Something that wasn’t solid slithered against my back, like a feathery whisper of energy that yearned to press me closer to his face but did not dare.

“Isn’t it obvious by now?” he asked.

I shook my head again, lost. Nothing was obvious. All was confusion.

His entire being seemed to sigh. “To allow you to be destroyed would be to destroy my own heart.”

I tried to glance down at the throbbing Seal over my chest, but he would not let me, pushing my face back up with his silky smooth touch.

“Andromeda. Foolish, simple, itty bitty, little thing…” His eyes smoldered into mine. “I love you.”

My mind had to be playing tricks on me. Did I misunderstand him? Even as they were the words I’d been desperate to hear in and out of all of my dreams, I couldn’t bring myself to believe them. Or at least, he couldn’t possibly mean them in the same way I meant them.

I took a shuddering breath. “But I thought you were done with me,” I protested. “That I was unworthy of you, that… that you hated me for the fact that you cared about something so beneath you.”

Tension gripped his great frame, his wings snapping out over his head. His fingers curled toward me, but did not clamp down. “No! Never,” he said with severity. “I had to leave you, little one, to protect you, for I would only drive you mad. It was an inevitability I could not abide, because I love you. I tried to stop. If I could have stopped loving you, then you would be free… but try as I might, I could not. I cannot. I cannot be without you. I cannot be where you are not. Dream figment or no, you are the substance of my dreams. I would rather be forever in a dream with you than endure one moment more of reality without you.”

A shudder seemed to course through him. “I feel as though we are linked,” he intoned, “tied to each other by some unseverable strand. Your very being, insubstantial though it is, commands me, dominates my immensity. Overpowers me. I am your thing, tiny one. Though you are the mortal and I am the god, it is you who are worshipped by me.”

I shook my head, not knowing what to believe anymore, overwhelmed.

My voice came out miniscule, “But you said…”

“I had to go,” he repeated. “If I stayed with you, how could I hide myself from you forever? My true self. Your mind was too precious to me.”

“But I’m looking at you now and my mind’s just fine.”