Chapter 41
Elsedora
The kitchen prepared me a bowl of oats and freshly sliced plums. Utility often defined my eating habits.
Compared to the savory, decadent dishes Emmerick whipped up for dinner, the spoonful of grain landed blandly on my tongue. I frowned into the bowl, suddenly disappointed in the thing I’d been eating every morning for years.
I had risen early to prepare for the day, and a kettle bubbled on the hearth. After pouring myself a cup, I let the tea leaves steep and leaned against the butcher block.
The phantom sensation of hands on my sides, lifting me onto the counter, overtook my ability to think of anything else. The night prior had been a reckless tiptoeing at the edge of a cliff—no, leaping from the cliff. It marked the first time I’d come undone with anyone in the room with me in years.
Biting my lip, I worried that maybe I’d sullied the first good thing to cross my path in just as long. What a harebrained idea. Albeit a fun harebrained idea.
I hadn’t yet fully dressed, but I’d thrown on a thick wool robe to fight the chill of the morning. Shuffling sounds in the parlor pulled my attention to the doorway.
When Emmerick appeared, he looked dead tired. The whites of his eyes were bloodshot. He ran a hand over his face before stretching; the motion caused his tunic to lift, exposing muscle that I tried to ignore. But, now, I knew what his body looked like tightly coiled and ready for release…
“Morning. How did you sleep?” I asked.
Rubbing the back of his neck, he shook his head.
He hadn’t.
“Fine,” he answered.
I frowned. “You’re not a great liar. You look like horseshit.”
He did not.
The top buttons of his tunic lay open, and a stray curl snuck across his forehead. Deliciously rumpled.
Behave, behave.
The light of morning should have made it easier to keep my mind from wandering.
“It’s hard to want to sleep,” he admitted before sitting on a stool at my side. His fingers clasped together and unclasped. He never stopped moving. It had to be exhausting.
“Oats and plums?” I offered him.
He scrunched his nose. “That’s what you’re eating?”
“Beggars can’t be choosers. Has your palate so quickly turned royal on me?”
He laughed and placed both palms down on the butcher block. “I rarely ate breakfast—I’ll just have some tea.”
The way he talked about himself in the past tense, as though the before version of him was someone different, made my frown deepen. I recognized that feeling.
The kitchen heard his request, and the kettle rose, pouring steaming water into a cup and floating it to him.
He skeptically took it and added tea leaves.
I rested an elbow on the counter, and faced him. He assessed me like a wild animal that might pounce.
“You need rest before we head to Algarnd. We don’t need to leave until this afternoon.”
I would fly to the West’s capital by Griffith and let Lark Shadow Emmerick with her. His running on no energy would do us no good when we arrived in a less-than-hospitable Corridor.
Our gazes locked over the teacup, which looked far too small in his grasp. I smirked at the touch of mauve on his cheeks.
“I’m fine, really,” he argued.
He wouldn’t win this one. “I am your advisor. I will be the judge of that, and I say you need sleep.”
His brows lifted. “You still want to be my advisor?”
“Oh, puppy, did you really think I would pass up the opportunity to watch you squirm in your kingly finery?”
His cheeks darkened more as he stared into his tea.
“Don’t act strangely,” I demanded. I wouldn’t let one bad idea snowball into losing his presence in my life.
“I am not acting strange,” he retorted, still observing the brown liquid like it was the most fascinating thing in the world. He’d not been this shy the night prior when he’d told me to take my clothes off.
“Yes, you are,” I argued. “Again—poor liar.”
He rubbed his eyes. “Elsedora... it’s been mere days since I woke up, and we’ve already seen each other nude. What am I to think or do about that?”
When his hand fell away, he finally met my gaze, his expression unreadably flustered. He didn’t seem angry, or upset even, just bewildered.
I smirked. “Well, simply stop thinking about me naked,” I teased.
He ran a hand down his face once more with a groan. “Well then, you stop hiding behind cavalier remarks to make me blush.”
Sunlight illuminated the shadows beneath his eyes and the irresistible, rugged stubble growing on his chin.
This attraction would be trouble.
“You make it too easy, pet.” And yet he was hard to resist, all the same.
Physical and emotional attachments had always remained separate to me; I couldn’t start muddying them now. Nor would I let him punish himself over one fun night of trying something new.
“I’m serious,” he said. “I don’t dally around—that was out of character. It doesn’t change your wanting to travel with me at all?”
