They were quiet, holding each other tight.
CHAPTER18
Robert had been afraid that talking would upset the delicate balance he’d finally found, or ruin their post-coital bliss. To his relief—and relief was a thing he had again!—Felicity didn’t seem horrified about his past, and he wasn’t angry anymore. He had Felicity at his side now, and she was everything he needed to be whole, his entire world. It didn’t matter who was to blame or what had come before.
She wasn’t a cage, she was his freedom.
They talked about everything under the sun, long into the night, and when they weren’t talking, they were making sweet love. He tried to caution her that he might still have speed bumps of sadness, and Felicity promised to help him in any way she could.
“It’s not something that just goes away. I get that. It’s a thing that happened, like when you wear suede shoes in the rain. They’ll never be new again, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t still your favorite shoes. Okay, maybe I’m not the best at analogies. But you can tell me more about it,” Felicity said, making lazy circles on his chest with her fingers. “If you want to. Was there...torture? In the zoo, I mean.”
“Only at first, and only to force us to stay in our animal forms for his amusement. If we complied, we were treated well and fed wholesomely.” Robert was stunned by how easily he could say it. It had been its own kind of torture to get to the point of telling his therapist about it. But Felicity was trust from first sight.
“Nothing as good as Chef’s food,” Felicity guessed.
Robert smiled wryly. “My hart thought it was very fine clover and grass, but it wasn’t as sweet as freedom. I’m far happier with a more varied diet now.”
“Did the zoo have a lot of visitors? I’m sorry, am I asking too many questions? Tell me stop.”
Robert shook his head. He genuinely wanted Felicity to understand what he’d been through. “A few, but Beehag did it for revenge, not for status. He wanted to prove to himself, and to us, that he was more powerful. I think he would have happily imprisoned every single shifter, but quickly realized that he couldn’t, and settled for the rarest and most prestigious kinds, like he was curating a collection.”
Robert went quiet and Felicity poked him in the side with a pointy elbow. “Hey, it wasn’t your fault. You know that, right?”
“If I hadn’t been so proud of what I was…”
“You have every right to be proud of what you are! White harts are lucky! Symbols of royalty! He’s beautiful, and so are you!”
See?his hart snorted.
Robert gathered all of her outrage up in his arms and buried his face in her hair. “I could have been a lot less conceited about it,” he said. Regret was a complicated feeling, tangled deep and dangerous, but he could feel the grip of it release as he faced it. “I’m not proud of my part, but I’m not ashamed of my hart.”
“You’re a poet,” Felicity said, muffled in his chest.
“A terrible one,” Robert said, releasing her to breathe freely. “I wouldn’t wish the experience on someone I detested. We weren’t permitted to shift or speak. We were isolated, bound, bared. If it hadn’t been for my hart, I would have gone utterly mad.”
“You have a good heart,” Felicity said, snuggling closer to him.
“I didn’t mean that kind of…oh!” She was giggling against his side.
He squeezed her. It could have been awful, talking about it, but nothing with Felicity could be awful. She filed away all his rough edges and was water cushioning the rocky rapids of his memories. Robert tried to decide if the metaphor worked any better than hers did and decided it didn’t actually matter as comfort and exhaustion overtook him.
“I don’t mean to make light of what you’ve been through,” Felicity said quietly, as Robert was drifting off.
Robert opened his eyes and found her watching him in the darkness across the pillow. “You are my light,” he said. “Your laughter is healing.”
Her teeth were bright when she smiled. “Oh, good. Because I really like to laugh.”
She closed her eyes and Robert realized after a moment that she had gone to sleep.
He watched her slumber for a while, a gentle smile on her face that Robert realized he was mirroring.
Tomorrow was Christmas, he realized in some surprise. Maybe today, given how late it was now. After a moment, he slipped out of the bed and crept to his luggage as an idea occurred to him.
CHAPTER19
Christmas Day
For Christmas Day, Felicity was invited to the staff party at the event hall, with Robert as her plus one. She was, however, warned to stay away from the snack table until they had proved beyond a doubt that she wouldn’t spoil it for everyone else, which seemed like a perfectly reasonable request.
