Wild Desire Ch. 09

***

The Lord opened his eyes only to find himself in an unfamiliar place. He was standing on a black road. A human road, he realized with surprise. He glanced up for guidance from the stars. All but a few were hidden in the ambient glow of unnatural lights and poisonous clouds. Behind him a field of sunflowers towered over his head. Before him he saw a human town, their little wood and clay houses strange to his eyes.

He closed his eyes for a moment to clear his head. How had he gotten here? And why?

He noticed a delightful numbness throughout his body. The shooting pains and heaviness that had plagued him for months were gone. He lifted his arms, amazed at the feeling of lightness and the ease with which they moved. He closed his eyes and scanned his body. He didn't just feel light. He felt weightless. The exhaustion and mental fog of fighting the constant pull toward oblivion was gone. He was neither cold nor hot. There was no sensation across his skin, no smells on the air, no sounds from the town. He opened his eyes again and saw the sunflowers bend with a breeze he couldn't feel.

He frowned. Wherever he was, he wasn't really there. He wasn't dream walking. There was a solidity to the setting in front of him that was too immovable to be a dreamscape. The town was too unfamiliar to be spun from his own imagination. The style of buildings was nothing like it had been the last time he'd visited humans. These were boxy, plain, ugly things, wholly unlike the filigreed monuments he remembered. For all their unfamiliarity, they were obviously real, human structures. He wondered abstractly why the humans would have stopped creating buildings for beauty.

One thing was familiar to him. He frowned and dodged away from the thought. He was embarrassed how often he had found himself entering Daniella's dreams. This wasn't a dream, but he recognized the sunflowers he had seen through her memories. And he recognized a persistent pull on his heart.

He sighed. He wasn't dream walking. He was projecting. He patted his arm and grimaced. He felt nothing, either in his hand on the spot where he'd patted himself. Projecting by accident was not a good sign. He wondered how many more days he had left. If his spirit was already this loosely tethered to his body it wouldn't be long now.

The only sensation in his non-corporeal body was a persistent tug on the center of his chest. He leaned backward experimentally. The pull on his chest tightened almost painfully. He grimaced and stepped forward, relieved when the tug lessened. He stepped forward again. Each step relieved the ache in his chest until he found himself moving so quickly the town blurred past.

He knew who he would find at the end of this invisible tether.

As soon as he thought of her, he found himself outside a door on the second level of a boxy building. He frowned at the plain ugliness of the architecture. It didn't suit her at all. A woman like her had no place living in this lifeless shell of a building.

As he slipped through the door he was greeted by vibrant greenery. Her home was filled with plants bursting from pots strewn over every surface and suspended in baskets hanging from the ceiling. He let his eyes wander over the dwelling before him. It was adequate as shelter, but he still had a hard time imagining Daniella living here.

The kitchen smelled of coffee and citrus. Was that where she sat each morning, staring at these plain walls as she drank her coffee? Or perhaps she drank tea still. He wondered if anything from her time in the Wood had stayed with her even now that she living here in such a thoroughly human place.

He felt an unpleasant tug at his chest. Without meaning to move he suddenly found himself standing in her bedroom. He cursed himself for his lack of control and ducked back from her sleeping form, forgetting for a moment that humans couldn't sense projections. He let out a shaky breath and straightened up again, his spirit strung tight.

The pain in his chest eased as he drew close to her. She was perfect. She was lying curled on her side, one arm clutching her pillow over the covers. Her hair was a tangle of strawberry blonde splayed across her pillow. Her eyelids fluttered minutely. He wondered if she was dreaming. Her lips were barely parted with low, even breaths.

How many times had he shared a bed with her? It had all been a blur. He had never paused to appreciate the way her body fit in the curve of his. He had never laid there and admired her, thanking all that was good in the world for his luck in finding her. The one woman who could see him behind his crown, who could laugh at and challenge him. She had accepted all of him willingly, taking the pain and control he doled out to her and turning it into love. For the thousandth time he cursed his own idiocy.

His eyes devoured every inch of her visible above the covers. Her arm was tanned and corded with new muscles. Her face was slightly fuller than it had been. The dark circles and worry lines he had seen the day she'd left were gone. She looked healthy and strong. She looked peaceful.

It hurt to see her, but he was also grateful that despite everything he had done wrong, he hadn't broken her irreparably. There was a shred of comfort there. He would soon fade away, but she would go on. She would continue to grow and heal. She would live well without him.

Stars, how had things gone so wrong. The Lord's knees gave out and he found himself kneeling by the side of her bed. Something about her always stripped everything away from him. The title, the power, the responsibility all faded into the background until he was nothing more than Malachite. Malachite, a strange faery who tended a bit too much toward darkness and dwelled too much on pain. Malachite who had never found his match before, who always stood alone. Malachite who had fallen in love with a human woman and given up all that he was to give her the life she wanted.

