“It's your fault, partly,” she whispered, feeling his strong heartbeat beneath her head.
He grunted, and lifted her partly as he readjusted to relax better into the pillows. “It usually is with you. I am in your head most of the time so I'm used to seeing fairly regular negative reviews of myself.”
“Yet still you want me around for the rest of eternity?” she questioned. “You don't make sense sometime Vitruvion.”
“I make sense to myself, my dear, and that is all that matters really.” He took a long breath in, and began to fiddle with one of her feathers, examining the way the fibres lined. “I told you I am a selfish being, and that includes you most of all. It took few months for me to figure out that you are my most treasured possession, but there it is.”
“Thank you,” she flatly said, eyes finally glancing up to meet his, “For comparing me to your wine. Or a chair.”
His lips lifted into a smirking smile. “I think we both know I consider you worth more than a chair.”
Her brow raised, and she looked at him with an unamused look in her eye before grunting. She looked away again and huffed before she nudged at his arm a little that wrapped around her torso. Gently he tightened his grip and settled his other arm around her.
“You are tired, emotionally and mentally. It has drained your energy,” he concluded after a short deductive moment. “You should sleep before we speak further of Pride. Or what I need you to do now.”
She twisted her head slightly up, avoiding his face carefully with her beak.
“What you … need me to do now?”
Vitruvion waved a hand dismissively, with a sigh once more. Then his hand fell back down to rest on her shoulder. “I have a task for you that may take a few days. But worry that for later.”
Her eyes stared at him, “A few days?”
“Our current lives never stop, my dear. We are on the edge of war, in fact with your brother's appearance I would say one has been declared.”
War. With his half-brother who had her brother as an undead. Sibling against sibling, battle of the unwilling versus the protector.
She instinctively flinched and tensed, her legs pulling up towards her body. A sharp breath arose and his arms were there, pulling her yet closer to him.
“Sleep, for now,” he murmured. “You are no used to me, your master and god, in the state that you are.”
“Bastard,” she mumbled back to him, her eyes slipping closed.
“Bitch,” he agreed. “My foul-mouthed, belligerent, incorrigible, disobedient, disappointing, distrusting …”
“Mmm,” she agreed, slipping into exhaustion.
“Idiot at times, reluctant, rude …”
“Thanks,” came the sleepy whisper.
“Workaholic, exhausted, eternal …”
She was hardly listening now as she drifted into sleeping world.
“Precious,” he whispered, in a foreign tongue she did not know, gazing down at her. “Beautiful. Unique. And mine, all mine.”
