19. Artemis #2
Her eyes flicked back to the screen. “Okay,” she said. “But before we romanticize the narrative, I need to confirm something.”
I frowned. “What?”
“How is it going with Arthur?” she asked. “Is he treating you well? Is he respectful? And most importantly, has he given you any indication that he might be a serial killer?”
I snorted. “He’s not a serial killer.”
“You say that now,” she said. “They always seem very competent and charming at first.”
“He is… good. Steady. Protective without being weird about it. He listens.”
Eloise’s expression softened. “Good,” she said. “That’s the bare minimum, but given your history, I’m still relieved.” Her eyes narrowed. “You look different.”
I stiffened. “Different how?”
“Alive,” she said simply. “It’s a compliment.”
I smiled despite myself. “Everything is going how it should.”
Which was true. Mostly. I didn’t tell her about the danger and the near disasters. She didn’t need that information yet. It would only make her worry.
“I feel,” I said slowly, choosing my words, “invigorated. Like my brain finally clicked into place.”
Eloise grinned. “Oh. That’s the good part.”
“I have ideas,” I said. “So many. I know when I sit down to write, it’s going to come out exactly how it’s meant to.”
She leaned back, satisfied. “That is the feeling. That is when you know you are finally telling the right story.”
I nodded. For the first time, I did not doubt it.
“Okay,” I said, shifting the phone. “Enough about my unexpected Scottish adventure. What have you been up to?”
She groaned. “I signed up to teach a writing class for the elderly,” she said. “It turns out retirees have been waiting decades for a captive audience. I’m surviving on caffeine and spite. And I miss you.”
My heart squeezed at that. “I miss you, too. I’ll be home soon.”
I stood there a moment, gazing out the window, my heart steady.
When I walked back into the bedroom, I stopped short.
Food was laid out on the bed. Actual food.
Plates set carefully on a folded blanket.
Steam rose in thin, steady threads, carrying the smell of roasted herbs and butter that made my stomach rumble.
On the nightstand, a bottle of red wine sat between two glasses that had already been poured, the surface of the liquid catching the low light from the lamp.
It all smelled incredible. Chicken skin crisped just enough to promise salt and fat.
Potatoes crushed flat and roasted until their edges were golden and brittle.
Greens dressed lightly with lemon, sharp and clean against the heavier scents.
Bread torn open at the seam, crust crackling faintly as it cooled, the inside soft and pale and begging to be pulled apart.
My mouth actually watered.
Arthur looked up from adjusting a napkin like this was the most normal thing in the world, as if people routinely transformed bedrooms into private dining rooms without comment.
His sleeves were pushed up, his hair slightly disheveled, and he seemed focused on making sure everything stayed where it was supposed to.
I must have looked completely lost, because he said, “I knew you must be starving.”
I was starving.
“And I wanted to apologize.”
Oh.
He straightened, hands settling at his sides like he was bracing for impact. “I didn’t mean to upset you. I shouldn’t have kissed you like that. I misjudged the moment.”
I nodded, because it was the only movement my body remembered how to do with the sharp pain pressing between my ribs.
“I won’t let it happen again,” he said.
There it was. The answer to the question I hadn’t asked yet, delivered neatly and without cruelty. I appreciated that. I also hated it.
“That’s fine,” I said, because I was excellent at saying that. “Really. You didn’t do anything wrong.”
I was lying, but it was a small, necessary lie to keep me functioning.
He gestured to the bed. “Please. Climb in. You should eat.”
I did, sliding onto the opposite side and tucking my legs under the blanket like this was a sleepover and not the slow dismantling of expectations I had built in the last twenty minutes. When he handed me a plate, I took a bite of the chicken and nearly cried.
“This is… wow,” I said.
He relaxed a fraction. “Good.”
The wine was smooth and deep. I didn’t know enough about wine to describe it properly, only that it made limbs loosen and my thoughts slow down enough to behave.
We ate quietly for a moment.
Then he said, “I don't understand what happened at the Writer’s Museum.”
That was an easier topic to discuss.
“Those attackers were trained,” he continued. “They knew the space. They knew how I would move. They were trying to prevent us from finding something they want to keep hidden. The question is what.”
“Information.”
“Yes,” he said. “But what information? And who are they? Who sent them?”
