Late into the festival week, Eulalie had disappeared back to the court carried only by the heavy drumming of her feet and the racing, thrumming of her heart. Fear was a wild, uncontrollable thing that she had not felt in more than a year’s time. Not since coming to Delumine, her escape, her second chance. But that fateful glance at the festival had changed everything.

She had been dancing her way through the lantern-lit crowd, laughter bubbling out of her chest and a sparkle in her dark eyes when an all too familiar voice had frozen her in place. Turning her head, she had been greeted by the face of someone she had thought she would never see again. The man her parents had sold her to as a youth—she loathed to even think his name—stood amongst the gathered bodies talking to a young woman dressed in fine silks with her hair pulled up in intricate wrappings. Inside, Eulalie could not help but wonder if she was another pet of his. Had he merely replaced her with someone else, to torture and to rob of freedom and of life? On the outside, she merely stared.

He had begun to turn in her direction and it was as though something feral was clawing its way into her. Eulalie turned and fled, pushing her way through the bodies. Had the crowd been this large the entire time? The bodies so close together? She couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t breathe and she couldn’t get through. And what if he noticed her? What then? It took her too long to reach the edges of the festival, to bolt out from beneath the cover of trees. Suddenly, the warm summer air had become stifling.

It took her the entire trip back to the court to realize that the emotion rising up inside her, choking her, was panic. It did not subside, even after minutes, hours. Days. The ivory and sunshine woman had hidden herself away, high within the walls of the citadel and fought against the tremors that zipped beneath her skin and the hummingbird vibrating of her pulse. She thought she had gotten the closure she needed, but then why, oh why, was she so afraid he would come bursting through the doors and drag her away and back to Solterra, to chain her up and to scar her again?

She did not sleep, did not eat. Every time she closed her eyes all she saw was his dark, dappled skin and his wicked, wicked smile warning her not to step out of line. She had been his prize, and even after all this time he still had a hold of her like a snake—wringing the life from her veins and the light from her eyes.

The woman did not know how many days had passed when a screeching came from outside the window She did not answer, could not gather the care to see what might be waiting for her beyond it. When the summons persisted, tap-tap-tapping, Eulalie forced herself to standing. All the way to the window her legs trembled, a sheen of sweat to her normally fine coat. There, upon the sill, waited a familiar owl. Alba’s presence spiked unease within her chest. Even more unsettling than that of seeing a demon from her past was the thought that something was wrong with Somnus.

Somnus.

Eulalie descended the tower as quickly as she could, and Alba waited for her, to lead her through the dark. She could never know what the barn owl was thinking, but could feel the urgency in the rush of her wings, the ruffle of her feathers. She followed Somnus’ bonded all along the Rapax, past where it branched off to flow south and became Amare Creek. How long had it taken Alba to come back to the court to find her? How long had Somnus been alone?

Oh and it took so long, ages it felt like, for the gilded man to come into sight standing so forlornly along the bank of the water. Her pace slowed until she had come to a stop behind him. In the dark hours of twilight, fireflies dancing all around them, it might be hard to see the darkness under her eyes, the echoes of exhaustion creeping along her skin. Despite everything her mind had put her body through, despite the lingering anxiety that drummed against her ribcage, she had come for him. She would always come for him.

Eulalie stepped forward slowly, coming closer to his side where she reached out her nose and brushed it gently along his flank. Her earth eyes inquired, searching for the verdant green she realized she so coveted, looking at the lines of burden in his face.

“Somnus.” I’m here.

The sound of her name on his lips brought a gentle smile to Eulalie’s face, and her eyes never left Somnus’ own as he turned to her. She searched his face, wishing to take all his worries, all his fears and hurts into herself. Although she knew she could never take the weight entirely from his shoulders, she was more than willing to help him shoulder it. He never needed to be alone. Nobody should ever be alone.

She did not register the moment Alba left them alone, taking off into the night with a flurry of wing beats. It was only them and the fireflies and the stars in the sky above them; the babbling of the creek and the chirp of crickets creating a tranquil soundtrack around them. Eulalie knew so little of his troubles, though she could see from their interactions that he spent perhaps too much time letting the responsibilities of his position getting to him. What else, she wondered, plagued him? The sunshine woman wondered how she might ease his mind.

He beckoned her forward and she stepped up to his side, the down of his wings brushing against her side, all of him encompassing her as she allowed him to take all of her attention. Her heart tightened at his words, at the endearment that fluttered along behind it like a banner in the wind. When her heart beat faster, she knew this time it was not for fear. Knowing that she must look like she hadn’t slept, hadn’t been well at all and that he’d noticed, despite the things that burdened him and weighed him down. It brought a sort of swelling, rising warmth within her.

