Graeling was seeing visions. The angel was crouched over him, haloed so sharply in golden light that her edges dissolved into the blur of blue sky and water behind her. It all became even more blurry when water splashed against his face. He coughed.
“Awake,” he confirmed on a croak, probably incomprehensible. Then there was more water dampening his lips, and his tongue darted out to lap it up, throat closing painfully around it. Graeling could not tell where this water was coming from – in that moment, he did not wonder, did not question. The confidence he felt radiating from his angel made him trust her implicitly. And anyway, he didn’t have the strength to object.
She, on the other hand, was strong. Her arm behind his neck felt wiry with muscle, her voice was commanding, playful. Graeling blinked up at her. The drops clinging to his eyelashes still framed his vision in a confusing jumble of bright shapes, but her face was drawing slowly into focus.
Beautiful.
“Hi,” he breathed, whatever part of his brain that controlled verbalization clearly as sunburned as the rest of him. “Thanks.” Somewhere deep in his subconscious, he registered that he had been complimented as well as saved. It was overlayed with the whisper of his exhausted magic, detecting notes of attraction beneath her questions, like a pickup line shouted from the next room. “Thank you,” he repeated.
What had she asked?
“I don’t know,” he admitted hoarsely, levering himself up onto his elbows. Then, because he didn’t want to disappoint her after her valiant rescue, he ammended “I’ll try,” and moved to shakily climb to his feet.
It was…not graceful. He wobbled once he was up there, and reached out instinctively to brace his hand on the angel’s shoulder. His long limbs looked a bit limp and useless as he stood there, swaying slightly, his breaths barely more than shallow, staggered gasps. His vision swam. Beneath his palm, he could feel the woman’s conflicting feelings, a current of alarm. He gave her a reassuring squeeze.
“I’ll try,” he said again, ever the wordsmith, and took a halting step forward. She slipped in next to him, moving his arm across her shoulders and placing her own around his waist, and together they made clumsy progress across the powdery sand. Her touch was comforting. Encouraging. He was moderately sure these feelings were his own.
The shade was an immense relief. Graeling sank from her grip, propping his back against a palm tree, and looked up at her. “My hero,” he said on a weak smile, clearly trying to be charming, even as half-drowned and fully sun-poisoned as he was. It was obviously an effort. “Do you know where we are?”
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