Chapter 21 Auria #2
Unfortunately, Dedalus filled the doorframe. He glanced around the room and shifted his weight from one foot to the other. If I didn’t know better, I would have said he was nervous.
But he rolled his shoulders back and marched toward me.
I swallowed the sweet bread that was in my mouth and met his stare.
“Lady Auria.” His voice was just as terrifying as always, but he shifted his weight again, like he was anxious about talking to me.
No fear. Bylur said he was more our friend than not. “Lord Dedalus.” I smiled, proud of the way I’d kept my voice steady.
He nodded and wrapped his hand around the sword hilt at his side. Did he usually follow people to the dressmaker to argue with them?
“Tell your husband that I fixed his bed. And he owes me for it.” He sneered the words, but they still made me smile. Bylur was my husband. My strong, sweet, forgiving, and terrifying husband. And probably handsome too. I hadn’t seen any ugly fae yet—
Wait, what? “You fixed our bed?” I asked at the same time that Brielle slid closer and said, “Why don’t you tell him yourself? You can’t just assume she’ll deliver messages because they’re married.”
Dedalus turned his stare to her. “I would very much like to tell him, but your shadow-kissing brother brought the request to me, and I can’t find him now.
Nobody knows where Bylur is, unless you’re keeping that secret to yourselves.
We won’t have a council meeting tonight because it’s the second night to get ready for this ball.
” He pointed at me. “She will at least see him before the rest of us do.”
He turned to me again. “Don’t let your bear play on the bed anymore. I have better things to do than run around the castle repairing its damage.” He nodded at me, in a weirdly polite gesture after all his growling, bowed at Brielle, and then stormed out of the building.
“He gets more charming every day, doesn’t he,” Brittania hummed in a sing-song voice. “It’s a shame he can’t get any attention.”
I rolled my eyes. “He gets plenty of attention.”
Brittania pinched another piece of fabric. “Not from the person he’d like.”
Without moving my body (because…pins!), I turned my eyes to Brielle to see if she understood the old lady any better.
But Brielle’s face had lit up pink, and she stared at the floor.
And then I realized. “You!” I gasped. “Brielle! He likes you?!”
She looked up, still flushed but with a steel in her eyes. “Yes. But it won’t ever happen.”
Brittania tugged on my dress. “Tsh, tsh,” she scolded in her sing-song tones. “No moving.”
* * *
Dedalus was right. Bylur came to our room during the noble’s nighttime dinner. His swirling black shadows emerged from the wall, rolling as if they were sentient, to announce his presence.
I briefly considered scooping up all the treasures I’d laid out on the bed in a futile attempt to hide them, but I stopped. Bylur already knew about them. Instead, I faced the bed, deliberately avoiding looking at the shadows roiling behind me.
“You’re not at dinner.” Bylur’s tone was somewhere between accusatory and curious.
I shrugged. “I never go to the noble’s dinner.”
“Are you not hungry?”
I shook my head. “I have tea with Orla, Brielle and Sandina every afternoon, and that’s more than enough food for my evening.”
Shadows swirled into my peripheral vision before Bylur set his hands on my shoulders. I tensed, imagining his thoughts as he looked over my shoulder and surveyed the jewels I’d collected.
But he gave my shoulders a soft squeeze, and his voice was not harsh. “What are you doing?”
I blew out a quick breath. “Honestly?” Of course, honestly.
That was all he ever wanted. Well, that and breaking his curse.
I shook my head, refocusing. “I was trying to decide how to return all of these. I could sneak them back the way I took them, but that feels… disingenuous. Especially for the ones I took from people I consider friends now.”
He didn’t say anything, but his shadows swirled up and nudged my arm like a playful puppy, and he squeezed my shoulders again.
His lack of judgement made me fear his shadows less, and I lifted my hand to the nearest one. It flowed toward me slowly and, when I didn’t pull away, it wrapped around my fingers.
I’d briefly touched them before, but never intentionally, and I’d never… interacted with them. The shadow had a light, feathery feeling, like Rat brushing the tips of his wings across my fingers. “They’re so soft,” I said, more to myself than anyone else, but Bylur answered.
“I can make them soft or hard, as wispy as smoke, or as solid as stone.”
The shadow wrapped around my hand and wound up my arm, spiraling until it reached my elbow and then retreating back into my hand. “It might seem silly,” I whispered, “but I was terrified of them in the beginning.”
