I stared blankly at him. “I can’t think of anything right now. My brain is too full and too empty.”
He smiled then, and my heart jumped. It was his smile, one that was warm and open, and I never thought I’d see that smile again. “Okay. Let me think of something.” He sucked his lower lip in between his teeth, and if I had been standing, I knew my legs would’ve given out on me. Zayne...he did that all the time, but he’d only done that once after the Fall. “I got it. You have a constellation on your ceiling.”
I truly stopped breathing then. Honest to God, my lungs seized right up as I stumbled to my feet.
“I put it there,” he continued, slowly standing. “I called it the Constellation of Zayne, and what happened after I showed you that ceiling has to be one of my fondest memories of all time.” His voice deepened as he bit down on that lip again. “You showed me just how much you loved me. You gave me everything—your body, your heart, your trust.”
For the second time, the world slammed to another halt. I wasn’t aware of moving. The achy protest of muscles and bones didn’t stop me as I threw myself at him. Or attempted to. My balance was off, my movements too jerky and stiff, and it was more like falling at him—
He was a blur of speed as he snapped forward, moving so fast that I didn’t even have a chance to be startled. He caught me, his arms sweeping around me, and the moment my hands connected with the bare skin of his chest, I knew.
This was him. It was his skin against my palms, and it was warm, no longer cool to the touch, his breath coasting over my cheek. It was him holding me.
It was Zayne.
16
Somehow, we ended up on the ground again, but this time with Zayne sitting upright and me in his lap. I turned into a total octopus, wrapping my legs around his hips and clamping my arms around his shoulders.
“You really remember,” I whispered, burying my face in his neck. Each breath I took was full of him.
“I remember the first time I saw you,” he said, and I shuddered as I felt his hand curl around the back of my head. “You were hiding behind a curtain, where you weren’t supposed to be. You were eavesdropping.”
“I wasn’t eavesdropping,” I denied, my words mostly muffled by his skin.
He chuckled, and even though it sounded hoarse and shaky, it did strange and wonderful things to my heart. It wasn’t that cold, apathetic laugh of a Fallen. “You were totally eavesdropping.”
I totally had been.
“I also remember that you took a swing at me when I tried to introduce myself.”
I frowned against his neck. “That’s because you snuck up on me at night, in the middle of the woods.”
“You meant to say that you weren’t being very observant, and correct me if I’m wrong, I wasn’t the one sneaking around,” he teased.
“You’re wrong.” I squeezed him tighter.
He responded by dropping a kiss to the crown of my head. “I remember the first time you revealed yourself. We were in Thierry’s office, and I think Nicolai might’ve choked on his own breath. I remember the first time you gave me a heart attack. It was after you told me about your vision.”
The corners of my lips turned up. Not wanting him to think that I wasn’t, well, capable after dropping the whole going blind bomb, I’d taken off and jumped from one rooftop to the next. He’d acted as if he hadn’t been all that happy with it, but I knew he’d been secretly pleased—excited and challenged.
“And I remember the night you helped get the imp’s claw out of me.” His voice deepened, and this time, my shiver had everything to do with the memory of him and I, in his bathroom and in his bed. “I remember it all now—those feelings and memories are a part of me.”
I couldn’t speak as I squeezed my eyes shut against the flood of emotion. All my senses concentrated on the feel of his skin under my fingers. His body temperature was as warm as before, running hotter than a normal human’s. Hands shaking, I drew them down, over his chest, stopping over his heart.
His heart beat strongly against my palm.
It really did work.
The Throne hadn’t been lying. The Crone hadn’t given me some kind of bunk spell. I hadn’t messed up. It really worked.
Tears slipped free, and there was no stopping them. I broke wide open, and all the hopelessness and despair, the sorrow and grief, crashed into the relief and pounding joy spilling out of me. I tried to rein it all back in. This was a happy moment, a good one, and I didn’t need to spend it drowning Zayne in my tears, but I couldn’t stop myself.
Zayne pressed his cheek to the side of my head. He spoke as my body shook, releasing all the pent-up emotion that I’d barely been able to keep leashed from the moment I’d lost him. I had no idea what he said. He could’ve been telling me that he was part-platypus at this point, and I wouldn’t have cared. I lifted my hands, sinking my fingers into the soft strands of his hair.
“Your tears are killing me,” he said, and that I understood fully. “Killing me.”
It was Zayne.
It was Zayne.
It was Zayne.
That was all I could think as I soaked in the feel of him. Zayne was alive, he was back and it was really him. I don’t know how much time passed while Zayne continued to whisper to me, gently rocking us while I cried enough to sink the entire city of Washington, DC. Eventually, after what felt like an absurd amount of time, the tears lessened, and the tremors that coursed through me every couple of seconds ceased. I could breathe. I could finally breathe.
Zayne carefully guided my face out of his neck. Blinking until his features cleared, I shuddered as I reached up, wrapping my fingers around his wrists. “I’m sorry. I just—you’re alive and it’s you, and I’m so happy, and I can’t stop crying, because what if this is some kind of superdetailed dream? That seems more plausible. I lost you, and when you came back, I thought—” As close as we were, I could see his eyes—really see them since I didn’t have to worry about him throwing me somewhere. “Your eyes.” I leaned in until our noses almost touched. I squinted. “Wow.”
His hands dropped to my hips. “What? I haven’t seen them.”
Did Heaven not have mirrors? Better yet, had he not looked in the mirror since he...since he Fell? I touched his cheek. “They’re really blue. Like very, very blue,” I told him, at an utter loss when it came to using descriptive words. “But there’s a...white-gold behind your pupils. I can see just the edges of it. It’s grace. I noticed it before, but to really see it like this? I’ve just never seen anything like that.”
Thick lashes swept down, shielding his eyes as he turned his head, pressing his cheek into my palm. “How noticeable is it?”