanket and pillow, I watched him out of the corner of my eye. He looked around in wide eyed wonder. Something like a pleased smile played at the curve of his lips.
“This was made with your magic.” not really asking, just confirming the fact. Of course he could sense it, the small room I’m sure was steeped with my magic.
“I can see you really like it.”
He gave me a look that said, ‘Don’t push your luck, Agnieszka.’
He strode further in the room hanging his jacket on the hook near my hearth and took his boots off, placing them neatly on the floor beside the bed. He sat down carefully on the end of my bed curiously fingering the grass coverlet. A sudden shyness fell between us. He held himself stiffly as we fell into an awkward silence for a few moments. I think we both came to the realization that we had meant to share the bed without really thinking. I had put the extra pillow there and he had sat there but we weren’t thinking about being there, together.
Sarkan finally broke the silence. “I could sleep on the chair if you’d like,” his voice quiet.
“No. Please lie down. I’m just...not tired yet.” I sat down at my table and noticed all the herbs I had gleaned the other day, still there waiting to be chopped and dried. I took the opportunity and began the task. It was well past midnight and of course the chore could have waited till morning, but I needed to burn off my nervous energy.
“You know I have taught you no less then four different cantrips for that,” he commented, watching me begin to chop. He was already lying back on the pillows with his hands clasped behind his head.
“I enjoy doing it by hand sometimes.”
“Yes, I do suppose it has its benefits. Keeps the reflexes sharp.”
From there we fell into easy conversation. I told him of the finer details of training walkers, while he explained how he was able to purge the remaining corruption from Kralia. He lay propped up on one elbow listening intently as I described to him how I devised the spell I had on my signaling candles. A passionate spark in his eyes shone through at his interest in magic.
As the night wore on and I had no magic left to talk about I began to tell him all the news of the valley that had happened in his absence; births, deaths, gossip. My focus had been on the last part of my task, putting some of the herbs away in jars and carefully tying others up to dry.
As we were talking, a late night rain shower had rolled through the Wood. The gentle beat of rain drops pattering on my roof and tapping on my window made my eyes grow heavy. When I began talking about Jerzy and his family, I noticed that for some time the conversation had been one sided. I looked up and saw Sarkan fast asleep. He was on his side, his face turned away from my view. When I shut out the sound of the pattering rain I heard the gentle rhythm of his breath echo through my cottage.
I was exhausted. I spelled the candles out and climbed into bed, careful not to wake him. I felt perfectly comfortable. It almost seemed silly to have been shy. His eyes fluttered open for a second but immediately closed again after I had settled in. I pulled the blanket around us, he had been sitting on top of the other blanket, so I gave him some of mine. I was surprised that my narrow bed had fit us both so comfortably.
In fact, for the past couple of days I noticed that my bed seemed to be growing bigger. At first I thought it was just my imagination, but now I came to the conclusion that it must have gotten bigger to fit us both so well. As I came to learn, I suspected magic wasn’t always a neat and tidy thing you could always control. It had a mystery and instinct all of its own, no matter how much Sarkan wanted to deny it.
I turned on my side, my back towards Sarkan. I closed my eyes, but after a few moments I realized I wasn’t as comfortable as I should have been. Something was missing. After I thought about it for a while I realized what it was.
I longed to be closer to him.
The strange thing was, the moment I came to this realization his pale arm snaked under the blanket and wrapped itself around my waist. He gave me a light tug, pulling me in just enough so I fit perfectly against the curve of his body. It was as if some unconscious part of me had called him and some unconscious part of him had responded.
As I drifted off to sleep listening to the pattering rain and Sarkans’ rhythmic breath, I realized I didn’t know what our future held, but right now I was happy.
(Sarkan)
Truth be told, I had not yet fallen asleep. But if I hadn’t at least closed my eyes and breathed a bit louder she would have droned on and on all night about every detail the valley had to offer, down to the smallest toadstool! And I also knew that she might have been a little nervous getting into the same bed with me. I was a bit nervous myself. At least if she thought I was already asleep, it would be easier for her to do so. I know it might seem ridiculous being we had already been together, but somehow without the urgency of passion, sleeping in the same bed just to sleep almost seemed more intimate.
Even though I wanted consciously to give her her space, something pulled me to her. The need to hold her. Almost involuntary, my arm wrapped around her as she slept. Her wild hair tickled my nose as I breathed her in. It should have annoyed me. But it didn’t.
As I held her, I wondered if she truly knew just how much she had me under her spell. Even before I left for Kralia I had fought to keep my distance, but she had thoroughly slayed me. What was even crazier, I reveled in being slayed, I enjoyed being under her spell. I was glad I lost the battle to stay away. Of course I was terrified, but it was still what I wanted. What was the use of living in fear of loss, if I had stayed away I would have lost her everyday, little by little. A slow, insidiousness type of pain.
Before I drifted off to sleep, I could have laughed at the irony of it all! Thinking about how after battling the Wood for over one hundred years, nearly being devoured by a heart-tree and trying desperately not to put down roots with any of the villagers. I was now in the Wood, sleeping in a tree no less, with the most absurd girl in all the valley, with whom I was hopelessly in love. Strangely, when I did finally fall asleep it was the most peaceful sleep I’ve had in all my one hundred and fifty years. It was almost poetic if you subscribe to that sort of silly nonsense.