Chapter 20
CHAPTER TWENTY
VICTORIA
Isat at my worktable, surrounded by samples and notes that had been there since yesterday.
A half-eaten pastry waited on a plate beside me.
Feral had brought it up from the kitchen a short time ago, along with tea that I’d spelled to remain piping hot.
I picked up the pastry and took another bite without really tasting it, my attention already drifting.
The flowers caught my eye again. Fresh ones in the urn this morning, their stems submerged in water. He’d remembered since the first day. I’d noticed it when he brought them and kept noticing it every few minutes since, like my brain wanted to register the fact as significant.
Wild honeysuckle and late-blooming columbine. The same combination as yesterday, which meant he’d gone to the same area to pick them. He was establishing a pattern. Creating a routine around bringing me flowers that wouldn’t die by midday.
I noted it the way I noted everything significant and then sat very still with the weight of what that meant.
I also couldn’t stop thinking about last night. The warmth of his hands. The way he’d looked at me. The bond flaring bright enough to leave afterimages behind my eyelids.
The headboard hitting the wall. The sword falling. His reflexes catching it without breaking rhythm.
The bed collapsing on the floor. He was fixing it right now, and I was grateful he hadn’t asked one of the staff to do it. I’d never be able to look them in the eye again.
My skin tingled at the thought of what we’d do in the fixed bed tonight.
I caught myself smiling at nothing.
Acorn watched me from his basket on the windowsill with the stillness of someone who’d already won a game I hadn’t known we were playing. He’d curled his tail around his body and groomed his whiskers, turning him into the picture of innocence.
The wolf who keeps his witch well-pleased, knows many ways to bring her ease, he said.
“You’re insufferable.”
His tail flicked once.
I sipped my tea and studied him.
“Where did you go last night while we were dancing? I saw you climbing into the canopy with another squirrel, one with the white patch on his or her ear.”
A lady’s secrets keep, where branches high and shadows deep. What passes between squirrel and tree, is not for witches’ eyes to see.
“So there is something happening with you and her.”
He groomed his whiskers with one paw, the gesture deliberately casual. Perhaps. Perhaps not. A squirrel need not explain his evening constitutionals to those who spent their own night breaking furniture.
I shook my head, my lips thinning. “The furniture will be fine.”
The bed would disagree. As would the sword.
“That sword was poorly mounted.”
A convenient excuse.
“You’re changing the subject.”
He chittered and turned his attention to the window opening, dismissing me with the kind of regal indifference only small creatures could pull off.
I returned to my notes, trying to focus on crystallization patterns instead of the fact that my squirrel knew exactly what Feral and I had been doing last night.
I took another sip of my tea, this time actually tasting it. The floral blend I preferred. He’d remembered that too.
The office door opened, and Feral walked in carrying a bucket of water in one hand and a rag in the other.
He didn’t look at me, just moved directly to his father’s side of the room and set the bucket down on the floor with a soft thunk.
He wore simple work clothes. Sleeves rolled to his elbows.
Hair tied back in a way that suggested he’d done it quickly without caring how it looked.
I watched him dip the rag in the water and wring it out before starting on the desk surface. Years of grime came away in dark streaks, turning the water in the bucket murky within seconds. A spell took care of that, but it would get dirty again if he kept going.
The wood he revealed was lighter than I’d expected, showing grain patterns that had been hidden under dust and time.
He worked slowly. The top of the desk first, following the sides.
Then the drawers, pulling them out one at a time to clean them inside and out.
The bookshelf came next, each shelf cleared and wiped clean before the books went back in the same order they’d been removed, though he gently wiped them off them first.
This was a reclamation. He couldn’t face the weight of his father’s space and all its abandoned grief without someone else here to anchor him. He’d anticipated I’d witness it without making it into something that required explanation.
But he could do it beside me.
I returned to my notes and pretended not to notice the way his hands paused on objects that probably carried memories I hoped he’d one day share. A stone paperweight. A wooden box with a painted unicorn on top. The small wolf carving I’d found in the drawer.
We were two people occupying one space. The sound of water wrung from cloth and the scratch of my pen on paper filled the silence between us.
