Chapter 24
Chapter Twenty-Four
She had no idea what she had asked of him.
No doubt she thought his reluctance had been a matter of propriety.
And it was, in part. But the truth beneath that, Kazrian knew, was far less noble.
It would be torture, pure torture, to lie so near to her in the dark and not touch her.
Not reach for her hand, not turn toward her, not do any of the thousand things his body had been begging him to do for weeks.
She had not the faintest notion.
He lowered himself onto the cushions beside her, every movement careful and controlled, and lay on his back with his arms pressed to his sides like a man laid out for burial.
The ceiling was dark above him. The rain went on.
Somewhere outside, the wind shifted, sending a scatter of drops against the glass in a brief, insistent flurry.
And beside him, close enough that he could hear each breath, each small shift of fabric, was Lucie.
He had been so careful. In the two weeks since the confessions neither of them had mentioned again—You felt forced; That is not what happened—he had kept a careful distance between them.
In addition to it being the proper thing to do, he was wholly determined that he would never make her feel as Henry Stratton had.
He had seen her step away from that man’s touch, swift and stiff.
He would sooner cut off his own hand than see her flinch from his.
But there had been moments. The chain at the back of her neck, his fingers brushing her skin, her breath held still.
And the stool, her body tipping, his hands closing around her waist before thought could intervene.
And in both of those moments, everything in him had ached to pull her closer rather than step away.
And now, after all those weeks of measured restraint, she had insisted he lie down beside her, and his resolve had crumbled, and this was going to be the longest night of his life.
Torture, he thought, staring into the dark. That is precisely what this is.
“Kazrian?”
His breath caught. He cleared his throat. “Yes?”
“Thank you. For coming tonight. I hope it did not cause you too much trouble, what with Balthazar racing through your home, dripping wet and—”
“It was no trouble at all.” His voice had come out slightly too controlled, too level, the voice of a man concentrating very hard on the precise mechanics of speech. “Balthazar was most persuasive.”
A small sound from her that might have been a laugh. “He must have looked a fright. Soaking wet.”
“Indeed. Though I suspect he was considerably more aggrieved by how long it took me to understand him than he was by the rain. I confess I do not yet read him with your fluency.”
Another almost-laugh, and he so badly wanted to turn his head and lean into her. What would it be like to feel that breath of laughter against his neck? To whisper something in her ear and feel her press her lips against his—
Stars above, stop it right now!
“I do not think it will take you much longer. The two of you seem to be getting along a great deal better than I ever would have predicted. Though I suppose I cannot fault him. He has excellent—” She seemed to realize what she was about to say and caught herself before the words could come.
Then she finished anyway, quieter now: “Excellent taste.”
Kazrian’s lips parted, but he could not fathom what to say in response to that.
Do not turn your head. Do not look at her.
“Well, except in matters of confectionery,” she added quickly, a small, strained laugh filling the silence he had failed to. “If left unsupervised, he would put sardine oil in everything I make and consider it an improvement.”
Kazrian smiled at that. “Perhaps he is simply ahead of his time. Sardine oil truffles may be the one innovation The Honeycomb has been lacking.”
She laughed properly this time, and he felt the cushions shift with it. The urge to look at her was almost overwhelming.
Ceiling. Eyes on the ceiling.
The laughter faded, and in the quiet that followed he became aware of other things.
The faint scent of vanilla and honey. The small, unmistakable shift of her arm beside his.
If the distance between them narrowed any further, he was going to have to launch himself off this bed and return to the blessedly uncomfortable floor, because there were limits to what could reasonably be asked of a person.
“I am glad you are here,” she said softly.
He squeezed his eyes shut and bit back the groan that threatened to climb up the back of his throat, because the knowledge that she wanted him here was NOT. HELPING.
“I am … glad of it too,” he said in a voice that sounded oddly strangled.
A pause. The rain filled it.
