20
It would be two more days before we resumed our lessons.
Alixa needed to rest her arm, so I helped with the well after lunch. This morning, though, Celestine had told me that I was free, as Alixa had been caught climbing a tree to spy on Meront while he hunted bush turkeys with Haynes and Darcen.
After lunch, I wandered the archives again. I pretended I wasn’t wasting time until I was certain the males’ rooms had cleared.
Voran opened his door with a slight frown.
For a moment, he just stared at me. Then he stepped back and waited for me to enter his room.
I stood by the window. It was too high and the blue glass too grimy for anyone down on the fortress’s side path to see me. Save for the book I’d given him a few days ago, sitting atop his nightstand, nothing had changed since I’d last visited.
I wasn’t sure why I hunted for personal items. If he’d brought any, they were hidden.
The wolf prince leaned against the closed door, where he proceeded to watch me with those intense and unreadable features. His crossed arms threatened to ruin the stitching of his black tunic at his broad shoulders.
“I’m sorry I couldn’t meet you these past few days.”
“You’re sorry,” he said slowly. Tauntingly.
I nodded.
“Apologies are about as useful as shit on one’s shoe.”
Laughter bubbled. My lips pinched to contain it. Rolling them, I sighed and said, “Then I will meet with you every day to make up for my absences.”
He cocked his head. “Will you?”
“I will.” Unable to hold his assessing gaze, I traced a fissure in the blue glass.
“I’m no longer needed in the afternoons now that Alixa’s back on well duty.
She broke her arm trying to spar with Haynes.
She had it reset, but needed to rest. It seems her arm is fine, though, as she climbed a tree to spy on…
” I trailed off because I wouldn’t want anyone knowing I had gone to such lengths to spy on a male.
And because when I looked at Voran, his lips were twitching.
I narrowed my eyes. “Are you trying not to laugh at me?”
He walked to the bed and dropped onto it. “Continue chirping.”
“You said you don’t like it when I talk so much.”
Linking his hands between his knees, he leaned forward. He gazed up at me with his head tilted. “Did I?”
Frowning, I tried to remember. I could have sworn he had, but maybe—
“I said that you say a lot of words,” he said. “Especially when you’re nervous.” A glint in his eye accompanied his brief pause. “Do I make you nervous, Princess?”
He knew he did.
Rather than lie, I collected the book of fables from his nightstand, then gestured to his bed. “May I?”
A crooked smile flashed his teeth and that glimpse of a dimple—and tipped my heart sideways. “You may.”
My hesitation spread that smile to his eyes. Made it all the more sinister. Fingers squeezing the book, I ducked my head. Though I kept space between us on the bed, the heat he expelled had me making sure we weren’t touching.
“Do you want me to read first?” I asked.
“I do.”
I opened the book in my lap.
And found numerous strands of near-black hair. My hair.
They had been smoothed. Also carefully untangled. As the silence screamed, I ran my finger over the curving strands and forced a laugh. “An odd choice for a bookmark.”
“It keeps them safe,” he said.
“Safe?” I asked, at a loss for what else to say.
“For when I need a stronger whiff of your scent.” He spoke as if it were ordinary. As if it were a common thing to do. “Because of your long absence, it’s faded from the bedding.”
I had wondered what he’d done with the hair he’d plucked from my brush. He was no witch, nor did he strike me as someone who tried their hand at spellcasting. Now that I knew, I couldn’t decide how I felt about it. Couldn’t decide if it mattered, really. It was just hair.
Just my hair. Kept with care within a book. A book I’d found for him because it would help him learn how to read.
Deciding to dissect it later, I read.
Voran sat silently beside me and did not comment on the rather vile short story that many younglings had heard before bed.
It was a cautionary tale about a faerie whose curiosity for the unknown saw her hiding on a trade ship bound for the human lands.
There, she lost her curiosity, her sweet nature, and eventually her life.
Shortly after arriving, she caught the eye of a man who promised her adventure she wouldn’t find elsewhere.
He owned a theater, and he added her to his arsenal of stolen faeries kept there. Every night, they performed acts of torture on each other. If they refused, they were punished. If they tried to escape, they were captured and killed by the rest of the performers.
Once done, I turned the pages back to the start and tensed when Voran’s leg touched mine. Somewhere during the story, he’d moved closer.
Though I didn’t need to, I cleared my throat. “The ending is implied rather than told,” I said into the quiet room. “While I understand the intent behind the story, I do wonder if it needs to be quite so ruthless with its delivery.”
“Ruthless,” Voran said, the word corrosive.
“You don’t agree?”
“You were raised very gently if you think this is ruthless.”
I had indeed grown with gentle hands and words, but that didn’t mean I wasn’t a good judge of evil doings. “I don’t know that how I was raised has anything to do with how I see it,” I rambled on. “Most people would agree this is too harsh a warning.”
“Warnings must be harsh to be effective.” His low voice washed over me like another layer of heat. “Otherwise, they are merely words.”
Flustered, I said, “Here,” and dumped the book onto his thighs. “Your turn.”
His smirk momentarily stunned me. It lit his eyes and lifted his cheeks. “Little bird really doesn’t like not being right.”