“You are the one standing here in the dark on your lonesome. I think perhaps I should be asking if you are alright… don’t you? You can tell me what is on your mind.” Eulalie could not help the smile on her face, soft and curling slightly at the corners of her lips. It was a somber, wistful thing, fleeting though the warmth remained within her. She breathed in deeply, looking away briefly to gather her thoughts, her truth. Then, she looked back at the golden man beside her, searching the green depths of his eyes.

“I saw a monster, parading in a man’s skin,” she said softly, and her voice wavered slightly, her eyes closing to breath in again. To push down the lingering dread that creeped along her spine. “One which I had hoped never to see again.” When she opened her eyes then, they spoke volumes more than she could at that moment and without thought Eulalie leaned a little closer to Somnus, taking comfort in his heat, his presence at her side. “I’m just glad not to be alone right now,” she said, the truth spilling from her like water as she took him in again, “I’m glad to be here, with you.”

It was such a simple thing, the pair standing there side by side. From a distance they might appear just as a couple partaking in each other’s company. But the feelings roiling underneath their skin. the stresses bearing down on their shoulders, were so much more complex than that. They were ghosts of the past and worries of the future, and the pressure to do right and good. They stood among the fireflies and the dry summer grasses but they were both far away from this night. They might be wading through their own troubles, but those struggles had brought them here, together.

Somnus reached his muzzle out to her and Eulalie closed her eyes at the velvet touch of his nose against hers, a soft smile shaping her lips. It was like a warmth inside her, a flowing, electric thing that ran through her veins. She returned the gesture, turning her head to press her muzzle gently against his in a caress of ivory and golden skin. “I believe you,” the woman breathed, once more finding comfort in his place at her side, at his promise spoken to her upon the summer air, “I trust you.” And she did, she realized, though that statement slipped off her tongue without intention. Of everything the golden man had showed her, given her, a reason not to have faith in him was not one of them.

He sighed, and her earth eyes searched his face again, hearing the weight that was sitting heavily upon him, rather than simply seeing or feeling it. “Tell me,” she encouraged him, knowing it would ease him as much as it would allow her to aid in whatever way she could, and tell her he did. Eulalie listened to Somnus’ confession of how he was feeling and though she could not understand the pressures of leading a kingdom, nor the ways it could eat away at someone, she could empathize. One thing she did understand was the feeling of not being adequate or doing a sufficient job, but, “You are so much more than you can see,” she said, recalling the words with fondness as she had spoken them to him the first day they had met. She felt they were more true now than ever. “Everything that you do for the court is enough, and your people love you.”

The ivory and sunshine woman reached out to him, and if he would let her, she would gently touch her head against the curve of his neck. Eulalie closed her eyes and breathed in, and Somnus’ smell surrounded her, enveloped her. Her heart raced, but it was a different feeling than either that had set it to the hummingbird pace it had reached so far. It pushed passed the panic and the darkness that wanted so much to settle within her heart. It was a need she felt deep within her, a longing to feel a connection to another, beyond any she had so far. She whispered, “Let me take some of the weight from you.”

What she wouldn't give to know what was going through his mind, to see and understand as their gazes remained locked. Eulalie did not look away, knowing he would be able to read everything in her eyes, the openness, trueness of her words. Though she could not make him believe her, she hoped he would. In her life she had always had so much to give, and yet nobody to give it to until coming to Delumine. This brilliant, bright, beautiful man was worth giving it to. That much she knew.

She believed in simple things. In small things that were always more than they appeared. One of those things was the words he spoke, extending to her the same truth she had set out before him. So few words, but the sunshine woman did understand. She did not need anything other than that, she could have been happy then. But Somnus accepted her touch when she reached out for him and he spoke her name and she felt a tugging, pulling within her. A warmth, a longing, and she thought that he might have felt too.

Her head turned with the movement of his body as they remained in their embrace, and her breathing quickened, her chest rising and falling in cadence. He buried himself within her golden hair and she gently brushed her muzzle along his neck. The ivory warrior gave herself over to the sensation of Somnus, the feeling of the touch of their skin. She drowned in him, happily, gladly, and when he pulled slowly away her earth eyes met his vibrant green and Eulalie smiled. It was not a question in her mind of whether she could and would.

She breathed in slowly, attempting to steady her racing, fluttering, soaring heart as his lips pressed against her jaw. "Yes," she said to him, her voice a whisper on the night air. There was nothing and no one but them, even with the creek beside them and the fireflies around them and the stars above them. She pressed herself closer to him and let herself forget the world, even if just for this one night.