12. The Stag and the Bowman

Avisit to the observatory was out of the question, but when Asa Castel mentioned the old atelier at the top of the eastern tower of Castellan, even Drazhan couldn't agree fast enough. That was how Rahn knew how truly scared the man was for Aesylt. Even in a crisis, he would ensure her needs were met.

Rahn and Aesylt had marched up the hundred and twenty steps with an entire retinue of guards, who went no further than the door. The studio was small, but the walls and ceiling were all windows. Unfortunately, the night was ill-suited for star-watching, but he sensed it wouldn't matter soon. A new plan was imminent.

"Scholar, you've been staring at the same spot for a half tick of the moon. Do you believe you can will those clouds to clear?"

Rahn grinned to himself, his head shaking as he angled it slightly toward Aesylt. "All clouds eventually clear, do they not?"

Aesylt screwed her upper lip into a frown that made her seem young and impertinent. "Is that supposed to be a pithy metaphor?"

"If so, it was clearly wasted on you, wasn't it?" His smile slowly faded as he returned his gaze to the hazy, cloudy sky. "This isn't the night for this." He waited for some fresh jibe from her, but she simply stared through the thick-paned glass with a thoughtful expression. "Nothing clever to say to that?"

Her brows fused as she stared harder. "Whatever happens next, we won't get more nights like this, will we?"

Rahn nodded at the cloudy night sky. "I don't get that impression, no."

"What happens if we don't have more notes to submit to the Reliquary soon?"

He sucked his teeth. "Well... We're beholden to how quickly other matters resolve themselves, but... nothing good."

"So if we cannot produce more observations on astronomy, our only option then would be for me to continue my work with Nik?"

Rahn prickled, heat rising within him, hard and fast. "No, Aesylt, that's not what I?—"

"Relax." She choked out a dry laugh. "I'm only trying to understand the situation for what it is. Fair to say we need to make the most of our time tonight?"

"More fair to say," Rahn replied testily, "that it isn't up to us."

"What if it was?"

"It's not."

Aesylt tapped the sides of her chair, staring at the fire. "The celestial realm is a mirror of our world. There are no terrestrial variances. The land is our land. The sky is our sky. The only notable difference is no one else is there, unless I bring them with me." She stretched an arm in front of her, pointing it upward. "What I did not tell you, Scholar, is I can influence that world, in some ways. Limited ways. If we were to go there, we'd see the same clouds, but I believe I could clear them. I think the world adapts to what I need from it, while the fundamentals stay the same."

Rahn turned in his chair. He couldn't deny his curiosity, but his rational mind was all too aware of the dangers involved in blind exploration. Even Aesylt knew little about the world she'd been visiting her entire life. A place without rules was a place anything could happen. Even something as innocuous as watching the sky could be hazardous.

He briefly weighed the risks and fears against the alternative. One good night of charting could keep them both busy with documentation for days, no matter where Drazhan sent them. Aesylt would stay occupied with something useful, and it would keep her from feeling obligated to compromise herself with Niklaus.

And if Rahn was there with her in the celestial realm, he would know if something went amiss. He would have, at the very least, an opportunity to help her.

"Scholar?"

"If we do this..." Rahn tented his hands under his chin, thinking. "What will happen if the guards come in looking for us?"

"They agreed not to bother us," she said.

"It doesn't mean they won't."

"If they come in, then they'll find an abandoned post, but if we transition, say, behind that wall over there... then we can just say they didn't see us. They certainly wouldn't see us come back if we were hidden."

"The plan seems thin, Aesylt."

"Then we..." Aesylt breathed deep, tilting her head toward the sky again. Her pale hair fell behind her like a silken wave, and he had to look away again. "We come back, once an hour. If we're gone only an hour at a time, and they come in between those times, we can simply say we climbed outside for a better look. We'd have plausible deniability."

"Plausible deniability? Are you a lawman?" Rahn chuckled, to cover the fact that he'd already decided the moment she'd proposed it. His protectiveness of her had been no more than a confine she was determined to squeeze through, but embracing her way of thinking was the one thing he hadn't tried. "If we do this..."

Aesylt rolled her eyes. She didn't even know what he was going to say. He smiled inside.

"Then we agree if either one of us wants to come back, we both come back. No questions. No arguments. Same outcome if we sense even a hint of trouble."

"Seems fair to me." A soft smile split her face. "Gather everything we need now, because the only things we can be sure will come with us are the ones we're holding onto."

"No,no, no. The stag and the bowman are the same, Scholar. Look. Look closer."

