Chapter 37 Neirin
NEIRIN
Evera slunk down against the kitchen cabinets, and I followed her lead, sitting opposite her with my back resting against one of the table’s legs.
With one knee bent and an arm hooked over it, I studied her as she made happy little noises through bites of muffins.
It was at least her third, and she’d yet to show any signs of slowing.
“Are you not going to have any?” Evera asked, licking crumbs off the tips of her fingers.
“Just making sure there is enough for you first.” Of the dozen muffins we made, most of them remained. Still, I enjoyed teasing her.
She narrowed her eyes, but instead of forfeiting the bowl, she brought it to her lap as if guarding it and pouted. Carefully inspecting her collection, she chose one muffin and held it out.
“Here,” she said. A dance of mischief sparkled in her eyes.
I reached for the muffin, but she drew it back and grinned.
Meeting her challenge, I sat forward and leaned over her until our eyes were level and our noses brushed. “Tease.”
Stifling her smile, Evera looked up at me through her lashes, and again I was struck by the depth of emotions she gave me.
I meant it when I told her I did not just crave her body, though I could not deny my attraction, my wanting for her.
But I wanted this, too. This playfulness, this wit.
The way she instilled a yearning for life within me that I’d not had before.
Hopes for a future, for something for myself, for us.
I leaned in to kiss her, but she giggled and broke my intentions with the muffin.
Narrowing my eyes, I took it from her and kissed her anyway. For as long as I was hers, I would not squander any opportunity for closeness and affection.
“Oh!” Evera gasped, reaching for her satchel.
I sat back, giving her room to grab it, and took a bite of my muffin.
She set the bowl aside and drew the book of lore from her bag. “I intended to lend this to you the other night, but …” She handed it to me instead of finishing the thought. “How much of it did you get to read?”
When she was resting in the manor house, I scanned a handful of the pages. Though in truth, I spent most of my time watching her sleep. But I wouldn’t tell her that, of course.
“A little,” I said, taking another bite.
“Did you read the part about middle shifts?”
I drew my brows. “Middle shifts?”
Evera crawled forward and turned, settling next to me. The way we fit like this was perfect. I placed an arm over her shoulder, and she pulled her knees up and propped the book open against her legs.
“Here,” she said, pointing to a page heavy with black script.
“The pages without pictures are dull,” I remarked blandly, teasing her.
It was something Harlan might say, though, and mean it.
The thought lent me to a feeling of homesickness and a longing for the times when his youthful ignorance irritated me.
What I would give now for him to be able to hold on to his childhood longer, to be safe, and to be unburdened by the expectations of rulership.
Even if Harlan’s decisions were undoubtedly guided by the court and by his mother—an uncanny thought—it would still be an incredible shift in expectations from his prior innocence.
The boy should have had more time to mature, to grow into his role.
Had I not been distracted at the festival, would I have noted something off and intercepted the assassin who had taken Kaius’s life?
Guilt tugged at me, and an apprehensive jitteriness seeped into my bones. When would the huntsman return?
Evera wrinkled her nose. “Just listen.” She began to read from the page. “Most children shift first between the ages of five and seven. Depending on the child’s magic and power, they may experience middle shifts for anywhere from a few months to a year from the time of their first shift.”
Middle shifts? The Queen never gave me a name for it, though I knew what Evera spoke of—the broken, horrid thing of nightmares I saw each time I met my reflection.
Just as I saw it that day reflected in Thatch’s eyes and the many times after, when the Queen forced me to stand before the great mirror beneath the castle as a reminder of what I was, what I was capable of if I lost control.
Where she kept me hidden until I could regain my composure, tamp my monster back down. Conceal what lurked within me.
“Until a child develops a connection with their other form, shifts can be frightening and painful, even, at times,” she read. “It is because of this—”
“Are you saying broken shifts are due to … what? A disconnect?” I shook my head. “I will not give power over to him. The fox is a monster. I know you do not see it that way, but that is the truth.”
Evera cast her gaze aside, and dejection trickled through the bond like the slow and steady drip of gathered rainfall from a leaf.
“I should not have spoken so roughly,” I apologized. What would Evera say if she knew the truth about Thatch’s death? Would she understand my resentment for the fox then? Would the truth be too much for her? Would I lose her?
When she did not respond, I wet my lips.
“The middle shift you speak of … horrid, cannot describe it. When it happened to me the first time, I was young and had no knowledge of what or who I was. The form is frightening, and though I will admit the fox does not favor violence over flight, I do not have control of him. And when he is cornered, threatened, he reacts.”
“He defends himself?”
A pain stabbed at my heart, and the heat that accompanied distress coursed through my blood.
“Did the fox hurt someone?”
I set my jaw and released a shaky breath, fighting to suppress the claws of the beast that raked beneath my skin, testing my emotional instability and searching for an opening to take his hold.
“Yes.” Behind my eyelids, images flashed, replaying the horrors of that day. I sucked in a breath through my teeth and blinked to clear the memories.
“Neirin,” Evera’s voice seemed distant.
Fingers cupped my cheek, then the touch trailed higher, into my hair as she coaxed my head to turn to her. She held me, both with the physical touch of her hand that grounded me and with her scent. In a way no one else ever had been able to, she soothed my panic and calmed my soul.
“There is something that I, too, am frightened to speak of,” Evera said, her voice soft, soothing as she stroked my cheek with her thumb. “Not a secret, just—” She averted her eyes for a moment. “Something very painful to think about.”
The sadness that seeped from her drew an instinctual need from me to put her first, to comfort her.
And though my heart still raced, I reached for her hip, drawing her into my lap.
As she shifted into my embrace, the book fell and became unimportant, as everything else in the room did. It all just … fell away.
With her forehead to mine, Evera found her voice.
“When you are ready to speak to me about your fox, I will listen. And in time,”—she dropped her head to the crook between my shoulder and neck—“I hope that I will find the bravery to tell you about my dagger. So that we can share the weight of our pain. But for now, Neir … for now just hold me.”