Chapter 127 Echoes Beneath

• Alexander's skin and the smell of warm linen hung about them, cocooning Dysis in comfort as the morning slinkily entered the room. Like a forgotten song, the far-off silence of rain tapping against the balcony doors threaded through. She moved slightly, the soft cotton black sleep shirt brushing her naked legs. After she had cried against him and he had held her like something holy, he had thrown it over her sometime following their confessions. The cloth still smelt like cedar, rain, something dangerous but sadly delicate.
• Still shirtless, Alexander lay next her with low navy pyjama pants on his hips. With each breath, the muscles in his arm sloppily behind his head flex and relax. His icy-blue eyes weren't chilly now. They watched her, steady and uncompromising, the way someone observes the horizon before a storm.
• Dysis tucked a strand of her messy hair, tangled from sleep, behind her ear, kissed, and pushed herself up on one elbow. The air between them was different now, heavier, sweeter somehow. It was a peace hard-earned, a promise unspoken but understood.