“Not silly,” he whispered back, “most people are. But my shadows will never hurt you,”
I smiled. “Because you promised to protect me.”
He brushed his thumb along the top of my shoulder. “Partly. But there are other reasons too.”
Oh, how I wanted to spin around and look at his face!
We were only a couple months into a full year of this, and every time we spoke, I wanted to see him more.
I reached up and set a hand on top of his.
He let go of my shoulders and wrapped my hand in both of his, sending an excitement and warmth into my heart that nearly broke my resolve to not look at him.
“You probably shouldn’t touch me so much,” I warned.
He froze, the sweet touch of his thumb tracing my palm stopping in its tracks. “Do you… not like it?” His strong voice was more hesitant than I’d ever heard.
“Oh, no,” I reassured him. “I like it a lot. It’s just that I’m very likely to fall in love with you before the year ends, and this will just make it happen faster.”
He remained perfectly still. “Do you not want to fall in love with me?”
My voice caught. “I… I think that’s an unfair question.” He didn’t say anything, so I went on. “You want me to declare potential feelings before you do, before I’ve even seen your face? Can you imagine how I’d feel if you didn’t return the sentiment?”
He huffed an almost-chuckle, and the edges of it just brushed my ear. “That is not something you need to worry about.”
Did that mean he cared about me? Could someday love me? Even though I’d messed up his politics and stolen from his castle?
He’d said things that hinted at that, but that’s all I had. Lots of little hints. I already trusted him more than I’d trusted anyone in fourteen years, but to risk letting myself love him?
I needed more than these vague hints.
His hands shifted to lift mine higher, over my shoulder, where he bent his head close to mine and brushed a kiss on the top of my thumb knuckle. “A pastry for your thoughts?”
I laughed and ducked my head. “A pastry? You know the way to my heart.”
He settled my hand on my own shoulder and ran his thumb over the knuckles.
“Hardly. I get these little windows into your soul—a woman who should have been fed far more bread in her life, who loves sparkling jewels, but more for their curiosity than their value, who doesn’t sit still well but hesitates to assert herself too much, who is inclined to trust and love but then stops herself and pulls back, who is frighteningly loyal, and whose mouth never accepted the discipline the rest of her managed—and every time I see a little more, I am drawn to you.
Like a moth to a candle, I want to know you more. ”
As he spoke, his shadows wrapped around us both, feather-light, drawing us closer together like a hug while still offering more room for me to resist than I’d ever need.
When he stopped speaking, he had one hand on mine (still on my shoulder) and one hand on my other shoulder.
His shadows stopped moving and hung, suspended in the air as if he’d told them they couldn’t hug me.
His voice dropped lower. “Then I remind myself that it isn’t fair to expect anything more from you in this relationship than you’ve already promised.
And I promised not to touch you without permission.
” He did not take his hands off my shoulders though.
“So it might not seem fair to make you speak feelings first, but I cannot act on anything less than your permission.”
My mouth opened to give him permission, but I clamped it closed. We were married. The idea of both of us learning to love each other sounded impossibly wonderful, but I would not be able to avoid looking at him for a year if he told me he loved me. We were already dangerously close as it was.
And I’d promised to break his curse. I might steal and lie, but I would not break a promise.
He squeezed my shoulders, a silent response to my silent answer. Then the pressure from his hands disappeared.
“Wait!” I didn’t want him to think he couldn’t touch me at all!
“I’m not going anywhere. I have something for you.” He reached over my shoulders, in front of my chest, and dangled a key as big as my palm from a fine golden chain that looked too slim to hold the key’s weight. “This is for you.”
I took the key, and he dropped the chain over my hand. “It’s a skeleton key,” he explained. “It will open any door in this castle or in our fortress on Umbran lands.”
I ran my thumb along the key’s cool surface, trying to identify the energy that radiated from the metal. “How can one key open doors in two buildings?”
“I’ve filled it with my magic. It will do more than just open doors.”
And then I realized—the energy that pulsed from the key was Bylur’s power. The same gentle thrill I’d just felt from his shadows wrapping around me emanated from the ring. He was giving me access to his magic! At least enough to open doors. “And you’re giving it to me? A thief?”
“Oh, Auria. I do not see you as a thief.”
“You don’t?” That was how I’d seen myself for more than a decade. A thief or a servant. And now a lady, though Bylur knew me well enough to see through that title.