He longed to touch her. He knew he should not have come, but now that he found himself at her bedside he could not make himself leave. He wished he could talk to her. If only he could tell her how precious she was to him, how he regretted letting her go every second of every day. But no, he told himself. That was selfish. She looked so well. He had had to let her go for her to have what she wanted. If he was a good man he would leave her to her peace.

He was only a decent man though, and he was exhausted. He hadn't slept a solid night in all the time she'd been gone. He doubted he would see her again in this life.

He pulled himself up onto the bed. He laid his body carefully down facing her. Her light lashes quivered across her cheeks. For a split second panic gripped him at the thought of her waking up to see him lying next to her. There could be no explanation for a trespass like this. He chided himself both for crossing a boundary and for panicking at the slightest risk of discovery. As a human she would not be able to see him even if he were jumping up and down and screaming at her.

He folded his arms up into his chest, holding himself. He longed for someone to hold him and tell him all would be well in the end. Daniella would be willing to, even now. He could not say why, but he was certain if she knew what he was going through she would be willing to ease his suffering that much. He closed his eyes and imagined her holding him, her fingers gently cording through his hair, a hand rubbing circles against this back. Her gentle breathing lulling him toward sleep.

Daniella shifted in her sleep, almost as if she knew he was there. Tentatively he put his hand out halfway between their bodies, palm face up. She sighed in her sleep and reached out her hand, placing it right on top of his. He stared at their impossibly linked hands. Humans couldn't see or sense projections. Projections had no physical substance. And yet... she was holding his hand.

His heart constricted painfully. He had missed her. He had been brave for the sake of his people but in the dark and quiet of Daniella's room, awash in this moment of tenderness, his loneliness and fears crashed over him. He sucked in a shuddering breath and gripped her hand more tightly, though he couldn't feel the warmth or pressure of her hand. It wasn't nearly enough, but for once he wasn't alone.

Too soon he felt himself slipping into sleep. He forced his eyes open. He wanted to memorize the exact curve of her body. The soft, easy rhythm of her breath. The weight and strength of her that spoke of all she had become. He didn't want to forget anything about her when he was gone. Despite his best efforts he slipped into unconsciousness in minutes, and found himself shoved screaming into his real, pain-wracked body.

***

Daniella woke up well-rested with an odd sense of calm. She had slept more deeply than she had in months, dreamless and peaceful. She rolled onto her side and was surprised to find the bed empty next to her. She stared at the empty pillow for a moment, letting her brain sort itself out. For some reason she had expected to see a rumpled head of wild black curls on that pillow.

She flopped back onto her back and stared at the ceiling. The realization that he wasn't there didn't hurt like it used to. It just felt — she frowned as she tried to understand the feeling in her chest — she felt too tight and too loose at the same time. It just felt wrong that he wasn't there when she woke up.

She had never been able to name that wrongness before. Now that she had, everything seemed so obvious. She had needed to leave the Wood and she didn't regret leaving for a second. She deserved the chance to have relationships with her loved ones. She deserved the chance to reach her full potential in her career. She deserved accountability from the man who had knowingly sent her to what he'd thought was certain death.

She had taken all those things for herself and she was glad for it. Now, as she stared the empty pillow next to her, she had to admit that there was still one thing missing. The life she'd built just felt wrong without him in it. Daniella closed her eyes and cast her imagination out, wondering how Malachite was.

She sat up abruptly as a foreign, constricted feeling shot through her. The wrongness she had felt wasn't just about him. Something was wrong in the Wood. She didn't know how she knew, but there was no doubt. Every fiber of her being screamed at her that something was wrong.

It only took her an hour to get ready. She had prepared most of what she would need weeks before. At the time, she hadn't cared to dissect why it felt so right to carefully pack the clippings and documents relating to Professor Craven's spectacular downfall in her camping backpack. She hadn't examined why it always felt imperative to have hiking snacks on hand. Why she had — to the mystification and vague horror of her family — bought and carefully kept camping essentials packed and ready to go.

Some part of her had been preparing to go back to the Wood. As soon as the thought dawned on her it felt completely obvious and right. Her gear, food and water were all ready. All she needed was to call in her favor from the entomology department.

And maybe leave a note for her friends and family. Yeah — better do that this time she thought a bit guiltily.

By mid-morning she was halfway up the mountain. Spurred by a growing sense of dread, she jogged as much as she could up the steep and treacherous path. Daniella was barely surprised when Feldspar and Gneiss hurtled over a rise in the trail ahead of her, nimbly darting down the mountain as if the hounds of hell her on their heals. They were running so fast that they reached her in less than a second after she registered their approach.

"The Lord," Feldspar panted, his eyes wild with panic. "He needs you."