He does not think.
If Lysander were thinking, in those moments between telling her and her answer (in touch, in words, in the glide of her feathers over his skin, each one turning him back to a god) then he would ask her to take her dagger back. To wear it again over her heart, the talisman that is her right, but not only for her own protection. With the dagger there is no death he need fear (never mind that each change to the fabric of time makes a new cut somewhere else, unintended). With the dagger she can save him, as she has already done once.
But her touch is fire sinking into his skin, mingling there with the wine that has made his blood sweet-slow and heavy. His senses have replaced his thoughts; having drunk his fill of soft gold Lysander closes his eyes until their breathing is a tide that pulls them deeper, tugs them out to unknown waters that taste of salt like sweat or tears. Lysander trembles beneath her touch and welcomes each shiver her breath raises on his dark skin; her dancing feet are replaced by the drumbeat of both their hearts, a new tempo.
When her teeth go to his throat he opens it to her, arching his neck back until his antlers brush his shoulders. What does she make of the pulse leaping there, so alive and thus so vulnerable? He thinks of the enemies that have tasted his blood - Raum’s dagger, the monster in the temple - and almost begs her to close her teeth, to drink of him and tell him if his blood tastes of salt or iron or ichor.
It is cold when she draws away.
Her voice opens his eyes to her face and he sees the tear-track darkening her cheek, with another drop of silver at the corner of her eye. Without a thought he kisses it away, his touch tender, his breath ragged. When she tugs on the chain for a moment he thinks she might open a world - almost her begs her to, almost he asks one more time to go home-
But her words, low and sure, stop him. His gaze finds hers and both are far steadier than rough breathing or racing hearts; he says nothing but feels the smile that blooms on his lips like a vine. There is joy in him, and fierce hunger, when he returns her kisses, when he closes his teeth just behind her ear and at the nape of her neck, when he buries her muzzle in the wildflower-field of her mane.
She turns away before he can see the grief in her - or perhaps it is only that he refuses to.
When he follows her down the hall it is not war he thinks of, or blood, or revenge. It is amethyst, it is gold, it is love and aching want. It is a girl with flowers in her hair who has found him in each world, who has made him more than a ghost, more than a god.
After they are gone darkness and silence eases again over the hall, save for the moonlight slanting in the windows that turns each settling dust-mote to a fraction of a star.
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