7. Violet
Chapter seven
Violet
I spend nearly every moment of daylight curled up in the library with a book in my hands.
There are times when I am there, and Jack is not. Mostly, he tends to his kingdom in the early hours of the day and arrives, looking weary and restless at the same time, sometime after dinner.
Mostly we don’t speak. Jack never seems too keen on talking, which is fine—it’s probably best to keep my distance, anyway.
While I doubt he’s the kind of guy I might find myself missing when all of this is over, it’s better to avoid creating any sorts of attachments at all. I don’t want to miss anyone when it’s time for me to go back home .
Anyone but Cora, that is. She and I have developed a routine—the second the first moon goes down and she’s no longer on duty, she comes to my room where we gossip—she tells me about what the other staff members get up to when Jack’s back is turned and I listen, or talk about who we are and who we used to be.
Then, when she leaves, I slip under the covers and am almost immediately asleep. There’s something so tiring about spending nearly every waking hour drowning myself in little unimportant facts about Jack’s realm, about collecting lore like children do with rocks.
When I wake up, I do it all over again.
Today though, as I study Jack after finishing a particularly boring chapter that I most definitely deserve a break after reading, the quiet begins to eat at me. I don’t normally mind it. Some days I even prefer it.
This is not one of those days.
“How is it going over there?” I ask him. “Anything good.”
He merely sighs in response.
“Is that right? It’s so good you can’t even spare me a single word? Do spill, Lord Frost. What is it that has your attention wrapped around its finger?”
He frowns and flicks his blue-eyed gaze over to where I sit. “What is it you want, Violet?”
“I want to know why it is that you refuse to acknowledge that I am a real- life person who wishes to have real-life conversations every once in a while. Is that asking too much?”
He straightens. “No,” Jack says simply. “But if it’s conversation you’re looking for, you’ll have to find it somewhere else. ”
“I’m sure you’re perfectly capable of talking to me like a person for a moment or two. It might even be good for you.”
“Good for me?” Jack echoes.
“Good for you,” I reaffirm, nodding slowly. “Crazy as it may seem, social skills are quite important for Lords to learn.”
His gaze narrows almost imperceptibly. “I have social skills.”
“You just choose not to use them?”
“Small talk is not currently at the forefront of my mind, strange as it may seem.”
“Ah, yes,” I say, nodding. “My bad, truly. I forgot men are such simple creatures that they are incapable of multitasking.”
Jack huffs out an irritated breath and closes his book loudly. “Fine, then, Violet Jones. Speak. Say whatever it is you wish to say.”
I beam at him. I wonder if he can see how sarcastic my expression is. “Excellent. Tell me, how was your day?”
“How was my d—” Jack cuts himself off and closes his eyes before pinching the bridge of his nose. “This is more important to you than getting back home?”
I shrug my shoulders. “Nothing wrong with taking a break, is there?”
“You seem awfully worried about taking a break when you’re the one who insisted you be here in the first place.”
Now I’m the one glaring. “I also spend nearly ten hours a day in here, reading all your shitty books with their shitty old-timey script, fuckface. So what if I want to take a moment to ask you how your day was? ”
He stares at me for a long moment. Sighs. “My day was and continues to be long and unhelpful in the grand scheme of things.” He pauses then, as if it’s an afterthought and perhaps a way of signaling a truce, asks, “How was your day?”
“How sweet of you to ask, Jack.” I bat my eyelashes at him with a shit-eating grin on my face. “It was probably one of the most boring days of my entire life—but getting the chance to speak with you has really turned that all around for me.” My tone is dripping with sarcasm.
His tone is flat when he speaks. “You’re the one who insisted we speak at all.”
“And it’s been riveting, really. But I’m hoping we might move on to more interesting topics before I jump off the balcony.”
“Like?”
“Like…” I pause, debating for a long moment on whether or not I really want an answer or not. Fuck it . “What, exactly, is a mate?”