I snorted. “But I am right.”
He flipped back to where my hair lay at the front of the book, as if to ensure the eight strands were still there. “Point proven.”
Bristling, I tucked my hands in my lap and straightened. “Go on.”
Another smirk. This time, it was directed at the book as he turned to the start of the short story.
He made it halfway down the first page before getting caught on the word curious, and I had to sound it out for him.
He repeated it twice, then moved on. He reached the third page with only a handful of stumbles and one pause, and I realized he hadn’t simply been using this book as a place to keep my hair.
“You’ve been reading this,” I said.
Brows furrowing, he looked at me. “You gave it to me for that reason.”
Laughing a bit, I nodded. “Well, yes, but I didn’t know if you would…
” His frown became an assessing stare, and I chirped even more.
“I brought it to you the other day because I’d kept it in my room for you, and I thought…
” I looked down at my hands, unsure I was making any sense, and closed my eyes. “Never mind.”
I sensed him lean closer.
Again, I tensed. We were already far too close.
Coarse and stirring the hair covering my neck, he whispered, “You make me nervous, too.” Then he touched my cheek. His nose touched my cheek—skimmed it. “So fucking nervous.”
Shivering warmth rushed through me to my toes. They curled in my boots. With my eyes shut, it was easier to turn my head ever so slightly. “I do?”
I found it exceedingly hard to believe that this male was ever nervous.
“You do.”
My eyes opened. My heart crashed against my sternum.
He was so close that all I’d need to do was lift my chin and our lips would meet. I wanted to. At that moment, I wanted to feel his lips on mine so badly that I was unable to remember why I shouldn’t.
But even as I forced myself to remember, I didn’t retreat. I whispered, “You said you wouldn’t make me kiss you anymore, Voran.”
“Am I?” Lashes bobbing, he asked, “Making you?”
I shook my head. A mistake that brought our mouths closer.
“Is that what you want, broshklin?” Deepest blue eyes held mine captive. “Do you need me to make you?”
“I…” Our noses grazed. My eyes squeezed shut. Maybe I did need him to because I had to stop my head from nodding. It shouldn’t have, but it took considerable effort to murmur, “I cannot do this.”
“Do what?”
Though he knew exactly what, and though I knew he was goading me, I still said, “Kiss you.”
“What if I kiss you?”
My frayed resolve became a single thread. The whisper snuck free on a fluttered exhale. “Would it be just one?”
Not a second after I’d asked, his lips touched mine.
We both inhaled sharply from the contact, and when we exhaled, his carried a faint and broken noise. For long moments, our mouths simply stayed softly fused.
Yet I felt him everywhere.
He groaned when I dared to place my hand on his forearm. The rumble parted my lips, prompting him to move his. He did so with a slowness that twirled my mind until it emptied. Only when he retreated to kiss the bow of my lip did sound and thought seep in.
Gulls and younglings shrieked into the quiet. Muscle clenched beneath my hand as I gripped Voran’s arm.
Against his mouth, I rasped, “That was two kisses.”
“And this is three.”
He kissed me again.
But it became far more than three.
I lost count as, slowly, he touched every bit of my mouth with his. Then he opened it to lick just under my lip. When I thought he might deepen the kiss by putting his tongue in my mouth, he framed my face in his giant hands and began anew.
I was wholly aware of nothing yet entirely aware that my mouth didn’t move unless he made it. I didn’t care. I let him adore my lips with his. Let him explore them and learn how to evoke fluttering sighs from tickling under my upper lip with his tongue.
Until growing noise slipped beneath the door from the hall.
Laughter. Right outside Voran’s room.
I pulled his hands from my face and jerked back to gaze wide-eyed at the closed door. I wondered if he’d locked it, or if he’d assumed no one would bother him.
“Don’t be stupid,” came a raised yet slightly muffled voice. “Your scent will remain for hours, and he’ll hunt you. I won’t stop him either.” Another burst of laughter, followed by, “Go on. Get back outside.”
Ice filled and stiffened my limbs.
Darcen. And a bunch of younglings, judging by that laughter.
As it faded, I released my held breath—then tensed again when I looked at Voran. He pressed a finger against his mouth. His hearing was better than mine, and he’d heard something I couldn’t.
Darcen must have lingered in the hall.
Panic sluiced through my chest in sharp shards.
My eyes roamed Voran’s room, but unless I crawled beneath the bed, there was nowhere to hide. Even then, the beds were small enough that there was a good chance he’d see me should he open the door and—
Voran placed his hand over mine.
I flinched.
He noticed, and though his gaze hardened, he just said, “Gone.”
But that didn’t mean I should stay. As his eyes fell to my lips, my own dropped to my lap. I tucked some hair behind my ear and whispered, “They were going to mess with your belongings.”
“All they would find is clothing.”
But their intent was a reminder that I shouldn’t be here. Getting caught in this room would be more than bad. Especially when most didn’t know whether I’d kissed Voran in that cupboard while playing Featherfate. And Darcen, how he’d lingered outside, as if my scent lingered by the door…
“I think I need some water.” I stood on trembling legs. “Fresh air.”
Voran didn’t say anything. He remained on his bed as I snuck out of his room.