Cedar Sweep romance

He felt singed by something beyond.

Had he failed in some way? To have not brought the woman down with Avicus before she had seemingly been taken by the universe instead. He had spent too much time looking over the bodies of the Rise, wondering and pondering his position.

Doubt had disgruntled his mind.

Enough that he steps away from the healing bodies of their own to pace the sweep, to make sure. As if he might find redemption in cedar trees and snow drifts.

But he is called and he moves at once.

For he did not doubt the one he treasured most of all. Only himself.

Yet she is there, smeared in the blood of something not from their fleeting war. Smelling of iron and that rippling, burning intoxication of her own doing. He never doubted her and this mission. He never doubted her any step in their long dance of living among one another.

He misses her touch in that moment of seeing her first, before he had come near.

Now he moved on tired limbs, closer and closer. Devoted to her utterly, filled with a grand appreciation. Some part of him sickly hope she'd reach with teeth and mark his flesh in the way she had marked his heart.