I swallowed and wiped my fingers. “I sent Percy the photos I took. The annotations. The catalog numbers. The map. All of it. Hopefully, he’ll know something we don’t.”
Arthur studied me for a long moment, then said, “You are brilliant.”
I laughed out of reflex. “No, I’m not.”
“No,” he said. “I’m serious.”
I opened my mouth, already preparing my standard deflection, but he continued.
“The connections you made. You noticed what did not belong, and the way you moved through that space… I could not have accomplished what we did without you.”
My stomach dipped. Annoying.
“And,” he added, quieter, “you saved my life.”
I shook my head. “You saved mine first. And second. And probably third.”
“That doesn’t negate your part.”
I stared down at my plate, suddenly very interested in a potato. This was the problem. He was so kind and thoughtful. Maybe it was just how he was with everyone. Maybe I was assigning meaning where there was none.
Maybe I needed to chill the fuck out.
I took another sip of wine and focused on the fact that I was eating one of the best meals of my life in a cottage in Edinburgh with a dragon who had very clearly set boundaries and was still being decent.
That counted for something.
When we were done eating, Arthur cleared the dishes off the bed.
I took a sip of my wine, then said, “We should play a game.”
He looked surprised. “A game?”
“Yes.”
“What kind?”
I thought that over. “We each get thirty seconds to tell the other an obscure fact. Something random.”
“And if one cannot think of anything in the allotted amount of time?”
“Then you have to answer a personal question.”
He thought about it seriously, because that’s what he did.
He nodded. “All right.”
I smiled despite myself.
“Your turn first,” I said and set a thirty-second timer on my phone.
Arthur considered the rules with the seriousness of someone deciding whether a treaty would hold.
“Timer starts now,” I told him, because if I didn’t keep this structured, my brain would start freefalling into something unhelpful and possibly romantic.
He tilted his head slightly, like he was opening a familiar drawer in his mind and checking what was inside.
“Frankenstein was first published anonymously,” he said. “Most early reviewers assumed Percy Shelley wrote it. When Mary Shelley’s name appeared on later editions, several critics revised their praise downward.”
I gaped at him. I had known that factoid since grad school.
I had lectured about it. I had argued about it with undergraduates who wanted to believe progress was linear and fairness inevitable.
Most men I knew, especially the ones I’d gone to grad school with, would have expected me to be impressed by their feminist knowledge, but Arthur simply stated the fact.
In fact, he seemed a little incensed at the injustice of it all.
“Early reviews were brutal after that,” I said slowly. “They called it unfeminine, overwrought, and dangerous.”
“Yes,” he said. “They preferred it when they could pretend a man had written it.”
Warmth surged through me.
“You chose that on purpose,” I said.
His mouth curved into a pleased smile. “I thought you would recognize it.”
“I did,” I said. “Immediately.”
“And?”
“And it explains an unreasonable amount of literary history. That was your thirty seconds,” I said, because I needed to anchor myself in rules before I floated off entirely. “You passed. Unfortunately.”
“Unfortunately?” he echoed.
“Yes,” I said. “Because now I have expectations.”
He settled back against the pillows, and his relaxed posture did dangerous things to my internal balance. The bed was nice and toasty, and the wine had softened everything. Arthur’s gaze stayed on mine, like I mattered.
I tried very hard not to read into that.
“Your turn,” he said.
And there it was. The rush. The good one. The one where my brain lined up shelves and cross-referenced footnotes and reached instinctively for something obscure and precise and entirely mine.
I sat up straighter, already smiling despite myself.
“Oh,” I said. “You are absolutely not prepared.”
And for the first time since he told me he didn’t have time for romance, the confusion eased just enough to make room for something else.
Joy.
Pure, nerdy joy.
I did not even pretend to think about a random, obscure fact.
My brain had already leapt the shelves, scaled the ladders, and landed on something feral and perfect.
“Okay,” I said, tucking my legs under me and squaring my shoulders like this was an exam I had been studying for my entire life. “Ready to lose?”
His brows lifted a fraction. “I have not yet lost.”
“You have,” I said. “You just don’t know it.”
I took a breath.
“Chained libraries didn’t exist merely because people were stealing books,” I said. “The chains were mostly installed because readers kept altering the texts.”
He stilled with interest. That alone was satisfying.