CHP30

“—st beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.” Briel’s blue eyes lit with magic and darkened with his fires. His voice went low and husky, gravel in his throat that hadn’t been there before. He stretched his hand out into nothing, beckoning at the air as a reverie passed through his mind.

Before him hung a painting, a beautiful woman with pale skin and milk-white wings stared back at him with eyes an iridescent blue.

“It’s wrong,” Briel breathed, drawing his hand to himself and turning his back on the painting.

“What’s so wrong about it?” Zayin reached a comforting hand to Briel’s shoulder.

“That is not Sai.”

“Not even a little?” Zaien tilted his head with worry for him.

“It has her four wings and parts of her smile, but that is not my Sai.” Briel held a hand to his chest and shuddered.

“Then tell me what she looked like, Briel.”

He closed his eyes and spoke as he reveled in a memory. She had skin like milk and tea, soft sand and wood. Her wings, not the white they portrayed, were silvery things, the lightest of grey that shimmered in the light. Her form was softer, more curvaceous. Her countenance was gold and silver, hair a pale gold. She stood taller than any male and more beautiful than any other. Her soft lips spoke whispers of truth. Her eyes, though, were depthless and silver pools blind to all but the brightest lights. For all the small things she could see, she could never see the ugliness.

Briel’s hand traveled to his face, fingertips brushing the broad features from his temple, cheekbone, jawline, and neck. His cheeks flushed, a strange blushing heat dappled over where he had touched alone.

“She’s still not ready,” Briel breathed with a choked breath.

“I’m sure she will be soon… Are you sure we cannot go find her now?”

Briel turned his fierce dark gaze to Zaien and tilted his head. His hand outstretched and touched over the top of Zaien’s head before finishing in a soft stroke down his delicate blonde locks.

“If you tell me I look like alt’dam sire again, I’m going to cut all my hair off.” Zaien’s lip curled like he genuinely meant it.

“If you do, may you gift me the locks so that I might curl up with them and sleep soundly,” Briel said with a playful lilt.

Zaien slapped Briel’s hand away and shoved him to stumble over the polished marble of the floor. He lost his footing and fell back on his butt. Briel grinned up at Zaien and moved to stand.

The hall hadn’t changed much in the hundreds of years he had visited it in every young life he had. A hundred versions of him stood at a hundred portraits over thousands of years, staring at the everchanging images of his love. He started from her last to the first, gazing upon each one in turn. The dark hall flickered weak light from lanterns powered by their unending mana. Ornate pillars rose fifty feet into the air, such a waste of architecture for a hall no more than twenty feet wide, too narrow to fly within. Behind him, the windows of the night brought no light or respite of their own save for the twinkle of stars so far away. White stone walls spaced between the inset pillars, each creating a small alcove and private screen for the next painting of her, each ensuring a guarded moment where none could see the hurt in his eyes.

“I saw her,” Briel said quietly as he strolled down the line to one portrait of an incarnation of her that he had loved. His hand reached across the distance he usually kept from the paintings, and a finger stroked softly over the pale face of a black-haired girl with brilliant blue eyes and small heart-shaped lips.

“Is she Acerrai?” It was a whisper that escaped Zaien’s lips, one full of dread. She had hated her form in that life, a child of the dark, bound to Acryan, an Anael-born boy at the time. It showed in her distant eyes that gleamed back at him, making Briel’s eyes well with glistening tears that he blinked away.

“No.”

“Then what is she?” Zaien asked.

“Beautiful.”