Laini Taylor

I don’t know many rules to live by,” he’d said. “But here’s one. It’s simple. Don’t put anything unnecessary into yourself. No poisons or chemicals, no fumes or smoke or alcohol, no sharp objects, no inessential needles—drug or tattoo—and… no inessential penises, either.”

“Inessential penises?” Karou had repeated, delighted with the phrase in spite of her grief. “Is there any such thing as an essential one?”

“When an essential one comes along, you’ll know,

“Right? I know. How much does your life have to suck to want the Apocalypse?”

“Dull sounds nice,” he said, letting his eyes flutter closed. “Maybe I can catch up on my reading.”

stay true in the face of evil is a feat of strength.

You know, I’ve always wanted to be a bath attendant. You should take me instead. I’m nicer than my sister.”

Tomorrow they will start the apocalypse.

Tonight, they let themselves look at each other, for just a little while.

“The Muse of Nightmares,” he said. “It sounds like a poem.”

A poem? Sarai detected nothing mocking in his voice, but she had to see his face to confirm it, which meant sitting up and breaking the embrace. Regretfully, she did. She saw no mockery, but only . . . witchlight, still witchlight, and she wanted to live in it forever.

She asked in a hesitant whisper, “Do you still think I’m a . . . a singularly unhorrible demon?”

“No,” he said, smiling. “I think you’re a fairy tale. I think you’re magical, and brave, and exquisite. And . . .” His voice grew bashful. Only in a dream could he be so bold and speak such words. “I hope you’ll let me be in your story.”

She was asleep—oh blessed rest—and instead of her own unconscious fraught with prowling terrors, she was safe in Lazlo’s. She laughed—a little incredulous, a little nervous, a little pleased. Okay, a lot pleased. Well, a lot nervous, too. A lot everything. She was asleep in Lazlo’s dream.

He watched her, expectant. The sight of her there—her blue legs, bare to the knees, entangled in his rumpled blankets, and her hair mussed from his pillow—made for an aching-sweet vision. He was highly conscious of his hands, and it wasn’t from the awkwardness of not knowing what to do with them, but from knowing, rather, what he wished to do with them. It tingled along his palms: the aching urge to touch her.

His turning brought them nearer, face-to-face, his tilted down, hers up, so that the space between them was hardly more than the wisp of tea steam that, earlier in the night, had drifted up between them at the riverbank tea table.

It was new to both of them—this nearness that mingles breath and warmth—and they shared the sensation that they were absorbing each other, melting together in an exquisite crucible. It was an intimacy both had imagined, but never—they now knew—successfully. The truth was so much better than the fantasy. The wild, soft wings were in a frenzy. Sarai couldn’t think. She wanted only to keep on melting.

He dragged his eyes up from it, back to hers. “Sarai,” he said, and if ravids purred it might sound something like the way he said her name. “You must see. I want you in my mind.”

And he wanted her in his arms. He wanted her in his life. He wanted her not trapped in the sky, not hunted by humans, not hopeless, and not besieged by nightmares whenever she closed her eyes. He wanted to bring her to a real riverbank and let her sink her toes into the mud. He wanted to curl up with her in a real library, and smell the books and open them and read them to each other. He wanted to buy them both wings from the wingsmiths so that they could fly away, with a stash of blood candy in a little treasure chest, so that they could live forever. He’d learned, the moment he glimpsed what lay beyond the Cusp, that the realm of the unknowable was so much bigger than he’d guessed. He wanted to discover how much bigger. With her.

But first . . . first he just really, really, really wanted to kiss her.

He searched her eyes for acquiescence and found it. Freely she gave it. It was like a thread of light passing from one to the other, and it was more than acquiescence. It was complicity, and desire. Her breathing shallowed. She stepped in, closing that little space. There was a limit to their melting, and they found it, and defied it. His chest was hard against hers. Hers was soft against his. His hands closed on her waist. Her arms came round his neck. The walls gave forth a shimmer like sunrise on fierce water. Countless tiny stars spent themselves in radiance, and neither Sarai nor Lazlo knew which of them was making it. Perhaps they both were, and there was such brilliance in the endless careless diamonds of light, but there was awareness, too, and urgency. Under the skin of dreaming, they both knew that dawn was near, and that their embrace could not survive it.

So Sarai rose to her toes, erasing the last little gap between their flushed faces. Their lashes fluttered shut, honey red and rivercat, and their mouths, soft and hungry, found each other and had just time to touch, and press, and sweetly, sweetly open