“How did you learn that word?”
“My mother,” he said, with the tenderness of a child who loved her. “She always said ‘Harthon’ was a warrior’s name. A name to be feared.” His fingertip was replaced by a palm that ran over my ribs, hot and sure. “Sometimes, she would call me by other names, I think because she wanted to impress that there were other parts of me, too. Remind me I wasn’t just a killer.Carellawas one of them.” He lightly snorted. “Though I don’t think ‘sunlight’ has ever suited me.”
He hadn’t just been calling mesunlight,then. He’d been sharing a piece of his mother with me.
Any parts of my heart that still remained solid melted into a warm puddle.
“What else did she call you?
Perhaps that was digging too deeply, but he answered. “Arteila. Vintaja.Good heart. Tree of life,” he translated.“Exaggerations, all of them. But with every one, she made her point. Reminded me not to be like my father.”
I caught his hand, soothing my fingers over the rough skin. “I didn’t know your mother, but I think she’d be happy to know she succeeded. Because those things aren’t just small parts of you, warring against some type of badness. They define you.”
His chest stopped moving against my side. I wondered again if I’d gone too far, but his fingers wove between mine, just holding them.
I smiled into the pillow and added, “Alongside the asshole parts, of course.”
His ribcage expanded on a chuckle. “Of course,” he echoed.
That was the last I heard before I fell asleep. And when I woke in the early dawn, Harthon was still beside me.
Chapter 23
Iwas well and truly fed up with old script writing.
So many swirls. So many tallTs andIs. So many tiny, smeared letters in between.
I swear, the elaborate cursive ineverydamn book was more about looking pretentious than actual readability.
The only benefit was that the letterJwas easy to pick out of a page, thanks to the enormous loop on the bottom and the fancy scroll on the top. You’d thinkJwas their favorite letter to write. The most pretentious in all the alphabet.
Yet, even with the letter’s visibility, I still hadn’t found a passage regarding King Jamison IV. Every book I pulled from Aric’s massive library seemed to love the Henrys, Jonathans, and our very own Donon—but not a single Jamison.
Stefano grunted beside me.
“Anything?” I asked hopefully.
He held up the book in his hands. “Not what you’re looking for. But this one has an interesting illustration.”
Stefano wasn’t necessarily literate, but he could spot aJamison,so I’d enlisted his help. I was fairly certain he hated me for it, not that I could blame him. But between training and waiting for Jac’s return, there was nothing else to do—other than replay last night with Harthon in my mind.
His body had been prepared for a repeat this morning, when I’d woken to him against my lower back, hard and persistent. That was all it had taken for my own body to rise, the juncture of my thighs pulsing in wait. But nothing had come of it. Harthon’s first words demanded to know whether I was sore, and when I’d lied, he’d easily discovered the truth and refused to do what we both clearly ached for.
Of course, I’d protested, to which he’d responded, “Some pains serve to heighten pleasure, and I look forward to teaching you what they are, in time. But this is not one of them.”
Of course, those words only made my body needier. Never would I have thought the threat of pain would be so attractive, but coming from Harthon, well—
“How many of these books do you think we’ll need to go through?” Stefano asked, wrenching me back to the present.
We’d only made it through twenty books so far. I nodded toward the bookshelves surrounding us. “Could be all of them.”
Stefano groaned. “Whatever you have us searching for better be important.”
I pursed my lips because I wasn’t sure if this was important at all. It was more curiosity about what that book on the ship had referenced.
He read that all over my face. “We both know hitting things is more fun. Let’s train instead.”
“We trained all morning. My body can’t move.”