Rahn shot her a skeptical, sidelong look before approaching the dusty lens. Asa's old telescope was more decorative than serviceable, but it was all they had.

He leaned down, squinting until he found the right spot again. "Aesylt, how many stags do you know that have a man's head affixed to their back?"

"I'm not friends with any stags, but do you not think that head is a cloud? Look closer. No, don't look at me, look at the lens."

"Thought you cleared the clouds," he muttered, fully expecting an elbow and feeling almost disappointed when it didn't come. They'd been in the celestial realm for several hours, carefully returning to their world every tick of the moon. But the guards had kept to their post. The only thing working against them was time and exhaustion.

He'd almost gotten used to the strange shimmer in the air and the foreboding otherness about the place.

"The worst of them. Are you even looking?"

The first hour or so had been a flurry of talking over each other, rediscovering new facets of constellations they'd already mapped and revealing a brand new one—the pheasant—that they'd only seen brief flashes of in the past. "I am. And respectfully, I think your eyes may be tired." He backed away and gestured at the telescope, blinking his own exhaustion away. "Not a cloud. I would suggest you look again, but you're swaying on your feet. Maybe it's best we call it a night."

Aesylt tilted her head back and locked her hands in her hair with a frustrated grunt. "We may only have tonight."

Rahn's hands lifted briefly in an urge to offer physical reassurance. "For now. But the trouble won't last forever."

"I just need..." Her mouth opened into a wide sigh. Her mouth snapped closed as an intense expression passed across her tired face. "I just need to close my eyes a moment. Clear my mind." She glanced behind her and rushed to the blanket she'd brought with them. She snapped it and spread it on the ground before plopping down with another sigh. "There's no reason we can't go all night if we pace ourselves."

Rahn looked at the clear sky, fighting a yawn. "I'll take the first shift, but you still need to bring us back every hour."

"No need for shifts. I won't fall asleep," she said, curling into a ball on the soft blanket. She slithered around with a soft sigh, stretching her limbs before returning to her comfort. "I have something I need to say, before I lose my nerve." She bowed her head toward her hands, which she fidgeted in her lap. The movement drew his attention. "I'm sorry I've been so obstinate, that I've given you so much cause to worry since Val came back. We're supposed to be partners, but I haven't acted like one. I don't feel right about any of it, and you should not have to go to such lengths to manage me."

Rahn's breathing slowed to a near stop. He left the comfort of the telescope, approaching the blanket. "Manage you? That's not what's happening here, Aesylt. Your restlessness is understandable to me. I'm only trying to help you."

Her eyes fluttered closed with a soft laugh. "You're always so politic, Scholar. Is there a playful side of you?"

Rahn scoffed and lowered to a crouch. He scraped his hands along the unruly stubble he'd need to address soon. "You've seen my playful side."

"Glimpses only." She nuzzled her flushed cheek against the blanket. "You don't have to be so serious around me."

Oh, but he did. Every lapse in the stoic mantle he wore around her seceded ground to a darker side of himself. There were some lines that, once crossed, could not be walked back. "You say serious; I say professional."

"Pfft. You aren't like this around Tasmin."

"I've known Tasmin all her life. She's family."

"Family?" Aesylt's voice gained a hard edge. "Not... lovers?"

"Lovers?" Rahn was so taken aback, he dropped onto the blanket next to her. "Is this about what you overheard in the barn?"

Aesylt rolled her face against the underside of her arm. "Ah, Ancestors. Forget I said anything. It's neither my place nor my business."

"No. Don't be ashamed of your curiosity. It's what makes you an excellent researcher." He reached out and brushed back the hair that had fallen over her buried face. "Tasmin is like a sister to me. It's why I couldn't even entertain the idea of partnering with her on the experiments." And why he couldn't understand how Aesylt could so easily partner with Niklaus.

Aesylt peeked one eye over her arm. "Why were you so angry with her in the courtyard before she left?"

Rahn grimaced, sighing. "That I cannot tell you, because it's not for me to tell. I'm sorry."

"Presently feeling like a right fool," she replied.

When she tried to bury her face again, he clamped a hand onto her arm, startling her into looking directly at him. "You may be many things, Aesylt Wynter, but I would not lump you in with the fools."

Her head lolled back. She stared up at him. "Is this why you're against partnering with me then? Am I as a sister to you?"

How I wish it were so simple. But he couldn't find words that were close enough to the truth to be worthy of speaking.

"And you're just feeling... protective, is that it? You don't want your little sister compromised by the darker side of learning?" Her words sounded petulant, but her tone was warm, almost solicitous. She was inviting discussion, not provoking an argument.

