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As Milori lazed in the blessed state of being half awake and half asleep, he heard Clarion jolt awake with a loud gasp beside him. It was a sound that roused him to full wakefulness and threw a spear of panic through his chest.
“Milori?” her voice was small when she called out.
It carried an underlayer of guilt with it; a specific kind of guilt he knew that she had been trying to get rid of.
“I’m here, darling,” he assured, finding her hand with his own in the groggy light of her lifeglow and lacing their fingers together.
She sighed with relief. The sound was still slathered with sleep, and, evidently, she wasn’t as awake as he had thought she was.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered, voice cutting out more from disuse than anything else.
He did not have to ask what she was sorry for. She said it often enough on nights like these.
He rolled closer to her, finding her face and carefully cupping her cheek with his hand. One thumb swiped across her cheekbone, feather-light even as he shifted his weight to lever himself onto his side enough to watch her face from above.
“It’s alright.”
That was usually enough to ease her back to sleep.
“No,” she breathed, brow crinkled, eyes barely open and irises glowing soft blue.
But, at times, even his assurance wasn’t enough.
“Why not?” he asked softly.
She shut her eyes again, eyelids flickering.
“You had so much blood,” she mumbled, a hand coming up to wrap around his wrist where his pulse thudded strongly. “It was hot and it was everywhere and it wouldn’t stop.” she sounded more awake.
“It’s alright now, though, darling,” he whispered. “My wounds have healed and my wing would be far more painful if you hadn’t done what I had asked of you.”
She frowned, squinting up at him, eyes more alert than before.
“You sure?”
He smiled and leaned down to press a kiss to her cheek.
“Do you want to check?” He asked, pulling away again.
Her eyes fluttered back open.
“Yes, please.”
Milori turned over to lay on his stomach as Clarion eased herself up into a sitting position and swung a leg over his hips, straddling his hamstrings. A tinkling sound and slight increase in the brightness of their room told him she’d conjured a fae light. He relaxed into the mattress again, watching golden light flicker across their silken sheets, mesmerised by the slight iridescence in the weave. He felt Clarion move atop him as she shook dust from her wings and coated her hands in it.
“Tell me if this hurts,” she whispered, the index and thumb of each hand settling at the base of his wings.
“I’m alright,” he answered, one hand moving back to grasp her quad.
She hummed, then lifted his wings, pixie dust seeping into the flight membrane for the first time in a long while. He shuddered at the feeling, so foreign after so long. Clarion continued her inspection, one finger tracing a vein on his right wing before stopping millimetres from the jagged break. She sucked in a breath. Milori squeezed her quad, thumb rubbing soothingly across her soft skin where her nightdress had ridden up.
“Alright,” Clarion breathed, hands moving from his wings to his lower back. “Okay.”
That was one concern assured. Now for the rest.
He held his wings out of her way, remembering a time when doing even that much with them had been impossible.
He tensed as her fingers—far too light upon his skin—swept across the sides of his ribs where hawk talons had left deep puncture wounds.
He though that if it hadn’t been for Queen Altherion’s quick thinking and her reserves of stardust on that fateful day, he’d have died.
“Press harder,” he instructed, squirming a little and not willing to admit that he was ticklish there, lest she use that against him at a later date.
Clarion hummed an affirmative, the end note jumping to an inquisitive pitch as she pressed firm fingertips to the lumpy scar tissue away from where the hawk’s talons had pierced him.
“What are these ones?” Clarion’s fingers slid firmly across the middle of his back, her tone worried.
“I used to fall from Khione a lot,” he explained softly. “Some landings were less than pleasant, and some of her rescues were quite rough.”
Clarion was silent and still for a while. Then, as Milori opened his mouth to say something, she moved. He shut his mouth as her hands braced against the mattress on either side of his ribs. He gasped quietly as her warm lips pressed to the scars that she had just uncovered. One kiss to the one that crossed his spine; another to the jagged one that started on his hip and disappeared beneath his sleep shorts; two to the base of his wings, one for each. He felt his face heat with each one and found his eyes stinging with grateful tears. He was lucky to have her back.
