Chapter 14 #2
Something inside my chest loosened before I could decide what to do with it.
He had meant what he said.
Ivy arrived before I could test whether my legs intended to cooperate.
She pressed the back of her hand to my forehead, checked the wound in my thigh, and finally allowed me to sit on the edge of the bed without threatening to tie me to it.
The infection had begun before the road ever opened.
The Marred claw had torn deeper than the wound first appeared, and although no indigo had entered me, Ivy believed my Wild had been working around the injury since the attack, keeping the damaged flesh from worsening while I continued walking on it, reopening it, and generally making every decision she would have preferred I avoid.
When the Cedarstone road drained nearly everything from me, there had been too little Wild left to keep doing both.
My body had lost the fight it had apparently been winning without my knowledge.
I disliked that explanation almost as much as I disliked the medicine she handed me afterward.
By midday, I could cross the bedroom without help.
By the second attempt, I made it into the passage before my thigh began to burn.
Ivy watched from several steps behind me while I continued toward the kitchen, and I could feel her preparing to interfere long before my legs started trembling.
“I’m still standing.”
She folded her arms. “For now.”
“I crossed the entire house.”
“You crossed four rooms.”
“That sounds like an entire house to me.”
A quiet sound came from the kitchen, and I looked through the doorway.
Xandros sat at the old table with a cup between his hands, amusement pulling faintly at one corner of his mouth.
Ivy stepped around me and pulled out the nearest chair. “Sit before I decide four rooms was too ambitious.”
Xandros lowered his cup, wisely keeping whatever amusement he found in that to himself.
The effort of reaching the kitchen had left my pulse beating too hard, so I lowered myself into the chair across from him before either of them could see just how much that little adventure had truly taken out of me.
The wood beneath my palm was worn smooth with age, except for a shallow gouge near the edge of the table.
Xandros watched me for a moment. “What happened there?”
I glanced up at him, then back at the mark. “Rhian.”
His gaze dropped to the table. “Rhian?”
The pressure inside my chest returned, quieter this time. “We were seventeen. He decided he could throw my father’s hunting knife across the room and make it stick in the door.”
Xandros arched an eyebrow then looked toward the doorway. “It appears he missed.”
“By several feet.” I smiled and pressed my thumb into the old groove. “He swore my father would never notice.”
“And did he?”
“He noticed before Rhian finished hiding the knife.”
The corner of Xandros' mouth twitched.
For a moment, Rhian stood in this room again, both hands tucked behind his back while my father stared at the fresh cut in the table. He had lasted perhaps three breaths before confessing everything, including the part where I had dared him to try.
“He was terrible at lying.”
“Was?”
My smile faded. The silence that followed tightened around my throat.
Xandros shifted closer to the table. “He’ll survive this.”
I nodded, because speaking would have made the pressure worse.
His attention stayed on the scar in the wood for another moment.
“I thought he was your lover.”
My head turned toward him. “Rhian?”
He inclined his head slightly. “You nearly tore apart your own infirmary trying to keep him alive. It wasn’t the most unreasonable conclusion.”
Heat crept along the back of my neck.
I supposed that was a fair assessment from the outside. And from the inside, no doubt, if rumors in the Grove were anything to go by. “He isn’t.”
Xandros' fingers rested against the edge of the table. “Was he ever?”
I wasn’t sure why I felt the need to explain myself, only that once I started, I couldn’t seem to stop.
“Our families were always close, so we grew up together. Then we both became Thornwardens.” I rubbed my thumb over the damaged wood. “For a while, I think we assumed everyone else must know something we didn’t.”
“What changed?”
I let out a long breath that stirred the loose strands of hair along my brow. “He asked me.”
Xandros waited.
“Rhian asked whether I wanted him as my husband someday, or whether I only wanted him beside me because he had always been there.” My throat tightened. “Then he asked if everyone stopped expecting us to end up together tomorrow, would I still choose him that way.”
Xandros' attention stayed fixed on me. “And?”
A quiet laugh escaped me. “I told him that was an obnoxious question.”
“That sounds about right.”
I looked up.
His mouth had softened.
“The worst part was that I knew the answer.” My thumb stilled against the groove. “I could imagine Rhian beside me when we were old. I could imagine raising children with him, sharing a home with him, burying our parents together. Every version of my future had him somewhere in it.”
The pressure behind my breastbone deepened.
“I just never wanted to kiss him.”
The corner of Xandros' mouth twitched.
Heat climbed higher into my cheeks. “It was a very useful distinction at seventeen.”
“I imagine so.”
“I loved him.” The words tightened something inside me. “I still do. I just have never wanted him that way.”
Xandros went very still.
My pulse stumbled.
Something shifted in his expression before his gaze dropped briefly to my mouth and returned to my eyes.
“You wanted me to say no.”
His fingers tightened around the cup. “I wanted to know the answer.”
“That isn’t the same thing.”
A loose strand of hair slipped across my cheek, and his attention followed it.
For a moment, neither of us moved. The fire cracked somewhere behind him, but the sound seemed farther away than the quiet between us.
Then Xandros lifted his hand. His fingers brushed my temple before sliding carefully through the loose strand and tucking it behind my ear. Sparks followed the path of his touch, spreading across my cheek and down the side of my neck.
I stayed perfectly still.
The tips of his fingers rested just behind my ear, close enough that I could feel the heat of his palm against the side of my face without quite touching it. Storm-charged air and warm amber filled every breath, stronger now that he had leaned closer.
My gaze dropped. His mouth was only inches from mine.
The thought of closing that distance came so quickly that heat rushed through me before I could shove it away. My lips parted, and the air between us carried the faint taste of the bitter tea he had been drinking.
I wondered what it would taste like from his mouth.
My pulse slammed hard against my throat.
His eyes lowered to my lips.
The starburst in my palm ignited, but the sensation barely registered beneath the blaze spreading like wildfire through every other part of me.
Xandros' thumb moved once against the edge of my cheek.
My lungs began to ache and only then did I realize I had stopped breathing.
I pulled in a shallow breath, and his gaze lifted back to mine.
Neither of us moved away.
A whistle sounded outside. The sharp note cut through the room, and Xandros' fingers fell from my face.
Cold air kissed the skin where his hand had been.
Another whistle followed from farther down the path.
Xandros looked toward the window, but I was still looking at him when voices carried through the trees outside.
One of them belonged to Maren.