She stroked the back of Madeleine’s head. And, as she had seen Jonathan and the farmhands do with upset animals, she gently hummed. Madeleine was no animal, but she was Hæra’s to hold nevertheless. “What else do you love?” she whispered into the shell of Madeleine’s ear. It was cold from the wind.

Madeleine shivered and exhaled again. She stepped back a little, although not out of Hæra’s arms, and wiped the tears from her face. She looked into Hæra’s eyes, sniffled, and bit her bottom lip.

For a moment, Hæra’s lungs—which could hold more air than a human’s—couldn’t function. Her eyes couldn’t either, since even her peripheral vision was gone, and Madeleine’s face was all she could see.

Madeleine said hoarsely, “No, it’s not like that. I’ve only known you for a month. I don’t know how to describe it. Just that…” She placed her hand over Hæra’s human-sized heart. Maybe she could feel it slamming against Hæra’s human-sized ribs.

“For years, I thought you were an angel,” Madeleine said. “Or I hoped you were. Church doctrine says everyone has an angel who’s assigned to us, who protects us, and I thought…if you were my angel, then maybe I was all right.”

“You are all⁠—”

“And now I know you’re not, but it’s like I opened a door I couldn’t close. I keep questioning. I keep wanting who I am, what I am, to be okay, because I’m so tired of fighting myself.”

Why in the Great Mare’s name would Madeleine want to be anything other than her generous self? Hæra said through her teeth, “I’m not an angel. I said so.”

“I know! But you’ve been with me for years. Wherever I went. Now we’re here, together, and I want you with me all the time—I don’t understand it, it’s like you’re part of me, even though you can’t possibly be when we’re not even the same species.”

Hæra wanted to cry out that it didn’t matter, but she couldn’t say a word. Not now, when Madeleine was saying what Hæra had dreamed of for so long. It was exactly how she felt too, and she couldn’t find the words to say so.

“But that’s not love,” Madeleine continued. “At least not like I’ve ever understood it. It’s something else, isn’t it?”

It was hunger. Hæra had always known that, and it wasn’t the same as love.

Or was it? Hunger could be sated. You could rend your prey to pieces and feed yourself to bursting, and it would be enough. It was impossible to have enough of Madeleine.