Chapter 15
Niki
Another week on Avalon and Enslak could actually talk.
Not just two-word responses or halting fragments. Real sentences. Real conversations. He asked questions, made observations, formed opinions. He had opinions about everything, which I found both delightful and occasionally infuriating, because he was usually right.
"You talk too much," he'd said that morning while I was explaining the difference between carrots and the tubers we'd been eating.
I'd stopped mid-sentence. "Excuse me?"
His lips twitched. "Always talking. Words, words, words." He gestured, mimicking my animated way of speaking with his hands. "Like little birds. Chirping."
"Did you just compare me to a bird?"
"Small bird," he clarified, gold eyes gleaming with something I'd started to recognize as enjoyment. "Loud bird."
I threw a tuber at him. He caught it effortlessly and took a bite, that almost-smile becoming real and warm and entirely his own, and something in my chest ached at the sight of it.
Moments like that made me stop pretending what I felt was only affection.
He was healing. Really healing. His personality was emerging from beneath the trauma like something that had always been there, patient and intact, waiting for the right conditions.
The person I was discovering was remarkable in ways I hadn't anticipated: dry-humored, thoughtful, quietly observant in a way that meant nothing slipped past him.
He noticed everything. He remembered more each day, not just facts but texture and context and the shape of who he'd been before they took it from him.
And he was beautiful. I'd noticed that from the beginning, obviously.
Even covered in blood in that cell, even with everything the Garoot hadn't undone, he'd been compelling in a way that bypassed rational thought entirely.
But now, healthy and present, his dark hair washed and braided back from his face, those strong features fully his own?
The word breathtaking felt both insufficient and slightly embarrassing, but it was the only one I had.
I noticed, and I felt guilty about noticing, and then I felt ridiculous for feeling guilty, because he was an adult who had been showing me exactly who he was for weeks now.
The guilt wasn't really about desire. It was about the power imbalance I kept turning over in my mind.
He'd been dependent on me since before he could form a sentence.
He associated me with safety and recovery and the return of everything he'd lost. How was I supposed to know whether wanting me was his actual preference or whether I was just the first person who'd been kind to him in a century?
That question kept me honest. It made me careful. And it kept me awake at night when I really didn't want to be awake.
He touched me all the time, but always with that deliberate gentleness that told me he was paying attention to what I wanted, not just what he felt.
His hand would find mine while we walked.
His fingers would brush my hair back from my face.
He'd rest his palm on my shoulder while I worked, a grounding weight, like he needed the contact to feel anchored in the world.
He kissed me on the forehead when I woke up, on my cheek when I said something that pleased him.
Small and chaste and clearly chosen rather than reflexive.
But not on the lips. Not since that first kiss by the river when the words had finally come back to him.
I remembered that kiss in distracting detail.
The taste of him. The way his whole body had gone still, like he was afraid to break it.
I wanted to kiss him again. I wanted it so much it had graduated from a thought into a physical discomfort, a tightness in my chest that had nothing to do with fear and everything to do with a week of sleeping pressed against someone warm and solid and increasingly, maddeningly present.
But I hadn't. Because wanting something and being sure it was right to act on it were different things, and I needed to be sure.
We were at the river again, upstream from the attack site, which neither of us acknowledged but both of us remembered.
The afternoon sun had turned the water gold, and I'd stripped to my underwear to bathe while Enslak kept watch from the bank.
It was our routine by now, established and easy.
I'd long since stopped being self-conscious about it, and he'd long since stopped pretending he wasn't watching.
I waded in to my waist, the cold a sharp shock against my skin, and worked soap through my hair while the current pulled the suds downstream.
Enslak sat with his back against a tree, legs stretched out, his posture carrying the relaxed quality he'd developed over the last week, the warrior's constant readiness softened to something more like comfortable vigilance.
When I surfaced from ducking under to rinse my hair, I found him looking at me directly rather than at the tree line.
Not with the hungry desperation I might have expected. With something steadier than that, and more unnerving for it. Like he'd made some internal decision and was simply letting me see it.
I waded toward the bank. He didn't look away.
When I climbed out and reached for the rough cloth I used for drying, he was still watching. His jaw was set with a deliberate effort that had nothing to do with pain, his hands resting on his knees with a stillness that was clearly chosen rather than natural.
"You're staring," I said.
"Yes." He said it without apology, which was new. A week ago he would have looked away and spent an hour being carefully composed. "You're beautiful, Niki. I think about it all the time."
Heat flooded my face. I wrapped the cloth around my shoulders, not because I wanted to hide but because I needed a moment to figure out what to do with what he'd just said so simply. "Enslak."
"I'm not trying to make you uncomfortable," he said. "I'm trying to be honest." He paused, choosing his words with the care I'd come to recognize. "I wanted you to know. You don't have to say anything back."
I studied him. He was watching me with that directness, open and unhurried, and there was no demand in it. Just the fact of the thing, offered without pressure.
I sat down beside him on the bank. Not close enough to touch, but close enough that the intention was clear. "How long have you been sitting on that?"
"Several days." The corner of his mouth lifted. "I wanted to be sure I had the right words."
Several days. He'd been choosing his words for several days, waiting until he was sure he could say what he meant clearly enough to be understood.
I sat with that for a moment. With what it meant that this man, who had spent more than a century having every choice stripped from him, had decided that the right way to tell me he wanted me was to wait until he could do it properly.
"Can I ask you something?" I said.
"Yes."
"When you say you think about me," I started carefully, "are you thinking about me specifically, or are you thinking about wanting closeness? Because I know you've been isolated for a long time, and I know that I've been your primary—"
"You," he said, cutting me off with a firmness that was entirely new.
"Not the idea of someone. Not the relief of being close to a person again.
" He turned to look at me directly, holding my gaze.
"You talk too much and you laugh at things that aren't funny and you threw a tuber at me this morning.
You cried when you thought I wasn't watching and you went back to look at the flowers I left even after you'd already seen them.
" He paused. "I want you. Not what you represent. You."
My chest did something complicated that I chose not to examine too closely.
"I also understand," he continued, "that you might not want the same thing. Or that you might want to wait. I'm not asking you to decide anything right now. I just wanted you to know."
I looked at him for a long moment. He held the silence without fidgeting, without filling it, just giving me the space to think.
"I want the same thing," I said. "I've wanted it for longer than I'm going to admit out loud."
Something moved through his eyes, a warmth he didn't try to conceal.
"But I need to say something first," I continued, "and I need you to actually hear it, not just agree because I'm the one saying it."
He nodded once. Patient.
"You've been through something that would have destroyed most people," I said, keeping my voice level.
"Your mind is still healing. And I've been your caretaker for most of the time you've been conscious, which means there's a power imbalance between us whether we want one or not.
I'm not saying that to talk either of us out of anything.
I'm saying it because I want you to know that I see it and I take it seriously.
" I held his gaze. "So if at any point you feel confused, or your thoughts go sideways, or you want to stop for any reason, I need you to tell me.
Not because you think it's what I want to hear. Because it's what you actually need."
He was quiet for a moment, genuinely considering it rather than rushing to reassure me. "And if I want to keep going?"
"Then I'll trust that."
"I can stop," he said. "I want you to know I understand what I'm choosing.
I've been thinking clearly for days now, not hours.
I remember who I am." He met my eyes steadily.
"I remember enough to know that I want this, and enough to know the difference between wanting something and needing to take it. "
Something loosened in my chest that I hadn't known was tight.
"Okay," I said.
He reached over and covered my hand with his, slowly, giving me every chance to shift away. I turned my palm up and let his fingers close around mine.
"I'd like to kiss you," he said. "If that's something you want."