Chapter 26. Grayson
Grayson
Our suite door clicks shut. I lower my arm from under Eloise’s knees and her feet drop to the floor.
“Screw this no-magic thing right to hell,” I say.
“I absolutely hate it,” Eloise replies, taking her arm from my shoulders. I’d have helped her to her room, but I know she wouldn’t let me.
Instead, I push open my bedroom door and pull open the top drawer in my dresser, digging through to find my zip-up leather case. Then I cross our suite and tap my knuckle against her door.
“Who is it?” she says irreverently through the wood.
“Your humble servant,” I reply.
She cracks open the door. “‘Humble’ is a lie.”
“Correction, your confident servant with fantastic hair?” I try again, and even though she tries not to smile, the corners of her mouth tilt ever so slightly. “Also, I come with a peace offering.” I hold up the case.
“What am I looking at?” she asks, raising an eyebrow.
“Medical supplies,” I reply, and she backs away from the door to let me in.
Her room is a mirror image of mine with a carved canopy bed and an earth-toned rug. Her boots are off and she hops around on one foot, pulling herself up onto her comforter with a wince.
I unzip the case and take out an Ace bandage. “Let’s get a look at that foot,” I say, but she plucks it out of my hand.
She glances pointedly at my palms. “While I’m wrapping my ankle, put some Green Goddess salve on those hands.”
I smirk. “Who’s bossy now?”
She huffs. “Your palms are bleeding. What sort of a person would I be if I let you wrap my bandage? I get that you’re trying to be nice, and I appreciate it, but no.”
Her comment startles me.
“What?” she says, probably wondering why I look spooked.
“No, nothing. It’s just—” I laugh at myself. “God, I feel like an idiot … but no one has ever accused me of being nice before.”
She laughs, too, and the sound does something to me. It’s light and airy and perfectly matches her hair.
“I absolutely believe that being called nice is a new experience for you,” she says, but there’s no bite to it.
Eloise finishes wrapping her bandage and slides off the bed to test it out. “Much better.” Which is also when she looks at my hands. “Seriously, though, if you don’t put that salve on your hands, I really will punch you.”
“You would hit the wounded?” I ask.
“Without flinching,” she says, hopping back on the bed, and it occurs to me that, for once, we’re not arguing.
“It’s fine,” I tell her, because it is.
“It’s not fine. Now sit down,” she says, gesturing to the spot next to her. And for unknown reasons I let this petite girl tell me what to do. In fact, I kinda like it.
“Where’s that salve?” she asks, but I’m already handing it to her.
She pops off the lid. I turn one of my palms face up and she holds it gently. Her slender fingers are soft and just a tad cool, even though the air blowing in from her open window is warm.
Ever so carefully, she wipes salve on one palm and then the other, before digging around in my medical case for gauze and tape, both of which she cuts with a dagger she keeps on her bedside table.
She looks up at me as she secures the last of the tape, my larger hand in her two small ones. And when we make eye contact, it’s different, less combative.
Her cheeks tint pink, highlighting the handful of freckles that create a band across her nose.
“Thank you,” I say, and my voice comes out low, rough even.
Her scent drifts toward me and it reminds me of the first day of spring. Fresh-cut grass, a hint of floral, and a promise in the air. I instantly recognize it for what it is—attraction. More than that, I feel it low in my stomach like a tightening coil.
I suddenly know I shouldn’t stay.
Only when I get up, she puts out her hand.
“Wait,” she says, and just like before, I obey. “I know tonight is shot. Neither of us can do any magic and we won’t be at full capacity until morning, but we should do something. Research maybe? You could help me read some of these books.” She gestures to the pile on her bedside table.
“You want me to read with you?” I say a little shocked, mainly because she’s usually trying to get as far away from me as possible.
“I know you’ve read some of these before, but I just thought—” She stops and I can scent a hint of embarrassment.
“Yeah, no, I mean, I have,” I say, trying to catch up to the situation. “But I could use a refresher. Hand me one you haven’t read.”
I kick off my boots and sit down on her bed.
“Really?” she says, handing one over with the fresh spring scent that once again affects me.
“Actually, I think I’ll take this into the living room,” I say, needing a second to slow my pulse and regain my effing sense.
“What? Why?” she asks as I slide off the bed.
I just stare at her helplessly.
Her eyebrows push together like she’s trying to sort me out. “Does this have something to do with what you said to me in the training room?”
“What did I say to you in the training room?” I ask, tracing back our conversation.