Though I had no ill feelings about what had occurred on the parlor floor, it seemed he did. The consequences of my flippant behavior struck again.
I squashed the image of his mouth hanging open, his body tensing as he gripped himself. It’d become clearer—that should not have been for me. I’d betrayed the trust he’d placed in me.
“It changes nothing.” I grabbed his shoulders, spinning him to face me on the stool. “We’ve established that we need one another. I apologize for my advances. But we’ve quelled that tension now, haven’t we?”
He searched my features and set the teacup on the butcher block.
Tell me it hadn’t quelled anything for you. The thought invaded, like a sunken ship hitting ground in the depths of my mind.
My heart skipped a beat as he licked his lower lip and ran his hands up and down his thighs. If he wouldn’t answer me, I wasn’t above shaking him.
“We have,” he finally said. I didn’t release his shoulders. Instead, I peeked into his cup to find it empty. Good.
“Come with me,” I said, pulling him to rise.
Once he’d gotten to his feet, I stepped behind him and pushed him out of the kitchen and into the parlor.
Neatly fluffed pillows and a stack of blankets, folded with precision, lay on the sofa.
I placed the quilts on the ground and settled down. Emmerick tapped his foot as he watched me from the doorway. “Come here,” I demanded and patted the sofa next to me.
His gaze narrowed skeptically. “You’re awfully bossy in the morning.”
And at night. I kept that comment to myself. He rubbed the back of his neck, appearing uncertain.
“And you’re awfully exhausted. Come, lie down,” I commanded.
“You said you wouldn’t try to get me in a state of undress.”
“Oh, puppy. With you looking halfway to death—that’s the last thing on my mind.”
Lie.
Even tired, he was devastating. I wanted to see him rested, happy, cared for. I didn’t feel equipped with the nurturing nature required to provide such things to him forever, but they felt right in the moment.
His shoulders relaxed, and he relented, settling down on the couch beside me.
I pulled him by his elbow and made him lie with his head in my lap, facing up. At first, he was stiff, and he folded his hands on his chest. I settled back against the cushion, taking in the way his dark lashes curled.
That stupid fluttering sensation in my stomach returned.
“This is... cozy.” He huffed out a laugh. When I ran my hand through his thick hair, he sighed and closed his eyes.
“You need rest. I’m not messing about or making advances. If it helps you to know, this reminds me of when I was a girl. Fenris sat with me like this once. I’d been too heartbroken to sleep. I can tell you the story if you want.”
“Yes, please,” he hummed out as my fingers clawed gentle circles on his scalp. His arms finally relaxed into the cushions.
“When I was thirteen, I was smitten with a boy I’d met in Belray Square. I don’t remember his name now. I’d see him there each week when I went into town with my mother.
“I’d only ever spoken with him once about the weather. Even so, I was convinced he was the Sources’ gift to me—that we’d soon fall madly in love.”
A rumble of laughter built in Emmerick’s chest.
“Don’t make fun!” I huffed out playfully.
“Sorry, sorry,” he said, and his head grew heavier. “Carry on.”
“I learned he lived a few miles from here, so I handcrafted the most beautiful card from linen and parchment for the winter solstice. Inside, I wrote out my deepest feelings for him. I rode my pony through the snow all the way there.”
“Oh no,” he sighed out.
“Oh yes. Young Elsie was a lovesick fool. I rapped on his door, and his mother answered and called for him. He came outside in his winter coat, and I gave him the card.
“He thanked me, and then asked, ‘I’m sorry, what is your name?’ I was mortified. All those stolen glances, all those false hopes, and all those built-up dreams of love just crashed down. I galloped home and cried well into the night.”
“That kid was a damn fool,” Emmerick murmured, his voice raspy.
I smiled, watching the lines of his face smooth. That love-sick girl stirred within me because his words reached deeper than I was sure he’d meant them to. I’d once been so open to the idea of finding my match; if I’d met Emmerick then, I wondered what might have come of us.
The rise and fall of his chest grew deeper.
I cleared my throat quietly. “Yes... Well, Fenris was here visiting. He forced me to come out of my room and drink hot cider in the parlor. Then he lulled me to sleep just like this with a story. I don’t recall the details.
It was something about one of his tomb-raiding adventures for Krait. I’ll have to ask him if he remembers.”
Emmerick’s nose whistled quietly; sleep had taken him.
But it would not keep him. In this quiet moment, he belonged here with me. I kept running my fingers through his hair until I, too, dozed off.