"Does it make you uncomfortable to hear me glamor my voice for you?" Dain's voice said near my right ear, as if he stood next to me.

It was extremely dislocating, to say the least, though I thought that had more to do with his voice emanating from nowhere rather than any inherent creepiness factor. Just like listening to someone on a headset, I told myself sternly. Given his general discomfort with his body, and the fact that he hadn't been able to speak to anyone for the first fourteen years of his life, it must have felt good to be able to communicate, and to have a voice even when he didn't have the mouth and throat for it.

"Weird, but not in a creepy way," I told him, and gave him a hug around the muzzle. "Ready to really get underway?"

"I am," he said, nuzzling up against me, his heated breath embracing me. "Will you tell me you love me again before we do?"

I leaned my forehead against the scales of his muzzle, closing my eyes. One day there would be nothing more to fear, and it would be as easy for him to stand on four legs as two. One day neither of us would feel the pounding terror of time slipping away from us, and the knowledge of forever would be as natural as loving each other. Today wasn't that day, and that was okay. We would outlive even the great granite mountains of Yosemite. There was an ocean of time for us.

"I love you, Dain," I said, putting my heart into the words. "I love you with everything that I am, and I will never stop."

He made a low sound, deep and full of affection, and pressed his face against me a little more. "And I love you," his voice said in my ear, the warmth of his love melting into me. "I will love you for as long as I live."

"Still making me promises, fae King?" I asked, smiling.

He rumbled a laugh from his chest, the sound like rolling thunder. "You are a difficult temptation to resist, mortal girl." Dain drew his head out of my arms, then crouched, offering me the back of his wing-hand as a mounting block. "I thought perhaps you could sit on my neck," he offered. "My back is rather wider than a deer's, and those inconvenient spikes face the wrong direction for a comfortable backrest."

I stepped onto him without hesitation, a thrill of excitement running through me. It was like putting my hand on a new climb for the first time, a beautiful one in the wilderness that I had been looking forward to climbing for months. "Would you be so kind as to glamor me something less slippery than your scales?" I asked, regarding the armor plating of the back of his neck, with the ridge down the center.