"That's..." Rahn studied the serious expression staring back at him. "There's a difference between choosing intimacy because you truly want it and giving into it because you feel you have no other choice."

Aesylt considered that for a moment. "How does that make it different from anything else we study?" She shook her head. "If the matter comes down to free will and agency, then is it not on the same level as everything we do? My commitment to studying the stars is a choice, so why can I not make an equivalent one about this?"

"You make a reasonable point," Rahn conceded. He rolled onto his back. Overhead, the auroras danced in ribbons of violet and turquoise, a phenomenon he never would have believed if he hadn't seen it with his own eyes. So much about the White Kingdom was a wonder to him, particularly when he had no memory of his own homeland of Ilynglass. "Is that really how you see it? That the matter comes down to the simplicity of choice? Nothing more?"

"Only if you see choice as a simple matter," she replied. He felt her watching him, reading him. "If you really want to know, Scholar, I view the assignment as a challenge. If I want this life, then I must be able to separate feeling from fact. What subject offers such a test as this one? As the one thing in all the world people cannot be rational about? If I can do this, then I can do anything else the Reliquary sends our way. And then I'll know, without question, that I am made for this life."

Rahn was lost for response. He'd spent most of his life teaching others, but every day with Aesylt was an unexpected lesson. No one else had made him question his way of thinking. If the assignment was her personal challenge, perhaps she was his. And if she could apply such pragmatism to the matter, he should be capable of the same rationality. "I hadn't thought of it that way. Perhaps we understand each other better than I realized."

Aesylt's sleepy laugh pierced the air. "What a revelation. Been telling you that for months. Maybe..." She buried her face in the blanket and yawned. "Maybe you could even look at me one day and see a reflection, rather than a precious vase one foul wind away from shattering."

Rahn's long exhale shuddered out of him. He rolled his head toward her. "I don't see you that way at all. I never have. Not for a moment."

"You're a confusing man, Rahn Tindahl." Her hand inched across the blanket and settled close enough to his for him to feel her warmth. "But I'm glad you came to Witchwood Cross."

For the rest of the night, and the ones to follow, he would wonder what in the stars had compelled him to climb his hand closer. What the gods he'd been thinking when his pinky tickled hers and linked with it. He could have stopped her when she slithered closer... should have said something when she hesitated, as though waiting for him to object, and then nuzzled her face to the side of his shoulder.

Aesylt's thigh half draped over his was the end of him, he knew it even then. All that remained was to determine the haste of his decline.

Her leg slid up his as she adjusted, coming dangerously close to brushing the rock-hard betrayal he was failing to will away. Her breath against the exposed hollow of his neck was enough to make him turn, but they were locked together in a suspended moment, neither able to speak or move.

Rahn's cock throbbed in aching rebellion. If he could just shift her, even slightly... but he didn't. Couldn't. He measured each breath, no longer thinking about the stars, the stag, the sky, or any of it. Perhaps the problem was entirely him; Aesylt might be able to throw up a wall, but she'd been crumbling his stone by stone since the day he'd met her. There was no victory ahead no matter what he did. He would either suffer through watching her with another man or suffer by agreeing to her challenge.

Aesylt adjusted again, wrapping her leg further over his, locking her groin to his thigh. Her very damp groin that moistened his trousers. He was certain she'd withdraw then, embarrassed, but the only thing to follow was the soft shift in breathing indicating she'd drifted off. Their hands were still linked on the blanket, an awkward joining with the way she was lying but one he couldn't make himself sever.

Light drool trailed from her mouth, coating his shoulder. How it was that, and not the sensuality coursing through her and into him, that made his toes clench was confounding, but it was also the start of the end. Stars of another kind exploded behind his eyes, his body lurching through his weak attempt at control as an orgasm involuntarily ripped through him. Cum coated his trousers, spreading evidence he'd never be able to hide if she woke.

Rahn rolled his head back in a silent, desperate pant.

Gods help me, he thought, as he realized the depth of the decision he'd made without being fully aware of it. The future awaiting them both. The restraint he'd failed to preserve and would no longer need to. Even if he changed his mind in the few hours left to them, it would not alter the course of his thoughts, forever reformed. He'd been silently fighting his entire life, but never harder than he'd battled to evade the temptation of the most enchanting, gifted, and beguiling woman he'd ever known.

Rahn breathed deep and fixed his gaze on the magical auroras, searching for the calm that could only be found after resolve. He'd need to wake her soon to return to the real world—and the even more real danger still brewing just beyond their walls.

He had until then to find the right words to tell Aesylt he would be her new partner.