“I’m not giving up on you.”
The sternness in his tone makes my head snap back up. There’s fire in his eyes, a burning so strong that my stomach coils tight.
“Okay,” is all I can muster.
We’ve reached our rooms, and each of us pause in front of our respective doors. I place a hand on mine and glance over at Feylin.
Low lamplight slashes across his face, which holds an expression that I can’t read as he watches me. His gaze flicks from my hand to my mouth and to my eyes.
“Thank you for dinner.”
“You’re more than welcome.”
Silence ignites between us—a tense, awkward moment that can only be broken when one of us leaves.
I turn the knob and start to slip through my door. “Good night.”
“Addison?”
I whirl back to him. “Yes?”
His lips tug up into a ghost of a smile. “Tomorrow morning we’ll begin again.”
Then he opens his door and disappears inside. Even though he didn’t say good night, an unexplainable hope mingled with happiness balloons in my chest.
The next weeksare spent with Feylin trying to find every which way possible to draw out my magic, and when we’re not practicing, we’re spending time together. He listens as I read aloud the best parts of the book I’m currently obsessed with, after first catching him up on the plotline, of course. He doesn’t even seem to mind when I describe in intricate detail how a romance unfolds.
He shows me how to falcon, and I eventually realize that waving my arms in the air and shouting at the bird, hoping it lands, isn’t the best way to go about it.
Shocking, I know.
We spend a lot of time with Ryals, who wrangles me into fishing with him. So of course I get Feylin to join us, telling him that he has no choice.
The king grunts a lot in his broody style, but when he helps Ryals pull in a fish, there’s no mistaking the happiness in his eyes.
We spend mornings lounging in the grass, eating sticky-sweet grapes and telling each other stories about our families.
I go into boring descriptions about my sisters and how different each of them are while he tells me about his parents and how his mother was a true lady.
“She would’ve liked you,” he says one particularly lazy morning that we spend sitting by the pond.
It’s awkward how my chest sings at the comment. My own family, I’ll have to admit, has been contacting me. But I’vedone everything in my power to dodge their visits since I can’t bring back the shop’s magic. I’m barely even talking to Elmore, choosing to keep his mirror closed.
In the afternoons Feylin disappears to do kingly stuff. Then he reappears for dinner, cooking me elaborate meals while I watch and point out all the things he’s doing wrong.
Just kidding. He doesn’t do any of it wrong.
“I think,” Feylin says, skimming rocks along the pool, “that I know how to make your magic reveal itself.”
I lift a brow in skepticism and let the book I’ve been reading fall onto my lap. “And what brilliant idea do you have? Shoot me to the stars? Tickle me?”
He leans back on his heels as if he’s considering it. For all the time we’ve spent together, we’ve been good about keeping our hands to ourselves. It’s been freeing but also frustrating.
Because there are so many times when I want to brush a curl from his forehead. But whenever I think about it, I remind myself that I’m protectingmeby keeping this rule.
But right now it’s late morning, so while Ryals hunts cicada shells stuck on trees, Feylin’s about to leave, which means we won’t be doing any magic practicing until tomorrow.
So it’s strange that he’s bringing up the topic now.