“When you told me…” She hesitates, reconsidering, and I suddenly know exactly what she’s getting at and wish I hadn’t asked. “Not to think about you that way?” She scrunches her nose. “I just want to set the record straight that I wasn’t thinking about you in any sort of way.”
I know I should just say okay and move on, but I can’t help myself. Some part of me wants her to admit it, to name the pleasant scent that is slowly chipping away at me.
“No sort of way at all? I guess your mind was completely blank in that moment.”
She shoots me a warning glare. “If you have to know, egomaniac, I was admiring your bravery.”
Normally I’d laugh. But I’m thrown by the compliment.
She tilts her head inquisitively when I don’t respond. “Did I break you? You’ve gone all deer in headlights on me.”
“I don’t see myself that way,” I say for lack of a better response. “I just do what I have to in order to survive.”
She side-eyes me. “Survive what?”
“Everything,” I say, and the answer holds weight because it’s true.
“I know the feeling.”
“I don’t doubt that. Laboring families have it rough,” I reply before I can think not to.
“What could you possibly know about Laborers?” she asks.
“I know there’s never enough. That Mage society uses and discards its workers without a second thought.
That you live at the weakest parts of the wards and that safety is always an issue.
That freedoms are small. Before my brother Liam died, his closest friend was from a Laboring family. He used to talk about it a lot.”
She goes entirely still and I wonder if I’ve said too much. I never talk about my brother, and yet I’ve mentioned him to her twice now. I stare at the book in my hands, again wondering if I should go.
But then I scent a new emotion from her—affection—which I can only describe as holiday-scented tea in front of a fireplace, a comforting smell I’m not used to. My eyes dart up to meet hers.
“See, that’s what I mean,” she says on an exhale, gesturing at my face. “You look like an entitled Mage. You smell like one—”
“What do entitled Mages smell like?” I ask.
She rolls her eyes. “Like magic and cashmere.”
I laugh.
“Point is,” she continues, “you don’t act like an entitled Mage.
Well, sometimes you do. But you’ve also showed up for me when it mattered.
Tonight, for instance.” She pauses, brushing stray hairs away from her face.
“I’m not too big of a person to admit when someone, even a Mage-baby, does something selfless.
Which is why I was trying to thank you on that plane before you decided to make the rudest comment of all time. ”
It takes me a minute to figure out she’s referring to the drooling comment. “Probably not my finest moment,” I admit.
“You do that a lot, you know,” she says. “Seem to know what I’m feeling and make a comment about it.”
“Do I?” I ask, because no one’s ever noticed before.
She gives me a look like come on.
“Also,” she says, and hesitates. “I didn’t really mean what I said before. About not wanting to be friends. It’d be a lot easier if we weren’t fighting over every little thing.”
I quirk a smile. “Friends, huh? Tall order.”
She laughs. “Says the guy who has a million of them.”
“You’d be surprised,” I say, and I’m not sure why I say it. Maybe it’s because she’s still giving off a low-level scent of affection and I’m feeling greedy.
“Would I?” she asks.
“I know a lot of people, that part’s true,” I say.
“And don’t forget that you’ve had a lot of relationships,” she says.
“Are you keeping tabs on my dating life, Claws?”
The pink in her cheeks bleeds onto her nose. “It’s impossible to miss. Anyway, moving on. It’s hard to believe friendship is new to you in any shape or form.”
I sigh. Am I actually going to tell this girl something real? I guess so. “That thing you have with Maggie? I don’t have that. With anyone.”
Her eyes widen. “Bas?” she asks.
“He’s a decent guy, don’t get me wrong. But it’s more a friendship of convenience. Everything we do overlaps, everyone we know.”
“Your family?” she asks.
I shake my head. “I think they’d be the first people to feed me to a shark.”
Her brow furrows. “Your brother?” she asks more quietly.
There’s a tightness in my chest I can’t quite pinpoint. “I was close to Liam. Or more like I followed him around. He was five years older than me. I think I annoyed the hell out of him.”
She waits for me to go on, but when I don’t, she nods.
“My little sister does that. And I love it. Sure, it can be aggravating sometimes, but kids are also the absolute best and funniest. Little siblings love so completely that you just melt when they look at you. I bet your brother felt the same way about you.”
Her words hit me hard. Like an uppercut I never saw coming.
She must realize it, because she says, “Sorry, I didn’t mean to … never mind. Come sit. I promise I’ll try not to pry.”
She pats the bed and I’m torn. Because I know if I sit, I’m going to talk. And I’ll probably say things I shouldn’t.
“Thanks, but I’m beat,” I say, and regret it before I even walk away.