In some ways, it felt more intimate than last night. Less about heat and more about trust.
Acorn leaped and flew from the windowsill to the top of the bookshelf. He settled with a small chirp, his tail high, and began grooming himself while watching Feral’s progress with the air of a supervisor inspecting quality of work.
Old rooms hold old bones, old dust holds old grief. The wolf who cleans brings both relief.
“Acorn.”
What? I’m simply observing.
“You’re doing more than observing.”
He chittered and continued grooming, one ear swiveled toward Feral.
“He’s commenting on your cleaning technique,” I said.
“I gathered it was something like that.” Feral moved to the next shelf. “Tell him I’m doing fine without supervision.”
Acorn’s response came right away. The wolf scrubs well but slow as stone. Perhaps his mate should help him, he works alone.
“I’ll tell your squirrel friend about that other squirrel you were seeing at my grandmother’s manor,” I said.
Acorn went completely still. You wouldn’t.
“Try me.”
His tail puffed. That’s cruel.
“It’s fair game.”
He huffed and went back to grooming in silence, his movements sharp.
Feral’s mouth twitched, but he didn’t comment.
I wouldn’t actually do something like that, but my companion didn’t need to know it.
I worked through another round of crystallization notes while he cleaned.
The compound analysis from yesterday showed interesting properties I wanted to cross-reference with the bioluminescent samples.
My pen moved across the page, documenting my observations, while Feral moved furniture to reach corners that hadn’t been touched in over a decade.
Him in his space, me in mine. The office belonged to both of us now instead of being divided by an invisible line of grief.
Eventually I heard him leave, probably to empty the bucket. He returned with it sloshing again.
“I could’ve spelled it clean for you,” I said without turning.
“I didn’t mind going downstairs. It gave me a chance to check on my pack.”
He got back to work.
“The desk is walnut,” he said after a while.
I looked up. “What?”
“My father’s desk.” He ran a polishing cloth across the now-visible wood grain. “I’d forgotten. It’s been so covered in grime I thought it was darker.”
“It’s beautiful wood.”
“He commissioned it when I was small. Had it made special.” Feral’s hand stilled on the surface. “I remember watching the craftsman work on it. My father let me help sand one of the legs. I was maybe four and did a terrible job, but he kept it like that anyway.”
I turned to face him. “Which leg?”
He pointed to the right front corner.
I could see it if I looked closely, slightly uneven sanding in one section, but still there if you knew to look.
“He was a good father,” I said.
“He tried to be.” Feral went back to cleaning. “He died before he could finish teaching me everything I needed to know.”
“You figured it out.”
“I had to.”
The words came out matter-of-fact, but I heard the weight underneath them. Nineteen and suddenly alpha, responsible for hundreds of wolves, carrying the pack on shoulders that hadn’t been ready for it yet.
“For what it’s worth,” I said, “I think you’ve done well.”
He glanced at me, vulnerability passing across his face. “You didn’t know me before.”
“I know you now.”
That landed somewhere tender. His throat worked, and he nodded before turning back to the bookshelf.
We worked in silence for a while longer. Him cleaning, me documenting. Acorn grooming himself on his perch and occasionally offering unsolicited opinions about technique and efficiency that I opted not to comment on.
The office was transforming. What had been a tomb when I first found it was becoming a workspace again. Feral’s father’s things arranged with care instead of abandoned. My equipment on one side, his maps and records on the other.
I liked it very much. I could picture us working quietly together here through the years. Sharing smiles and discussing whatever we were working on.
A buzzing sound cut through the silence, and a messenger sprite flew in through the window, trailing silver sparks.
I walked over to the window and held out my palm. “Take a rest, little one.”
The sprite landed on my hand, her wings still moving fast enough to create a faint hum. Up close, I could see the delicate structure of her body, translucent in places where the light hit her right.
After setting her onto the windowsill, I collected the nectar I’d kept ready, pouring it into a small dish. The sprite dove into the drink, gulping it down.
Feral had stopped cleaning and come over to stand beside me, watching the sprite.
“A message from your grandmother?” he asked.
“Most likely.” I watched the sprite finish the nectar, her tiny hands cupping the dish.