Her gaze lifted to mine, soft and hesitant. Gray like a winter morning. I could have stared into those eyes forever.
Instead, I opened the small, worn book in my hands and began to read.
“The moment I first heard love, I gave up my soul, my heart, and my eyes.”
I felt her lungs hesitate, felt the shift in her focus as she latched onto my voice, something steady to cling to.
“I said: ‘O spirit, make me drunk. Let me be lost in your fragrance.’”
Cas adjusted her ankle. She gasped, sharp and quiet.
“Take me, ruin me, be the architect of my heart’s undoing.”
A snort came from the floor.
“Damn, man,” Z muttered. “That’s a lot for a girl who just learned your name.”
Cas let out a short laugh. “No kidding.”
Even Brumous, still chewing on his leather strip, let out a small, amused snicker.The traitor.
I ignored them and turned the page.
“The minute I heard my first love story, I started looking for you.”
Her fingers curled tighter into the blanket. A flush crept up her neck.
I didn’t move. Didn’t let my voice waver. But Ifelther reaction like a current through my blood.
“I did not know how blind I was, how every road led me to you.”
Cas sent Zane to fetch a splint and compression wrap, and he ran out of the room like his ass was on fire, running back in just as fast. As they worked on her ankle, I kept reading.
And she kept listening.
And although I did not move a muscle, I felteverything.
Finally, they finished, and our redheaded menace groaned and dragged a hand down his face.
“Enough with the fluffy emotional crap.” Z reached over my head to the bookshelf. “Even some moon-damned history is better than this.”
Seri blinked, still caught in the haze of the poetry, and followed his movements as he grabbed a book from the end of the row.
“Here. Read. Something dry and dusty to balance out all that love-sick mush.”
As he smacked the book into my palm, something fluttered out from between the pages. A small rectangle, aged at the edges, tumbling end over end before landing face-up on the blanket.
A photograph.
Seri made a small, startled sound.
I picked it up.
In the grainy, sun-washed image, child Seri stood with one hand wrapped around the curved horn of a black billy goat, his golden eyes glinting like twin candle flames. Her curls were wild in the breeze, and she was smiling, an open, unguarded kind of joy I hadn’t yet seen from her.
I turned the photo over.
Elegant cursive scrawled across the back.
