Not knowing what other path to take, I simply retraced our steps from our arrival. This led us through the main, pavilion-style entrance into the temple. Two children carrying armfuls of what looked like bandages stopped and stared at us, Suvi especially, before being prodded back to their duties by a voice calling from an adjacent hallway.

Suvi came to a jerky stop before the swaying curtains that separated this large space from the outer courtyard.

“Daylight,” she breathed.

I gave a growl of acknowledgement. A light, warm breeze shifted the curtains where they hung, letting in wedge-like shafts of sunlight so thick they almost appeared solid, like generous slices of Sionnachan butter on bread.

Sionnachan?

I could feel the exasperated tightening of my snout and jaw as I tried to remember what “Sionnachan” meant. It described a place, I was fairly certain. Apparently a place with butter.

When my mental toiling brought forth no new information on the subject, I gave up on trying to remember for now. Instead, I stood with Suvi and watched the wind sway white curtains, letting the light in. The curtain I’d torn down for my makeshift robe that first night had been replaced.

“Can we go outside?” Suvi asked.

I snorted. Of course we could. It was not as if a flimsy row of curtains could have locked us in. But for Suvi, it seemed like the curtains were a solid wall of stone. Like they represented a line she could not cross.

With a flick of my power licking outward like the breeze, I parted the curtains and led her through them.

Instantly she raised her hands in front of her face, scrunching her eyes shut against the sunlight.

“Paska,” she whispered. That was a word I heard from her somewhat regularly, but had not determined the literal meaning of yet. It often accompanied pain or annoyance.

Remembering how she’d needed shade before, I raised a hasty wing above her head, casting a cooling shadow over her. Once adequately shaded, she lowered her hands and then opened her eyes in stages. Fully shut to squinting, squinting to a narrowed very blinky sort of gaze, until they were finally open all the way.

“I mist suhn light.”

I only caught the first and last words of her statement, but based on the wistful way she sighed I assumed it was something to do with not having been outside in many days. I did not realize that would bother her so much. She had not seemed to enjoy the outside in our first days together. She got too cold, got too hot, and the sun seemed too bright for her skin and her eyes. But there she was, stepping out from under the protective rooftop of my wing, tipping her face up to the sky just so she could feel the light come down upon it.

Eventually, she lowered her face again and looked around. I did the same, feeling rather like a dunce for not taking note of our surroundings earlier. No one here posed any real threat to Suvi while I stood beside her, but I still needed to know who and what was near to us at all times.

“This is bue-tih-full,” she said.

“What’s that word? Courtyard? Yes, this is a courtyard.”

I hadn’t taken much note of the space before, but did so now. Sun gleamed on the river stone beneath our feet and drenched the massive natural pillars of the trees directly across from us. But there was more in the courtyard I had not seen before. Raised, curving garden beds interspersed with benches rimmed the rounded space. Greenery sprouted from the gardens, and Suvi wandered to the nearest one, bending down and resting her hands upon her knees.

There was nothing I could either imagine or remember that compared to the elegant curve of Suvi’s body when she bent down like that. Her hair tumbled forward over her shoulders in a pale river whose colour defied definition. Not quite gold, nor silver, nor any variation of white, but some shifting combination of the three, gleaming like liquid metal. Her spine created a graceful curve leading into generously rounded hips, hips that would be perfect for grasping so I could ease her backward onto my –

I wrenched my gaze from her backside and stared at the bright sky, fangs on edge and groin throbbing. Now that Suvi was no longer so sick and weak, now that she’d regained her strength and energy, it was harder and harder to ignore the way I wanted her. Because that want ran very, very deep.

I brought my eyes slowly back to Suvi, this time keeping my attention fixed to her face in profile. Her expression was relaxed, maybe even happy, as her grey gaze roved over the various grasses and flowers in the garden bed. Perfect, innocent little star. Completely oblivious to the dark, demanding heat pooling in the belly of the male who stood behind her.

We might have stayed like that all day. Suvi studying the plants while I ruminated on the effort it took to contain my cocks in my slit these days.

We might have. If the sky had not started shifting overhead.

It darkened, though there wasn’t a cloud in sight, before solidifying into a sheet of hard rock. Sky door.

It was how I’d brought Suvi here.

And now someone, someone potentially as powerful as I was, was doing the same thing.

“Get behind me!” I did not know why I even bothered saying it. I was already reaching for Suvi, grasping her by the arm and thrusting her behind my back. My wings slammed open as I gripped her wrist and walked her backwards, staring upwards the entire time.

Mother’s Claws spilled from the temple, filling the courtyard, aiming weapons upward. But they did not seem overly afraid, just cautious.

“It is likely Aeshyr.”

A voice from beside me made me snap my jaws and hiss, but it was merely Jolakaia who’d followed the Mother’s Claws out here. My breath dragged in and out. Darkness clouded the edges of my vision, and my bones felt suddenly too large for my scales. Suvi was struggling at my back, trying to break from my hold, but I did not let her go.

“The other stone sky god I told you about,” Jolakaia said slowly. “Remember, Skallagrim? He comes here to trade, that is all. He’s never shown any violent inclinations towards anyone here. You need to get a hold of yourself!”

I shook my snout once, twice, like I was trying to dislodge an insect from my ear. I remembered her telling me about him. I even remembered wanting to speak with him, to ask him questions. But being faced with him here, now, as he cracked open the sky and descended into the courtyard while Suvi was right there at my back was another matter entirely.

Suvi was no longer fighting my hold. She’d noticed what was happening overhead, and when she saw the other stone sky god, the one called Aeshyr, she crowded closer to me instead of fighting to pull away. That change in her – from fighting me to huddling against my spine – made ferocious heat expand in my chest. She did not like to be captured by me, cornered by me. But when faced with a new danger, something frightening, something male, I was the one she hid behind willingly. I was the one she trusted. Me.

She knew that when it counted I’d protect her. And by the skies, as the other winged male touched down, I vowed I’d do it.

My starmap buzzed, my power primed to lash out and drive him back the moment I needed to – the moment I sensed the merest whiff of a threat from him.

“Skallagrim,” Jolakaia murmured low but sharp, a warning. A warning not to fight, not to rage, not to destroy half the people in this courtyard and leave the other half limping and limbless. I ignored her, because above the heads of the Mother’s Claws between us, Aeshyr’s eyes met mine.

My first thought was those are a dead male’s eyes. Hollowed out and lifeless. His face seemed hollow, too. Pale skin stretched too-tight over hard bone. In places, it almost appeared as if bone jutted right out of his body. There were shiny, black, near-metallic-looking blades embedded in his skin along the sharp line of his cheekbones. His face was closer to Suvi’s in structure than mine – no snout. But Suvi’s had life and colour and movement and his did not.