She stared at him.
"How is it in your tribe?" he asked, genuinely curious, his amber eyes steady on hers. "How do you know it's love?"
She opened her mouth and closed it again.
"From the first day I saw you," he continued, unhurried, like he had been waiting for the right moment to say all of this and had decided the open sky and the dying coals and the vast quiet dark was finally it, "I wanted to be by your side. I didn't understand it then. I just knew I didn't want you to be somewhere I wasn't." His hand came up and cupped her face gently.
"My piece of heaven who fell from the sky."
Ningning went very still.
Fell from the sky.
She looked at him.
He said it so simply, without agenda, like it was just the most accurate description he had for her.
Like he had always known, in whatever way he knew things, that she hadn't simply appeared at the edge of his territory one day.
That something had brought her here from somewhere else entirely.
Somewhere very far.
