Since Esmera was abandoned on a stranger's doorstep as a baby, the only person who has looked out for her is herself.
Until a lark starts visiting her, leaving behind exotic flowers and iridescent pebbles that the internet doesn't recognise.
Esmera...
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Esmera woke up groggy despite her panic at the inexplicable sensation that she was suffocating. Like a swimmer caught in the unrelenting grip of a riptide, she thrashed, searching out something, anything with her desperate hands. A rock, a buoy, Tauram, anything that could keep the water from claiming her for itself.
But she was on dry land, and Tauram was nowhere to be seen.
Esmera opened her eyes and squinted against the morning light that slipped past the ceiling of the pillow fort.
She sat up, pulling the covers around her chest. The pillow fort was somehow less enchanting by daylight now that the fairy lights were off, and the stars had gone to sleep. Its magic was in Esmera's memories.
But where was the man who dominated them too?
The dent in the pillows beside Esmera told her that Tauram had been there. The lingering warmth of him beneath the covers told her he had been asleep beside her until not too long ago. Her waking up in the observatory told her that it hadn't all been a dream, the grilled cheese sandwiches and the star gazing, the kisses and confessions and everything that came afterwards.
It made Esmera hot just thinking about it, but she closed her eyes and forced herself to focus on listening to the house, on tracking down the familiar sound of Tauram. She could hear him muttering to himself almost as though he was murmuring sweet confessions into her hair, but she had no idea where he really was.
Esmera would have to find him. She crawled out of the pillow fort and stood. The covers fell away from her, and she stared down at herself, disoriented with sleep even though she remembered all too well that Tauram had taken her clothes off.
She had half a mind to begin her search for him regardless, but she didn't think it would be a good idea to wander around the house naked. What if Tauram had company? What if Belaren and Anjarah were around?
Esmera grabbed the first item of clothing her fingers came upon on the heap in front of the tent fort, which happened to be Tauram's white shirt. She pulled it on and buttoned it up with clumsy, drowsy fingers. The smell of him made her dizzy, sent her mind spinning in delight, made her long to be wrapped up in him again.
Esmera left the conservatory, her bare feet muffling her steps and turning them silent to anyone who wasn't a śradūgara. Even so, Lundas heard her. He looked up at Esmera with his luminous eyes where he reclined in his basket. She dared to lean down and stroke his soft, spotted head, and instead of snapping at her as he might have a few days ago, he merely purred.
Smiling, Esmera glanced up at the nest Jammas had made from twigs and scraps of fabric on the curtain rail. He was still and asleep, Esmera assumed. That was the only thing she could do because all she could see of him was his shimmering green wing peeking over the edge of his nest.
Tauram's mutters led Esmera through the sitting room to the kitchen, where he stood in front of the stove in his underwear. His black hair was mussed, the backs of his shoulders speckled with reddish crescents where Esmera's fingernails had pressed into his skin, and that was how she knew she had left her mark on him as he had on her.