He heard her shift beside him, the whisper of linen, and his hand clenched at his side because for one terrible, exquisite instant he was certain she had turned toward him.
She had not. When he risked the briefest glance sideways, he could see only the outline of her profile, chin tilted toward the ceiling, her face turned slightly away.
She was staring at the ceiling too.
Good. That was good. Two people staring at a ceiling. Nothing remotely agonizing about that.
“Are you … comfortable?” she asked.
“Exceedingly.”
He was not. He was the furthest thing from comfortable that a person could be while lying on a surface that was, objectively, quite soft. Every muscle in his body was held at a tension that could not possibly be sustainable for the remainder of the night.
“You do not sound comfortable.”
“I assure you, I am perfectly—”
“You sound as though you are lying on a plank.”
A plank might be preferable at this point. He decided not to say that out loud and instead managed a long, steadying breath through his nose. “I am—merely tired.” Then, in a gentler tone: “I am sure you are too. After … everything.”
The memory surfaced before he could stop it, her voice in the dark, coming apart on the words I can’t breathe.
“Yes,” she murmured. “Well … good night … I suppose?”
“Good night.”
The rain continued.
Neither of them moved.
He was never going to sleep. He knew that with absolute certainty.
He was going to lie here, rigid and sleepless, for the entire duration of the night, because every part of him was tuned to her with a precision that made all his careful diagnostic work on the lumyrite lattice look like guesswork by comparison.
Find something else, he firmly instructed himself. Find something else to think of.
And so his mind returned, mercilessly, to that horrifying image from earlier—her breath hitching, her hands at her neck reaching for a ring that was not there, the terror in her voice when she had gasped out I can’t—I can’t breathe—
His own chest tightened at the memory. He had crossed the room before he’d even made the decision to move, pulling the signet ring from his finger as he went. Because her ring was what she always reached for to steady herself, and now her ring was gone.
After the ring, his mind had reached for the next thing, and the next, racing through everything he knew, every approach that might reach her, while the rest of him held steady and spoke gently and did not let her see that he was terrified.
It had been frightening the first time, too.
The only other time, if what she’d told him was true.
He had been fifteen. Lucie had been working at The Charmed Leaf for only a few weeks, and he had known her for precisely that long, but already she’d become the thought his mind returned to whenever it was left unattended.
He had gone looking for her in the pantry, drawn by nothing more than the simple, aching wish to see her, and had found her instead pressed against the shelving with her hands clutched at her chest, her hair loose and tangled from where she had evidently been pulling the pins from it, gasping for air that did not seem to be coming.
He had not known much at fifteen. He had known considerably less than he liked to think he knew. But this he recognized, because Aurelise, who felt everything just a little too deeply, sometimes experienced what their mother called ‘a fit of nerves.’
And Kazrian, in the way his mind could never leave a problem alone, had spent those early episodes with his sister quietly working out what helped.
A careful process of trying one thing and then another until he realized he needed to ground her in something physical.
Something that pulled her attention out of the spiraling dark and back into the solid, tangible world.
Standing there in front of Lucie, he had reached for the nearest thing, a tin of tea leaves, and pressed it into her hands.
He told her to feel it. Was it hot or cold?
Smooth or rough? Could she count the edges?
He hadn’t been sure if she’d even heard him, but then he watched her shaking fingers trace around the rectangular lid, then down the sides, then around the base.
“Can you try to breathe with me?” he’d asked, the same way he’d asked tonight. He drew a breath, slow and deliberate, held it for several counts, then let it go. Drew another. Held it. Let it go.
She had not been able to match him. Not for a long while. She had turned away from him entirely, gripping the tin, and gasped out, “I can’t—I can’t—”
And so he had done the only other thing he could think to do, the thing that had always helped to settle his sister.
He had gently gathered Lucie’s loose, tangled hair back over her shoulders and begun, with hands far steadier than he had felt, to braid it.
Slowly, methodically, counting his breaths aloud as he worked, over-under, over-under, over-under.