Choosing to say out of the Alliance, the Cinders are isolated in their own conflicts, and when Helia Cinder reaches to the void for answers, she inadvertently draws a creature out. Expecting to be eaten alive, she is instead left with a man with no...
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Stone woke in comfort to the steady flow of flame magic caressing his body, and he turned to find Helia passed out on the bed next to him. It looked as if she'd faded off reading a spell book, her arms wrapped in her mage sleeves to better cushion her face as she slept on her stomach. With just two fingers, he trailed his knuckles over her cheek, and that was all it took to rouse her. Helia's eyes snapped open like a war general expecting an attack, and he flinched his hand back to himself as she yanked herself up onto her elbows, scanning the room before landing on Stone.
"Crap, I fell asleep on your bed." Helia sank back into the blankets despite the words before she lifted her fiery gaze to Stone's patient grey eyes. Something had her drifting her gaze lower into the bed before she touched her lips and her cheeks reddened.
"I apologize for kissing you without permission," Stone said as he realized she must be lingering on the way Ghost had left her. Without prompting, Stone would never dream of touching her that way, but Ghost was different with his memories. Memories Stone couldn't access even if he reached.
"You're talking about in the alleyway," Helia said, peeling her outer mage layers away as she sat up. They left her in a thin, unadorned white robe, but it tied her so tightly that it covered all of her skin save a small v at her neck. "So, you really do see through each other's eyes."
"Yes, I see and experience through Ghost as he does me, but with our damaged connection, it is more of a dream than memory sometimes."
"Why didn't you tell me?" Helia's question had Stone biting his tongue. Though Helia's expression was searching for meaning and not upset that he'd withheld information, it still felt like betrayal. Like he was supposed to share everything of himself without hesitation.
"I wanted to tell you, but the opportunity did not present itself," Stone tried to explain as he sat up on the opposite side of the bed, guilt weighing on him. "After our conversation yesterday, I was worried you would think Ghost seeing through my eyes was a danger to your people. I did not want you to cast me out." The last words were quieter than the rest, and Helia sighed as she found clean mage attire and slipped it on beyond his sight behind the wardrobe doors.
"Stone, I'm not going to kick you out."
Helia came round the wardrobe dressed in new formal Cinder attire, and he dropped his eyes to the embroidered flames that crawled the arms of the white airy fabric. When he lifted his gaze to hers, she averted her eyes and rubbed her wrist. Unmarred skin climbed to her forearm so she must have had a mage heal the punctures after Ghost had left. Not a Cinder though. They'd run to Pyre in an instant to tell him that his daughter had been bitten by a creature of the dark, and Stone would be dead. Again.
"Is it not weird that he kissed me?" Helia conquered her hesitation to ask.
"Why?"
"Well, you got really possessive around Zane just mentioning anything inappropriate, and Ghost actually kissed me. Does that not make you jealous?"
