Chapter 18 #2
With a laugh, Dashiell lifted his hands in surrender. “I’m sorry. A far better man than I could not have passed up that opportunity. But I’ve proven my point. Art is not my forte.”
“And since half of these sigils aren’t for conjuring, translating it isn’t mine.”
No fire had been lit in the library, yet despite the chill, Dashiell took off his coat and rolled up his sleeves. “Is there any paper and ink? And perhaps a sigil dictionary?”
“At once, Master sa Vare.”
“Sorry, I didn’t mean that as an order.”
“Oh, I assure you I didn’t mind.”
On that far-too-honest utterance, Nic went to find ink and paper, leaving Dashiell to straighten out the tape as best he could in swollen silence.
Sigil dictionary, ink, paper—a lot of paper, because sigil translation could be a slow, painstaking process. Each individual sigil had a name and a purpose, but that purpose could be changed by the sigils on either side, and two sigils combined could form something wholly new.
It was not a challenge Nic had ever enjoyed, and sitting beside Dashiell made it a thousand times worse. The man was too present, too close, every breath full of his scent.
As though they had slipped back through time to the young boys they had once been, Nic sat unable to concentrate while Dashiell’s focus narrowed to nothing but the problem in front of him.
Eyes bright, he moved the tape along a few sigils at a time, thumbed through the dictionary, and made notes, his frown deepening.
“If miir trumps semitt… then it’s not quite a connecting command, but it almost is. ”
Soon feeling entirely extraneous, Nic sat absently folding a piece of paper, making small slices with some charmwork as he went. Dashiell worked on, not seeming to notice, until Nic had an intricate flower taking shape on the table.
“That’s very pretty,” he said then, glancing over.
Nic breathed a laugh and brushed the flower away across the tabletop. “Sorry, it’s hard to focus. Here, let me be your dictionary assistant.” Nic pulled the book close—anything to feel like he was helping.
A small frown marred Dashiell’s brow, but he pointed to a sigil partway along the tape. “All right. Can you find this one?”
It wasn’t hard, and with Dashiell pointing and Nic searching, they fell into a routine that seemed to eat up both tape and time. The candles burned steadily lower, yet despite the number of pages filling with Dashiell’s handwriting, his frown only darkened.
After a while, Dashiell dropped his quill in frustration and ran an ink-stained hand through his hair.
“Perhaps if we can’t figure out what it does,” Nic said, “we can figure out what it doesn’t do.”
“No, I’m sure I can work it out; it’s just not vow law and it’s not conjuring—it’s not even charmwork. It’s like nothing I’ve ever seen before. But some sigil will eventually give its purpose away, I’m sure.”
Dashiell got to his feet and started to pace slowly back and forth, dragging the tape with him.
He was a man with fire in his soul, lit by the challenge, and Nic recognised something of the obsessive way he could himself spend hours working out the exact size of a single gear or practicing a series of sigils until they flowed like music.
“What?” Dashiell said, and Nic realised too late that he’d been staring, smiling like a fool.
“Just you,” Nic admitted with a shrug. “You’re really good at this.”
“Oh.”
“Nice to know all your hard work was worth it,” he added. “Oh no, don’t stop. I was enjoying the show.”
As he spoke, Nic made to fold his arms behind his head, but the theatrical gesture was ruined when he hit the ink bottle. It tipped, and although he caught it before it clattered onto the floor, the price was ink spilled over his hands and a pair of heating cheeks.
“That was well done of me,” he said, holding his dripping hands over the table.
Dashiell smothered a grin and pulled a handkerchief from his pocket. “It was certainly very dignified. Very graceful.”
With a mock bow, Nic rose to take the handkerchief, only for Dashiell to grip his outstretched hand and draw it close. He spread Nic’s fingers and brushed the crisp linen over his ink-smeared knuckles.
“I can do it myself,” Nic said, his voice a little hoarse.
“This is easier,” came the low reply. “Besides, you might somehow manage to spill more if you try to clean it.”
A nonsensical excuse, yet Nic let Dashiell keep his hand, let him go on wiping the mess with the handkerchief balled in his palm.
There was no getting rid of what had already dried, but the vowsmith diligently cleaned all that could drip or smear, working from the base of each finger to its tip, first one side and then the other, front and back.
By the time he finished the middle finger, Nic’s entire world had shrunk to nothing but the space where their hands met.
When he reached the little finger, Dashiell first slid off Nic’s signet ring to wipe it clean.
Yet having polished the ink from its face, he went on staring at it.
The Monterris family crest stared back. This the name, the history, the immutable fact that chained Nic to a different life—a thought that must surely have been in Dashiell’s mind when, slowly, he slid the ring back into place.
“This hurt is like a knife in my heart but I cannot stop,” he said, lifting Nic’s hand.
The kiss pressed to his knuckles was soft.
Slow. Dashiell’s lips seeming to stick a moment as though unwilling to part from his skin.
“But if I don’t,” the vowsmith added, drawing Nic’s hand closer to plant another kiss to the back of his wrist, “I don’t know what will happen. ”
Turning Nic’s arm, Dashiell pushed back the rolled edge of his shirtsleeve to reveal soft skin, before lowering his lips to the inside of Nic’s wrist. “Although at some point, I might stop caring.”
Dashiell looked up, his expression half question, half promise, and all need.
Nic knew they had no future. He knew the dangers, knew the risk to Dashiell’s career and his own contract.
Being caught would leave both their lives in ruins, and yet he did not move.
Could not. What was one more kiss when his heart already ached?
What was one more moment pressed against each other and gasping?
No one would know. No one would see. No one—
The door creaked open.
Dashiell dropped Nic’s hand as though it had been a hot coal and Nic stepped back, cheeks heating as the duke strode in.
“Ah, Nicholas. Master sa Vare.”
“Father.”
They had moved quickly enough, Nic was sure, but the duke’s brows rose all the same.
“Your Grace,” Dashiell said, somehow managing an easy bow. “I have been assisting Lord Monterris with some sigilwork.”
The duke’s gaze swung from Dashiell to Nic, seeming to take in everything and nothing. “Well then, do not let me keep you. I merely saw the light and, given the late hour, wished to be sure one of the servants had not left a fire burning.”
“Oh, I did not realise it had gotten so late.” Dashiell glanced at the clock over the cold fireplace. “I ought to sleep since we are meeting in the morning.”
“Do not hurry to bed on my account. I don’t doubt your ability to negotiate under any conditions.” His gaze swept to Nic, but he merely added, “And now I am assured the house is not going to try to burn down again, I will bid you both good night.”
Dashiell tucked his ink-stained handkerchief away as the duke departed. “I must go. The tape is yours, but if I may keep the notes, I could let you know if I have an epiphany.”
“Please do,” Nic said, his mouth dry.
Dashiell gathered the papers he’d covered in scrawled notes, yet did not make immediately for the door. “I… shall bid you good night, Lord Monterris.”
“You don’t have to call me that.”
“No, but I think it will be safer if I do.” The vowsmith pressed a thin, wan smile between his lips. “Good night, my lord.”
Nic nodded, the gesture leaving him hollowed by the complete impossibility of everything he wanted, even when that everything was only one man.
“Good night, Master sa Vare.”
It wasn’t until Nic collected the tape that he realised what else Dashiell had taken—Nic’s charmworked paper flower. It had been just a silly little thing he’d made with restless hands, and it hurt to realise it might be all of him that Dashiell would ever have to treasure.