Reeve peered at her from the corner of his eye. “Very funny.”
She would have corrected him that it hadn’t been a joke, but he was already going for the skeleton.
“Wyverns fly with arcana, not because their bones are hollow,” she cautioned, following. “The pieces really are quite heavy.”
“Well, I’m quite strong.” He heaved one of the longest bones up onto his back with barely a grunt.
Celeste watched effort briefly pass over his face. Feeling a little pre-swoony, she gathered her hair up in one hand and fanned at her neck as he centered the bone across his shoulders.
“So…where does it go?”
“Oh!” She hadn’t thought of that and wished he’d asked before picking it up. “Well, there’s a graveyard out back?”
He turned, and the length of his burden swept through the air. Celeste ducked to avoid being knocked to the ground, then picked up a talon and hurried along behind him. They chose a corner spot, and Reeve carried a number of the larger bones, Celeste calling on noxscura to help where she could.
The knight was wearing himself out, but he was hiding his exhaustion until he dropped a chunk of broken rib right onto his foot. She could tell he wanted to swear but instead bit his lip and mumbled out a request for Valcord to forgive whatever unacceptable words he only thought instead.
“Tempest is a pain even in death.” Celeste waved him away from the remaining bones and urged him to take a break. Reeve relented and leaned up against the temple wall, sliding down to sit on the ground. Sweating again, he pushed up his sleeves, and Celeste found herself entranced by the exposure of toned forearms. Perhapshewas the witch, able to drain every thought from her mind and replace them with downright indecency.
Plum returned then, shooting over the fence and diving for Celeste. At the last moment, she threw up her hands and caught him. He carried a flower in his fangs, once covered in yellow petals, though only half had survived the trip.
“Is this for me?” she asked, grateful for the interruption to her enthrallment, and Plum nuzzled her thumb. “Oh, thank you.”
“I’ve never met a wyvern in battle before. I assumed they were destructive, not so friendly.” Reeve looked dubiously at Plum and then the massive skull. “What kind of gifts did that big one bring you?”
“Oh, goodness, nothing at all.” Celeste chuckled as she sat herself on a stump across from him. “I couldn’t get Tempest to like me no matter how many dead rats or fermented slugs I offered. He was only loyal to my sister, but she could get him to do anything like chase me all over the courtyard. But you’re so much sweeter, aren’t you, Plum? Yes, you’re my very sweet boy.”
“That thing used tochaseyou?” Reeve choked on the word.
“Well, he never caught me,” she said as Plum flopped onto his back in her lap for his belly to be rubbed.
“And it was your sister who told it to do so?”
She focused hard on giving Plum the best scratches she could. “It was sort of a game, I guess?”
“Your sister,” he said, voice going careful. “You mentioned her before. She’s like you?”
“If you mean was she also nox-touched, then yes.” Celeste’s eyes pinged toward the back of the temple and where the graveyard would be, remembering then that Delphine’s plot was still unmarked. “She’s dead now.”
“Ah, I am sorry for your loss. You must have been close.”
She waited for him to call them both witches, but the admonishment never came. “She protected me, especially when we were little, and then we got older, and…” Celeste felt squirmy and cleared her throat. “Well, you said you have brothers, so you know how it is.”
“I did say that. I have sisters too, but…” Reeve pursed his lips. “But I don’t. I mean, Ido, but they are the others in service to Valcord, not blood relations. I hope that did not mislead you. I grew up with plenty of other children at the temple, but most found their place in the realm elsewhere before they even came of age.”
“Oh.” Celeste cocked her head, things making more sense then—his surname, how he could have abrotherfrom Clarriseau, a place he’d never been, and the exchange with Gaspard was probably identical to her own, about who his parents were, ones he apparently didn’t know. She licked her lips and decided it might be all right to say a bit more. “I grew up in a temple too.”
Reeve pointed over his shoulder at the building.
“Not here. Not a temple to Valcord at all, but one of Osurehm’s.” She swallowed, going on slower. “It wasn’t one of the temples that are open to the people for prayers; it was for study. There were a lot of other children there too. At first.”
“Wait, you’re an orphan?” There was such a brightness in Reeve’s question that Celeste was sure she had not heard right.
She stared back at his wide eyes and high brows and the eager crook to his lips and finally nodded. “My sister and I both.”
“So am I!”
Celeste almost laughed at the excitement in his words. Yes, obviously, she had figured that out, and he probably should have inferred the same about her, and really it was nothing to be jubilant about, nor was it all that unique. Yet his reaction was entirely unique—no one spoke of being left behind in such a cheerful way, and it should have put her off, but it didn’t. In fact, it made her heart flutter that he was so approving of this experience that they shared.
