Twenty-Seven - Isabel
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Mapping the archiveswas a slow, painful business. It didn’t help that Felix had turned remarkably chatty. Conversations with the duke had always been too easy, but arguing over magical theory wasn’t the same as discussing our childhoods. Or perhaps the problem was that I had given into my curiosity and asked him about Lady Cecily. Hearing him agree that he could visit a lover in Leort if he wanted had affected me more than I expected.
Especially since I was the one who suggested it in the first place. I think I had expected him to tell me he could visit an inn and find a bedmate if he needed to scratch an itch, not imply that he wanted more than that. After all, he had admitted that he had slept with Lady Cecily mostly because she was available and temporary.
The more we talked, the more his answer ate at me. I disliked imagining him with a hypothetical woman who meant more to him than a means of physical release even more than thinking about his past relationship with Cecily.
I shouldn’t be thinking about him in such situations at all. Not because he was a cat—in my imagination he was still a man, memories from when I had seen him walking through town in the past suddenly clearer than they’d ever been. The striking onyx of his hair, the same shade as his current fur, the tailored doublet that emphasized the width of his shoulders and the narrowness of his hips, it all stood out in my mind with an intensity I wasn’t used to. I had never once sighed over a man’s smile. Now a twitch of whiskers sent my mind down avenues I’d never before explored.
The morning after we started mapping the trueness of the scrolls in the archives, I declared I needed a break. Listening to so much magic was giving me a headache. It was true—I couldn’t have said it otherwise—but it wasn’t the whole truth. I needed a little time away from Felix.
I wanted to talk to my sister. I understood why people behaved the way they did from an outsider’s perspective. Sofia was much better at understanding what was going on in the middle of social interactions. Maybe she could explain my own feelings to me, because if what I was beginning to suspect was true, I was a fool. Forgiving the duke was one thing. Liking him could even be explained away as a side-effect of living in an enchanted castle with him. But I suspected there was more than that going on.
It was a situation I was unfamiliar with.
Because of the power binding me to my contract, I couldn’t spend the rest of the morning analyzing my own feelings. I still had work to do. A curse to break. A duke to turn back into a human.
My thoughts wandered again. This time, my imagination conjured more than his physical form. I heard him clearly in my mind. His deep voice and sardonic drawl. His contrary answers and teasing questions.
Node magic constricted around me and I gasped. I really needed to talk to Sofia if I was daydreaming about Felix now. She’d understand if this was caused by the forced proximity—the unintentional intimacy of working together toward a common goal.
Rubbing at my sternum, I grabbed Theory of All Magics from the table I had left it on days before. Now that we knew the node was locked to both truth-telling and reading, and that Cecily had gained access to the node through Felix, perhaps the book would offer me new insights.
I snorted. Or perhaps it would at least provide a distraction from my thoughts.