No matter how much time we had with each other, it would be too short, because he could die or I could die, or we could both live a century and it still wouldn’t be long enough. He was just good, and with him, so was I, and life lost all its sharp, dangerous edges when we were together.

I cried because I’d never felt so much emotion in my life. I cried for my mom, who never once felt safe and maybe never knew this kind of moment. She knew the other kind, the ones that demean and leave you emptier than you began. I cried for everything I’d lost. I cried for his heart and the world. I touched the tears glittering in his long dark eyelashes, caught and kissed them then kissed him with the salty tang of both our tears on our tongues.

Then neither of us was crying but our eyes were locked, wide with wonder, as he moved faster and deeper and my body trembled around him and my orgasm made a kaleidoscope inside my skull. I didn’t just come with my body, the explosion of so much sensation did something to my head, too. As if it was injecting an incredible chemical into my brain and suddenly I was no longer shorted out and I started to vibrate and we both looked at each other, startled, then he started to growl and I realized what my vibrating was doing to him and I started to laugh and so did he, but he was growling and gasping, too, and he shook on top of me and threw his head back and groaned and sort of roared and it was the best sound I’ve ever heard—Dancer, free and happy and totally alive.

I held him afterward, cradling his head to my chest, smiling because I had some really cool tricks I could do and I couldn’t wait to explore all of them with him.

I drifted a bit then and so did he, and as I was floating in that dreamy place he said softly against my ear, “I see you, Yi-yi.”

“I see you, too, Dancer.”

We killed the clocks that night.

It stretched impossibly long, as if, just for us, time stood still. We made love over and over, trying anything and everything during those long hours of him kissing me all over, touching me with just the right amount of reverence and lust, and some part of me was reborn. Something I hadn’t even understood had died a long, long time ago. It was young and new and would need nurturing but it was there.

Deep in my core, that nameless thing found a way to be, shifted and settled into place like a bone wrenched from its socket long ago. I had no idea what it was but I’d figure it out eventually.

No thinking tonight. Just feeling. While my long-held suspicion about brainy men was proved true. Dancer had the inventive imagination of a geek, zero inhibitions, and the lusty hunger of a man that lived each day with full awareness of his own mortality.

Brainy is the new sexy.

When I woke to the mid-morning sun slanting in the windows across our bed, his breathing was rough and labored and he was gasping in his sleep.

This was what he’d never let me see.

The bad times.

These were the days he’d overtaxed his heart, gone into hiding from me so I would never know that he thought he wasn’t man enough for me.

I’d never once asked where he’d gone or why, telling myself friends didn’t ask questions because they required answers and requirements were cages. Told myself he’d just wanted time alone. Like me.

But now I knew all those days I’d been freeze-framing around the city, burning off my boundless energy and steam, he’d been lying in a bed somewhere, trying to gather enough strength just to get back out of it. Alone or with those friends he’d permitted to know about his problem and see him that way. Perhaps Caoimhe had been with him, bringing him food, making sure he survived.

I drew reassurance from those times, because it meant it had been happening for a while. And that meant it could continue to happen. And maybe he would live a whole life this way and I could deal with that. But I sure wasn’t going to be having sex with him five times in a single night anymore. We were going to have to pace ourselves. And maybe I shouldn’t vibrate either.

I placed my palms gently against his chest and tried to will some of my strength into him. I closed my eyes and imagined beams of light bathing his heart in healing.

But the power to heal isn’t one of my super strengths, and he woke up, sat up, and leaned back against the headboard. We sat together and held hands and waited for him to feel better.

I wanted to ask him if there was medicine he could take. I wanted to know if there was some kind of surgery that could be done, assuming we could find a heart surgeon.

I said none of those things because Dancer was brilliant and he loved being alive and if there had been anything he could have done, he would have by now.

The only gift I could give him was the one that wouldn’t make me feel better but would make him feel okay.

So, I pretended it was nothing, and we didn’t talk about the elephant in the room as it tossed its mighty head and swung its trunk, threatening to break all fragile things in its way, and I cleaned last night’s pizza off the floor and cabinets while he made us powdered eggs with dried salmon and cream cheese on toast.

Then we headed out into the city, holding hands, young and in love, eager to see what the day might bring.

ZARA

The man who called himself Rain found her a house with a large walled garden on the outskirts of Dublin, and she spent her days outside, whether rain or shine, weeding and spreading seeds he’d brought her for the animals, talking to her T’murra but not to him at all.

She had no idea why he was taking care of her, unless he found her beautiful and helpless and, like so many men, liked beautiful, helpless women, far more than they liked strong queens.

Were she mortal, perhaps she’d have spent a life with him because, for the most part, he left her alone.

Sometimes she’d catch him watching her when he thought she was lost in a reverie. Sometimes she thought she saw sadness in his eyes, but attributed that to an odd trick of shadow and light.

He seemed to be waiting for something. She didn’t know what, and frankly, didn’t care.

She was waiting to die.

She could no longer feel the earth except in a far dimmer, more muted version than Zara once had. Diluted by her Fae essence, cut off from the True Magic, she had only a shallow connection to the world around her, yet she forged on, by rote performing those actions that had once given her joy.

She was grateful the earth was dying and would soon take her, because living in such fashion wasn’t living at all. As queen of the Fae, power, care for her race, and immortality had been her compensation. As a powerless immortal that couldn’t experience sensation, there was no benefit.