Chapter Sixteen #2
If that’s true, I might be able to learn how to use the magic within me.
I avoid Davien’s attentive stare by helping myself to another piece of bread, dipping it in the oil and herbs, and popping it into my mouth.
It’s like he can sense what I’m thinking.
I wonder if one night at the manor, he drilled a hole in my mind with those eyes of his while I was blindfolded and oblivious, and now he has a window to my innermost thoughts whenever he wants.
I bite my lip. I really hope that I’m wrong about that because my mind isn’t a place that anyone should spend too much time in. It’s dangerous enough for me, and I live here.
The rest of the meal goes smoothly. After, when Hol and Felda escort us to the door, I can honestly say I’ve enjoyed myself. Felda actually gives me a little squeeze.
“It’s been a delight to meet you,” she says.
“Hol filled me in on some of your circumstances, told me more than he likely should have, I admit.” Her mouth quirks into a mischievous grin.
I see where Raph gets his from. “I know that coming here wasn’t part of your plan, but I’m glad Davien has you with him. ”
I glance over to Davien; he and Hol are engaged in an intense, hushed conversation. They don’t seem to hear Felda’s soft words.
“I’m not…I don’t know what you think. But—”
“You don’t have to explain,” she says a little too quickly.
As if I’m embarrassed and she’s doing me a favor.
“It’s just nice to see someone with him.
Hol and his other king’s knights have certainly tried their best. But they had their obligations here, keeping Dreamsong safe.
They could never stay with him for long anyway, because as you can see with Davien, we fae aren’t meant to live in your world.
I can imagine how lonely he was with only Oren for company.
Bless him, he’s a good man, but not the greatest conversationalist.” She laughs.
I smirk. “From what Oren has said, it sounds like you two get on well.”
Before I can say anything, the two men join us.
“We should return to the main hall,” Davien says. “The last thing we want is for Vena to need us for something and find us unavailable.”
“Of course.” I nod. We bid our final farewells and return to the streets of Dreamsong.
“I’m glad they’re doing so well,” he says after we’re far from the house.
“Were they not?” They seemed like an enviably normal family to me. More normal than what I’d thought possible for a family.
“Their family’s ancestral home is in what is now the Bleeding Woods.
Their Court of Leaves was led by one of the last blood survivors of Aviness,” he says with a somber tone.
I see his hands clench and the muscles in his jaw bulge.
“The Butchers drove them out of their home well before Raph was born.”
Davien slows and shoves hands into the pockets of his loose-fitting trousers.
He’s wearing a tunic that’s open low on his breastbone.
The flat expanse of his chest is on display underneath a series of necklaces.
He fits in so naturally here. There’s something to the air around him that just… belongs.
I suppose that’s not what surprises me. What surprises me is how envious I am of it.
It’s not the fae that I want to be a part of.
I just want to belong. I want some people, some place, some time to be mine.
I want to not be a castaway fighting for forgotten scraps on the floors underneath tables I’ll never have a seat at.
I want to have a family. A table.
“If you become king, will they get to go back to their home?” I ask softly. “Will they rebuild the Court of Leaves?”
He meets my eyes, exposing the murky depths of his pain.
So many things about this man are still a mystery to me, but rather than being frightened, I find myself more and more intrigued by the endless possibilities of them.
I want to ask. I want to know. I want to peel back every layer of him as I feel him doing to me every time we’re together.
What’s wrong with me?
This endless push and pull between us threatens to rip me apart.
“If—when I become king, these lands will once more belong to the people who made them. The courts may return to their ancestral homes or rebuild anew, whichever speaks more to who they are now.
“I will see that the fae are strong again. That we have a seat at the table at Midscape’s Council of Kings.
I will demand the return of the lands the Elf King stole from us and I will fight for the fae to once more have the prominence we deserve.
I will see every court rebuilt to keep the High Court in check so no king ever feels he is so powerful that he can act without accountability.
I will use the power that’s trapped within the glass crown and the hill of the High Court to help my people however I am able for as long as I draw breath. ”
I stand in awe of him. The way he speaks is filled with conviction…and not because he’s practiced these lines like Helen did before Father’s parties so she had the best chance to win a suitor. He speaks the truth that he knows, that he has burned into his heart above all else.
The need to touch him becomes irresistible.
A man with a noble mission is more attractive than I ever expected.
I want to hold his hand and caress the soft skin of his palm.
I want to press my fingers across the strong muscles of his chest and do all the things I fantasized about late at night that left me gasping, such as… my mind reels.
Heat crashes over me, flushing my cheeks and making me shift my weight from foot to foot as it pools uncomfortably in my lower abdomen. This man makes me want dangerous things. Things I’ve never thought I wanted and certainly never needed.
“We should return to Vena,” I say, my voice not sounding as strong as normal.
“We should.” Yet his eyes are still on mine, his head ducked slightly. For the first time since coming to this world, he looks and sounds like the Lord Fenwood I knew in the manor.
The rest of our walk is consumed by an awkward, tense silence. Our shoulders brush seven times. But who’s counting?
Yet we both resist closing that dangerous gap between us. Because in that space is the line of no return. And somehow, in broad daylight in the middle of a busy street, we just came dangerously close to crossing it.