Total pages in book: 68
Estimated words: 64872 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 324(@200wpm)___ 259(@250wpm)___ 216(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 64872 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 324(@200wpm)___ 259(@250wpm)___ 216(@300wpm)
He squeezes my wrist gently, his thumb stirring ticklishly as he whispers, “How long will you keep wearing my braids?”
Nothing about this moment I expected—this, I’m most unprepared for. My knees tremble and his hand at my hip closes around me tightly, holding me up along with the softest magicked wind.
I swallow thickly, still shaking, and Quin’s nose travels over my temple and sweeps down my cheek until he’s pulling back a half inch to look at me. His gaze is so soft, so intense, so intimate it’s hard to breathe.
I briefly close my eyes, and he moves my arm between us, draws back the sleeve and reveals the braids curled around my wrists. His fingers trace over each one. “Did this cost you a lot?”
I shake my head.
“I don’t believe you,” he murmurs.
“I didn’t spend any money.”
A smile ghosts at his lips. “Who said anything about money?”
“I . . . I did it for your dignity.”
“You don’t hesitate to spank me or call me pitiful before kings, why care about a moment of lost dignity?”
“It’s different if anyone else does it!”
“Now we’re getting closer.” His finger trails over the braids and fastenings again. “Why are you wearing them?”
My stomach hops with a kind of vulnerable panic. “So no one else touches them.”
He laughs lightly and presses me closer against him, my hand and his locked between our chests as his mouth hits my ear again. “Keep going.”
“If you know why I wear them, why don’t you tell me?”
His nose bumps against mine and he presses our foreheads together, staring deeply into my eyes.
I close my eyes and the form of Nicostratus is there, the barrier between us. Some things . . . shouldn’t be said. And yet . . . Something is unfurling in my chest, a great wave of light that is bursting to be let free, that tries to force its way out with every beat of my heart.
His gaze flashes, like he feels it, and his breath skitters over the bow of my lips, the warmth of his own hovering close.
I sway on this precipice; I want to fall and I can’t.
We’re tangled in these shivery seconds, him waiting for me to decide, and I . . . screw my eyes closed and curse myself as I push him away. He takes his cane—and my bag—and leads me through the grove.
I follow him with my head bowed, my steps heavy. This could’ve been our one stolen moment. I kick at a pebble in the grass.
“But shouldn’t you be angry at me?” I ask. “Your mother . . .”
“I’m not,” he says simply and we turn past trees to a firepit, where someone’s spit-roasting a chicken. Quin dismisses the man, tossing him a Skeldar brooch.
“What’s this?” I say when we’re alone. Quin gestures for me to sit on the bench dragged beside it.
“Roast chicken. I believe it’s the reward you wished, for freeing me.”
It’s so absurd, it startles me into a laugh. I throw myself onto the bench. “You wouldn’t believe how over fish I am.”
He sits beside me, my bag between us, unravelling to expose my belongings. My box has tipped over and my soldad is spilling from it. I reach for it, but Quin brushes my hand away and picks it up himself. He stares at it and I wonder if he’s recalling the last time he saw it, as I left him watching me from the shadows in the woods, brandishing it to let him know I knew the truth.
It’s always been Quin.
I look away, fighting a sad lump in my throat as I grip the bench. When I glance back again, it’s to Quin and his glowing fingers as he carves a fifth stamp.
“But I’m not a—”
“You won the Medicus Contest. Any winning team would have been awarded this stamp.” He sets it in my hands. I stare at it through blurring eyes as Quin quietly rips off a chicken leg for me. I tuck the soldad carefully into my belongings and take the chicken, biting into it ravenously. I laugh and tell him if this king thing doesn’t work out, he has options. He threatens to clock me with his own chicken leg. We’re easy and carefree and humoured. But it’s acting. Masking. Masking the sadness lurking beneath at our imminent parting, masking the intense longing to whisper things usually said in the dark, masking the burning urge to sink into his arms and stay there.
When we’ve finished our meal and cleaned our hands in the nearby brook, we return to the flickering flames of the fire. The sun has almost completely set and the light is so mesmerising it’s brought out the fireflies. Dozens and dozens twinkle around us but though I’m not looking at him, his presence feels sharper.
“Cael. Give me your wrists.”