“They must have hurt,” Clarion whispered, straightening up into her original position in his peripheral, one index finger trailing along the scar at his hip.
“Yes,” he agreed, voice rough as he gently squeezed her quad again. Her free hand moved to lay over his, squeezing back. “But they don’t hurt me anymore.”
Clarion’s hands moved back to his wings, fingers gentle as she guided them back down into their usual folded position. His hand dropped from her quad as she slid back onto the bed behind him. Milori turned his head to face her, studying her expression in the dimming fae light hovering above them. She seemed less worried—that crease between her brows having smoothed back out—but not entirely unbothered. Her eyes—no longer glowing—had an increasing hollowness to them.
“What is it?” he asked, rolling onto his side and scooting closer.
Clarion reached absently for one of his hands, tangling their fingers together with that faraway look still in her eyes.
“I wonder what we’d have been like if I hadn’t banished you to the furthest part of the Hollow,” she murmured, bringing his hand to hold against her chest.
“You didn’t banish me-” he began to protest.
“I may as well have,” Clarion said decisively, gaze suddenly fully focused once more. “The Border Law ensured we would never see each other again. It was enough of a punishment that it satisfied my mother’s vendetta against you and the rest of the Winter Court.”
The hand of his that she still held to her chest flexed as he thought of a counter argument. The more he thought about it, however, the more he realised that she was right. He sighed heavily, then leaned over to press a kiss to her forehead. She huffed, catching the unsaid: “you were right.”
“I think we’d have still been miserable,” he said, circling back to her original question. “I pushed everyone away while I was healing. I don’t think you’d have stayed for that.”
She hummed, thoughtful and weary.
“Bóreas persisted with his attempts to get me over to see you before I put the Border Law in place,” she confessed quietly. “I refused each time. Even Mother was visibly surprised.”
Altherion was rarely surprised, and when she was, she was never visibly surprised. Milori tried to imagine just how much of a wreck—or not—that Clarion would have to have been to pull such a reaction out of their previous Queen.
“Well…” he trailed off, not quite sure what to say.
Clarion’s face twisted painfully.
“I’m horrible, I know,” she whispered, hiding her face from him with a swift downward tilt of her head.
She held his hand tighter. Milori shook his head in disbelief, chastising himself for such a vague half response.
He could almost hear Altherion’s sarcastic, ‘Well done, frost boy. Now, clean up your mess.’
Regardless, that thought that his tired mind had voiced to him in Altherion's snide tone held some merit for being an effective course of action if undertaken with the proper sensitivity.
“No, Clarion, you’re not,” he refuted firmly, pulling her close and wrapping her safely within his arms. “I’d have hurt you and we would never have made it to where we are now. We would be fighting like your mother and Bóreas. I’m glad you stayed away even if it did take us a few centuries to come back to each other.”
Clarion drew a shaky breath, hands gripping his as though her life depended on it.
“Okay.” she sniffed and pulled back with wet eyes.
Milori eased his hand from her grip to cup her cheek. Clarion turned her face to press a kiss to his palm, her hand finding its way back to his wrist, holding him there.
“Try not to fret over the past,” he whispered, seeking her eyes with his. “We’re here now. We’re alright, Ree.”
She nodded, bottom lip caught between her teeth in contemplation.
“I’ll get the light,” she said eventually, plunging them into darkness again with a flick of her wrist.
“I love you,” he whispered into the dark, hand finding her face again, thumb swiping over her cheekbone. “Remember that, Ree, when that guilt tries to choke your heart.”
Clarion made a pitchy noise in the back of her throat and moved as close as she could to him.
“I love you too,” she said shakily, pressing one last kiss to his jaw before she finally settled with her forehead pressed to his throat.
It was a while before either of them fell asleep again.