The question formed in the air, bold and immediate, as if it had been waiting behind her lips since the moment she stepped aboard.
"May I?"
It hovered between them, written in large curling black script, the ink almost steaming where it formed. Fedlimid saw the word hang there like a door not yet opened.
He paused. His breath slowed, caught in the hollow between ribs. Reluctance was growing fast in his mind,I but he was curious. Too curious to know more about that part of himself that existed just beneath his skin.
So he nodded.
The next word burned brighter.
"Brace yourself."
He didn't have time to do anything else.
Her hand closed around his, sensors flaring to life not gently, but with the precision of scalpels. They bit through the surface of his skin without breaking it, drank from his magic, his temperature, the breath locked in his chest. They plunged into him like a thousand mouths tasting marrow, seeking what lay beneath the shell.
The world tilted.
