“You get used to it.” He groans raggedly as I press my thumbs into his traps. He sounds worse than the last time, or maybe he’s less self-conscious because it’s dark.
“Why are you so sore?” I move across his upper back, making sure to work every square inch evenly like Cidro showed me.
“Sparred, then cleared rubble. Should have cleared the rubble from my pigment channels first.”
“Jara Nik, was that ajoke?” I tease. He huffs out a breath, his laugh muted by pain. “You should have let me help today.”
“Not your duty. It’s mine.” He grunts and growls as I work my way down his sides. I shouldn’t be turned on by his noises. I know he’s not having a good time. But the sounds he’s making are so primal and unselfconscious, they make me feel some type of way.
“There’s too much for you to do by yourself. I’m here, so I might as well be useful. I feel awful doing nothing all day while everyone else is working so hard.”
He rolls over and grabs my hands, squeezing them together between his. “No. It is a help. Your safety is my responsibility, and knowing you are unharmed and protected is one less task for me.”
Welp. Still feel like an asshole. “I love being another problem for you to solve.”
I try pulling my hands back to continue the massage, but he doesn’t let me. He drags me down by the wrists and presses my palms to his bare chest, holding them there where I can feel hisheart beating, his breaths rising and falling. It’s a good thing it’s dark so he can’t see my face right now. I am a messy mess. I blame hormones.
“It is a privilege,” he says, totally serious. “Keeping you safe is my honor.”
“I’d be safe helping the healers in the pits,” I point out, finally extricating my hands from his oddly intimate grip. “If I’d been there today, I could have given you this massage before you cleared rubble, and then you wouldn’t be hurting so bad. Turn over, I’m not done.”
Nik does as I ask, and I work on his lower back, knuckling into the muscle and trying to ignore his moans. A few long minutes later, and he says, “I will consider it.”
I have to laugh at this guy.
Chapter 12
Delphie
When I wake up in the morning, Nik is already gone, and Aqen stationed is outside. “Let’s go get breakfast,” I say, knowing his answer even before he grimaces and shakes his head. My anger surges. “Fine. Fuck you, too.”
I slam the door, instantly feel bad that I let my hangry period hormones get the better of me, and open it again. “Sorry, Aqen. I didn’t mean it. I’m just feeling bored and useless, and I took my frustration out on you.”
He doesn’t say anything, just regards me with a steady gaze, and I realize that, while I am locked in a room, he’s stationed in ahallwaywith even less to do. I’m sure he’d much rather be training or helping clear the tunnels with the other apprentices, but he’s stuck babysitting me, and he hasn’t complained about it even once. So I grab my sketchbook and colored chalks from inside the room. If he can’t come in to hang, I’ll go out.
“You must stay inside,” he says urgently, stepping to block me when I attempt to exit. Leaving the door open, I slide down the smooth stone wall to sit on the floor on my side of the door frame.
“Close enough. Sit with me,” I suggest, patting the spot next to me that’s technically still in the hall. After a moment’s hesitation, he sits. His legs are so long, he has to brace his feet against the opposite wall. I rip the back half the sketchbook offand hand it to him, then scoot the open box of chalks between us. “Pick a color.”
He selects a dark purple one. My heart sinks because I know it’s the color of fear for Irrans. I choose yellow, and we both proceed to color our pages one solid shade.
“Why’d you pick purple?” I ask him, expecting a sad story to match the color.
“It reminds me of home.” He gets a dreamy look, his voice rich with nostalgia. “My father’s husband is Alcoran, so we lived in his family’s compound with maybe sixty other family members. Noisy, loving, always in my business. Their skin is this color,” he says, running his fingertips over his page and picking up the loose pigment.
The rest of his hand turns that color, too, and then his arm. At first, I think he’s getting emotional, perhaps fearful of never seeing them again, but then I realize he’s camouflaging against the chalk dust, trying out that skin tone. “They treated me as family, but I often wished I was this color, too.”
That makes me smile. “You miss them?”
He nods, drawing Fen’s scroll out of the pocket in his sveli. He turns it over in his hands, leaving dark purple prints all over it. The seal on it is still unbroken. He hasn’t read it. “I have a good life on Alcor. Good parents. Good family. I don’t know why I even care what this scroll says. I have two fathers already! I don’t need a third one. Especially not one who didn’t fight for me.”
I want to jump to Fen’s defense and say what a good guy he is, but it’s pretty obvious Aqen needs to vent, so I just nod.
“I know it’s not his fault. He thought I was dead, so he had no reason to search for me. But now that he found me, he just sends me ascroll? That’s it? I don’t wantparchment,” he says fiercely, staring at the scroll like it did him wrong. He closes his fist around it, crumpling it. “I want the father who taught mehow to spar! I want the warrior who sang me lullabies, not these weak words!”
“You don’t have to read it if you aren’t ready,” I say gently. Poor guy. The hurt little kid who lost one of his dads is right there on the surface. It’s great that he’s talking about it, though.
He puts down the mangled scroll. “What about yours?”
