Timeline: a Wings of Fire fanfiction (COMPLETED)

9.

Darkstalker

Clearsight knocks at my office door, gently, but she cracks it open before I answer.

And I know why. I don't need to read her mind.

The rain pounds down outside, the kind of rain where you're only half-convinced that it's not going to crack the roof open or something. She nudges me with her shoulder. "C'mon. Stop cursing at your scroll. We're going."

"I can't believe you're dragging me outside."

A flash of a smile flickers across her face.

"Come on. Trust me. You'll feel better. I'm your wife, you don't have a choice about this." She throws her wings around me, looping her talons under my arms, grunting as she tries to drag me off my chair.

I laugh, the first real laugh I've given her in days. "Are you kidnapping me?"

"Not kidnapping," she says incredulously, with mock offence. "I'm your wife."

"Wife-to-be."

She snorts, finally managing to heave me away from my desk. "Same thing. Come on, I think there's gonna be lightning. We're going."

***

"Look at this."

I pick up a cool shell with stripes of brown on the inside and smooth white on the outside.

I pause, frowning. A couple weeks ago, before Father died, I had to link up my scroll to my mind, so it would respond when I think or say a spell aloud. That way, Queen Vigilance will never have to find out about the scroll, but I'm still actually using the scroll as the source of my magic. If Clearsight disapproved, she never said anything about it.

"It's beautiful." Clearsight smiles a little bit. And for the first time in a long time, I realize that if someone saw us, maybe we would look like a normal couple.

Enchant the two prettiest seashells on this beach to turn themselves into earrings and then, let those earrings come to my talons.

Nothing happens for a moment, and then two earrings whoosh themselves through the door of the cave and into my talons. I hand them to Clearsight, smiling tentatively. I haven't given her a present in a long time. I forgot how much I missed that.

"For you. My wife-to-be." I meet her eyes.

"Darkstalker... they're beautiful." She hooks them into her ears, fumbling around for a moment. The waves crash against the shore, one after the other. WooshwooshWOOSSHHHwooshhh... "Thank you."

Our eyes meet for a second. I brush our wings together.

"Anytime."

"I love you," she tries, her voice a little faint.

"I love you too."

It's the lightest my chest has felt in... ages. To be honest.