Chapter 21 Nesrina has a butterfly infestation.
twenty-one
Nesrina has a butterfly infestation.
The second day of the symposium dawned sunny and warm with a blessed southern breeze ambling up the river from the sea. Kas had awoken before her, and sounds from the street fluttered into their room through the open windows.
She groaned and rolled from belly to back, before yanking a soft, feathery pillow over her face to block out the sun.
“Good morning, Nes.” His voice resonated from far too close.
Lifting a corner of the silk-covered pillow, she found him standing on her side of the bed, placing a steaming cup of spiced tea on the side table. Nes let out a small grunt by way of greeting and pushed up to lean against the headboard.
“Did you know you snore?”
She shot her leg out and kicked him on the thigh. “I do not!”
He chuckled and sauntered away. Thank the gods. Because his thin bed shirt and even thinner linen pants were about to become a problem.
After dressing and eating a small breakfast in their room—bread and honey for her and bacon and eggs for him—they headed out for a day of activities.
Together, they attended a variety of presentations, ending with two back-to-back antiquities sessions. The second was an engrossing lecture on the various species of extinct faeries whose fossilized bones had been discovered in the north, on the border with Domos.
“I’ve known about that for years. I have one, in fact,” Kas said as they left the building.
“You do not.”
“I do, my late friend Teymour sent it to me ages ago. Remind me to show it to you.”
“I bet it’s bird bones.”
He snorted.
They ate delicious food at a supposedly-Karovian themed restaurant and stayed up late into the night.
After rehashing the presentations they’d sat in on during the day, their conversation hit a lull.
Sitting before the waning fire, sometime after midnight, Nes stifled a yawn with a sip of wine.
She’d asked Kas to procure a dry variety that agreed with her palate, and he’d happily obliged.
“Nes”—his voice was gravelly and tired—“tell me more about your magic?”
“What do you want to know?” She let out a small yawn, unable to stop it from escaping.
“Chaos. It’s renewable, you can grab it from a moving stream, from flames, from air, from—earth? How does it work with earthshapers? For example, do they have to be moving sand? Or is chaos something you can harness from any element at any time?”
With a smirk and sleepy blink, Nes laughed. “You have so many questions.”
“I like to learn.”
“On that, we’re the same.” They toasted, and she continued, “It’s everywhere, truly everywhere, Kas.”
Sighing wistfully, she tapped into her sight, watching pale, shimmering threads of chaos whorl through the room.
A golden cord flowed from Kas’s finger, and she squinted, realizing he was pushing the air around, moving the heat outdoors, and beckoning a cool breeze through the open windows.
Bringing her gaze back to his face, she stopped drawing power from her well, her breathing shallower than it had been a moment before.
“Nesrina.” Kas leaned forward in his chair, arms resting on his knees.
“What?”
“Can you see it?”
“You’re very observant.”
“On occasion.” The muscles of his forearm bunched and flexed as he swirled the ice in his glass. He’d rolled his sleeves to his elbows and ditched his coat at some point during the evening. “What do you see and how?”
“Is this an interview?”
“The good sort.”
Laughing, she offered a better explanation, informing him that chaos appeared as little threads of gold woven throughout nature, throughout space itself.
He thought that sounded like it might be exhausting to have to take in all the time, but she assured him she didn’t have to see it constantly, only when she chose.
And it was taxing to tap into the ability, hence limiting her use of the skill.
This intrigued him further, and she told the fascinated duke how Papa had given her the sight a few years prior.
“He gave you ‘the sight’? Sounds official.” Lifting a brow, Kas took a sip of his drink.
“Far from.” She chuckled, before going on to explain that once her papa deemed her old enough, he’d literally drugged her and taken her on a journey to learn to see, on command, the elusive fibers that composed the fabric of the universe.
Kas was, beyond a shadow of a doubt, the best pupil she’d ever instructed. He leaned toward her again, hungry for more information. “Nesheli kibdi, the joyful herb?”
“Stronger.” She chuckled into her wine. “A combination of mushrooms and a guided lesson.”
“You delinquent!” His enthusiasm reverberated through her, somersaulting her stomach.
With a grin, she said, “You know as well as I that academics will do damn near anything in the pursuit of greater understanding.”
He returned her smile, and a wayward strand of his magic brushed against her cheek, at least she thought it was from him. She wasn’t using her sight at the moment.
“What is it that your father always said? You’ll learn more at the helm than reading books about boats?”
Nes startled. “That’s it, but you never said you knew him.”
“I haven’t? You’re certain I’ve never mentioned it? I’m almost positive I have.”
“I’m positive you have not.”
He fidgeted with his whiskey. “We were friends. I met him here, at the symposium. I was fourteen, and Hevva chaperoned me after much cajoling on my part. It was the year she met Ehmet, actually. I spoke with your dad then. And we corresponded for years after that, well into my time at the Institute. I regret that we lost touch a few years back, and—”
“And?” Nes’s tone was sharper than she intended. It was quite a surprise, after all, to learn Kas had been in regular contact with Papa. More pertinent, she hadn’t realized her father corresponded with anyone from the aristocracy, not with how vehemently he’d railed against the upper class.
Kas cleared his throat, and continued, “And I regret that I didn’t meet you earlier. I had no idea you were his daughter, not until that dinner at the palace, when Ehmet said.”
“Oh,” slipped out as she felt heat rushing her face. She began to trace the rim of her wine glass, round and round her finger went as her thoughts whirled in parallel.
Papa was friends with Kas? Did that change anything? Nes wasn’t positive, but felt as though it meant she could permit herself to relax and enjoy having her own friendship with him, guilt-free. That had to be acceptable.
But she was also at the symposium . . . and there were next to no rules here. Kas’s confession replayed in her mind yet again, “You know I’m attracted to you, right?” A cloud of butterflies snapped into action in her belly, sending Nesrina further into anxious turmoil.
You cannot feel this way! her conscience shouted.
But you do, her consciousness replied.
She set down her glass with force, earning a raised brow from Kas.
With an exaggerated faux yawn that was more of a silent scream than anything else, Nes stood from her seat and stretched. “I’m exhausted.”
He nodded without tearing his gaze from her face.
Nes’s heart fluttered. One of the belly-butterflies must have made its escape. With that, she crossed to her wardrobe.
“I’ll join you shortly.” His voice tumbled over to her on a gust of wind that nearly buckled her knees.
An odd little choked sound came from the back of her throat, and she rushed into the washroom to change into her nightgown.
Nesrina floated on a bed of clouds, held aloft by the duke’s billowing magic as it swirled about her.
Where was he? It was Kas who trapped her so delicately in a hammock of air, she was positive. She couldn’t see him anywhere, but she recognized the feel of him.
Tendrils peeled away from the mass of power, roving over her body, licking at her sensitive skin. A shiver of pleasure and need shot from the center of her chest downward, where it nestled at her core.
One bold breath of wind made its way to the apex of her thighs, parting her to push its way to her most sensitive spot where it began to whorl gently, pulsating against her.
The duke’s wisps of magic coaxed her higher and higher, closer and closer to the top of that cloud-covered precipice.
“Oh, Kas,” she whimpered, cresting over the peak, her body drifting, floating, and plummeting in pure bliss. She was left shuddering in the wake of his ministrations.