Jess gestured at him vigorously. "You won't be sorry," she said, and scooped up another huge bite.
Reive smiled a little, and took a small bite. Jess was pleased to see his expression of delight, and even more pleased when he dived back in for more.
"How is it?" Heddy asked, passing by their table with her coffeepot.
With her mouth full, all Jess could do was moan expressively.
Heddy smiled. "Coffee to go with it? On the house."
She poured them two steaming cups and left them alone.
Jess and Reive cleaned their bowls down to the last delicious crumb.
As she was chasing the last bits of berry-soaked toasted crumble topping around the edges of her dish (and half-seriously wondering if it would be horribly rude to pick up the bowl and lick it), Reive leaned across the table and whispered, "I've just thought of something. We don't have any Canadian currency."
"Oh, crap." Jess patted her pockets. No money, no passport. Magical traveling wasn't all it was cracked up to be. "I have my credit cards. Maybe that'll work? Um, ma'am? Do you take credit cards?"
The innkeeper produced a cell phone and struggled with a plugin scanner. After some tries, they got Jess's card to swipe, and full of berries and ice cream, wandered on up the street.
Jess was glad they'd had a chance to stop and rest. Reive had been looking completely wiped out from the walk down the hill, and now he seem to have perked up a bit.
Maybe he's getting better, she thought hopefully.
She suspected it wasn't going to be that easy. This was, if anything, just a temporary remission.
But it gave them a little breathing room to enjoy the day. Seagulls wheeled above them, and colorful boats with names like Fin and Tonic and The Codfather bobbed in the harbor. Everyone they met said hello to them.
"This entire village is like something that time forgot," Jess murmured to Reive. "I wonder if it's like this at least partly because of Mace."
She expected Reive to ask her what she meant, but instead he nodded. "Dragon clans sometimes take local human villages under their protection. My clan doesn't have one, but I've visited them. They're often like this, a little bit old-fashioned and unique."
"That's just what I was thinking. Like the entire place has wrapped itself around Mace, a little bit. Does that make any sense?"
"It does." Reive smiled slightly.
Reive was rubbing his stone arm again through his jacket sleeve.
"Are you hurting?" Jess asked gently. "Here ... let me."
She laid a hand on his arm. Beneath the sleeve, his arm was hard and unyielding, but the rest of his body relaxed somewhat.
"Does this help?" she asked.
"It does, but ..." He took a breath, strangely shallow, and she wondered with a stab of worry if the stone was affecting his lungs now. "I can't just ask you to walk around holding my arm."
"How about if I hold your hand instead?" Jess slid her hand down to clasp the stiff fingers covered with the glove. "There, now people will just think we're one of those insufferable PDA couples who can't resist holding hands all the time. No problem."
She was smiling as she said it, but then her eyes prickled with tears and she had to blink rapidly to fight them back.
This was going to work. She refused to think otherwise. She couldn't find him and then lose him immediately. She wouldn't.
A strange feeling stirred inside her, a kind of core-deep agreement. For an instant she almost thought she could hear the grinding rustle of great stone wings.
"Are you all right?" Reive asked.
Jess blinked at him. "Do I not look all right?"
"You just got the strangest look on your face."
"Oh. I ... um. You told me once that shifters can talk to the instinctive part of yourself. I don't, not really, but ..." She hesitated, not wanting to offend him if it was something private. But he looked alert and attentive, listening to her, so she went on. "Do you actually hear them? Is it words?"
"Sort of. It's hard to explain. It's not that we hear our animals with our ears, exactly. It's more that—"
"You just know what they're saying," she said.
"Exactly."
"I think I do actually have that, now that I'm listening for it. Just maybe not quite in the same way you do."
Reive smiled, and put his good hand over the one she was holding. "Something else we have in common."
Jess smiled, but deep down inside, in that same hidden part of her soul, uneasiness stirred.
She had come all this way hoping to find a cure for her condition. Even if Mace didn't know how, there might be someone else who could.
But if a shifter's animal side was really just the instinctive side of themselves, then the gargoyle part of her was still her. Even if she somehow found a way to undo it ... wouldn't it be like getting rid of half her soul?
Who would she even be without it?
Reive
Reive felt that he could have stayed here forever with Jess's hands wrapped in his own, her presence a soothing balm to the aches in his body. But the tightness in his chest made it clear that, however much he appreciated having her with him, Jess could only add so much extra time to Reive's personal clock.
"We should probably be getting back," Jess said before Reive could say anything, and he nodded.
She set a pace up the hill that he could easily keep up with, even with his breath coming short. He was grateful and also frustrated with himself; if not for Jess, he probably would have pushed himself up the hill anyway. But that would have meant striding off ahead of her ... and then probably collapsing to catch his breath on the first steep stretch of hill that he came to.
So he told himself it wasn't that it was necessary, exactly. It was just that it was a very nice day and he couldn't think of a nicer way to spend it than strolling up the hill, hand in hand with his mate.
It was a far more pleasant thing to dwell on than the hitch in his breathing, and an even more worrying ache somewhere deep in his chest, that even the painkilling effects of Jess's touch couldn't quite sooth. He wondered how much longer he had.
We will beat this. For our mate.
But his dragon's voice seemed strangely muted again, more like it had been in the early stages of this illness, when he had first begun to have trouble making contact with it. Jess's presence had brought his dragon out, but now even that effect seemed to be wearing off.
"You know, it occurs to me that we hardly know anything about each other," Jess said. Her voice was soft, but it suited the quiet calm of the hillside. "I can't believe I've only known you for a few days. It seems like so much longer. What kinds of things do you like, Reive? What's your favorite food?"
"Cheeseburgers," he said promptly, and she giggled. "Why? Is that an odd answer?"
"It's just that I would have expected something more exotic from a dragon, I guess."
"Hey, keep in mind I'm a dragon who grew up on a mountain in the middle of nowhere," Reive pointed out. "Cheeseburgers are exotic, for me at least. I hardly ever got to have them. Also, most shifters like meat. Especially dragons. What about you?"