“Not forever...just...for today, maybe?”
With a sigh, she returns to the window, and he follows her. The warmth of his chest near her shoulder draws out her own heat again.
“What are you looking at?” he asks.
“The tram, mostly. But the people are intriguing, too.”
“Which ones?”
“Aren’t all people interesting?”
Their eyes meet as she glances at him over her shoulder.
“You’ll make a good queen someday,” he says softly.
A faint smile fills her lips. “Your queen.”
He leans closer until his breath teases her ear. “My queen.”
Whistling wind. Is he doing that on purpose?
Her knees wobble, and she pushes back the fire magic that looms so near the surface lately. When he slips his arm around her waist from behind, she leans against his chest.
He doesn’t say anything, and neither does she. It’s not a moment that requires words. A breathless connection betweenthem. A building of something new. This...touch. This nearness. It sends shivers to her toes, but it feels right. More right than she could have imagined.
Of course his arm belongs there, wrapped around her. How could it not?
But they don’t speak about it. They just...exist.
“What else do you see?” he asks softly near her ear. The tickle of his breath is far too distracting. Does he have any idea?
When his arm tightens around her, her smile grows.
He knows.
Doing her best to return her attention to the window, she studies the people coming and going. A woman with younglings. A man sauntering along with his lips pursed in a whistle. A nervous man fiddling with his fancy necktie. He’s dressed far nicer than anyone else on the street. Nicer than Rominy, even.
And he carries flowers.
“I think that man is wooing a sweetheart,” she whispers. “Unless those flowers are for his mother.”
He stands outside a building, and Elowyn struggles to put the letters above the door into a word.
“It says confectionery,” Rominy says. “A candy store.”
“Candy? Like sweets?”
“Yes.”
“Can we send for some?” She glances over her shoulder at him, and he grins.
“Don’t you have candy in Lostariel?”
“We have sugared plums. And caramel. Sometimes Cook sneaks sugar into my berries when no one is looking.”
“That hardly counts.”
She’d love to visit this confectionery herself, but he seemed so worried about taking her outside that she doesn’t have the heart to ask that of him right now.
