“What’s that?”
He turned, and the surprise on his face stopped me. For a man with supernatural hearing, he hadn’t heard me coming. Whatever that paper contained had pulled him deep enough to drown out everything else.
He shoved the note into his pocket. The raven launched off the sill with a rough cry and disappeared into the gray sky.
“Just a message from our world.”
“Yourworld? You mean… Different dimension?”
“Yes.”
I stepped into the room and wrapped the cardigan tighter. The open window turned the study into a freezer, wind-driven rain misting across the floorboards and biting through my sleeves. Goosebumps erupted down my arms.
Lucian’s gaze tracked the shiver I failed to suppress. His eyes moved from my bare forearms to the thin cardigan to my face, and his jaw clenched with that specific brand of irritation I wasstarting to recognize as Lucian for “I’m concerned but I’d rather chew glass than say so.”
“It’s freezing in here,” I said.
“Then get inside.”
No warmth or invitation to stay. Just an order to get inside.
Still, he closed the window and reached for the curtain panel hanging beside it. A long, woven throw, draped over the rod as decoration. He yanked it down in one motion, crossed the distance between us, and dropped it over my shoulders.
“Wear warmer clothes when it’s raining.”
His hands pulled the fabric around me, tucking the edges together at my chest. His knuckles brushed my collarbone. The contact sent a jolt down my spine that I felt in my toes. He was close enough that I caught his scent, pine and frost, and the heat of his body cut through the cold fabric.
“Or if you’re cold. That solves it.”
I glared up at him. He met my glare, and buried beneath nine layers of stoicism, the faintest glint of amusement surfaced in his eyes. I wasn’t sure if he was messing around given the curtain or his reprimand.
Then he stepped back and walked past me toward the door.
He just leaves like that.Bastard.
I called out to him. “Lucian.”
He stopped. His shoulders rose a fraction.
“Were we close?” My voice came out quiet. “During that week…” He turned. The amusement was gone. What replaced it was raw. An expression I’d never seen on his face. Not anger, not control.
A wound.
I gulped and finished my question.
“Were you and I close?”
His expression fractured. There was a crack in his mask, gone so fast I would have missed it if I’d blinked. Lucian reset his jaw, straightened his shoulders, and buried whatever I’d just seen beneath five hundred years of practice.
“Does it matter?”
Two words. He held my gaze for one more second, then disappeared down the hall.
I stood in the study wrapped in his curtain, breathing in pine and frost, and the question echoed in the cold room.
There was more to Lucian Valdris than distance and his temper. More behind every wall he put up and every time he walked away.
And I was going to find out what it was.
