I assured him I did, though admittedly my Common tutor was the one I ditched out on the most growing up. If I’d known I was going to be living in the Boundlands as an adult, I might have tried harder to pay attention. Common was still spoken in my kingdom, but not as much asSanrin. And definitely not written as much.
“How many languages do you speak?” I asked as I scanned the rows and rows of shelves that created little corridors throughout the room. While I did see a lot of spines with Common Tongue titles, there were quite a few languages I didn’t know, too.
“Most of them. I never counted the exact number. I suppose it depends on how different a dialect needs to be before you consider it a new language.”
I turned back to stare at him, blinking repeatedly.Most of them.
“And… there are dead languages I don’t speak at all but can read quite a bit of, and I don’t speak all of the human languages in the Void,” he amended.
The encyclopedia was heavy, so I wrapped both arms around it and carried it to a table near a hearth at the front of the room, settling in with it while Victor drifted among the bookshelves looking for something in particular. I stared at the empty hearth for a bit, imagining how lovely it would be to sit with Victor and read by the warm glow of the flames. I didn’t know how to start a fire—our servants had special tools to light fires, and I wouldn’t know how to use one even if I had it—but at least I could load some wood into the hearth. Victor was always the one doing everything for me here, so I rose, deciding to make myself useful.
I only managed to get two small logs into the firebox before I felt his hands smoothing down my wings as he gently tugged me away. My eyes widened at the sensation of him touching me in such a familiar way, and I turned to find him trying to guide me back to the table. “Rest, Doveling. This is my job.”
I let him guide me but frowned at him as I sat. “I wanted to help.”
“And I’m still concerned about your ability to stay upright. I want to take care of you. Rest, please.”
It was hard to say no to that, but as I watched him arrange wood in the fireplace and start it by using little sticks that smelled of sulfur, I felt rather useless. “Can I at least retrieve the tea from our rooms for us?”
He raised an eyebrow at me while he waited for the flames to take hold, and then, rising, said, “When you have more balance and strength.”
I nearly argued, but as soon as I opened my mouth, he tutted at me and gave me a playful scowl that made me clack my teeth shut. Did I think the man didn’t emote? That haughty look made me bite my lip and clench my thighs. I locked my muscles to keep from flaring my wings as he left the room and just about held my breath until he returned with the tray of tea and cups. He even had my quilt neatly folded and draped over his arm.
He unfolded the quilt and tucked it around my shoulders before pouring me a cup of tea and placing it in my hands. Then, after pouring himself one, he took a seat in front of me, dragged the stack of three books that he had selected across the table, and began to read. I watched him drinking from the dainty cup out of the corner of my eye and smiled to myself.
The fire crackled beside us as we sipped our tea in the old library, and I managed to find all the flowers that Victor had been bringing me—little cliff-side plants that bloomed in the snow, somehow defying the poor soil, salt spray, and bitter cold to produce sweet little blossoms in the dead of winter. But I couldn’t pay attention to the text because somehow his hand had brushed against mine, or mine against his, and then his fingers had closed around mine and we were holding hands. And that was how we spent the next couple of days. Whenever I wasn’t sleeping, we were huddled together in the library reading books, him reading whatever it was he read in various languages I didn’t understand, and me reading specific texts that he selected to help me learn more about the cultures here or—at my request—to broaden my understanding of Common Tongue. But always holding hands.
His hands were surprisingly demonstrative. He would appear to be thoroughly engrossed in his texts, his brow wrinkled in concentration and chewing on his lip—but his fingers would trail along the inside of my wrist or brush tenderly against my sensitive palm. And his fingers were so long. Silken skin with slightly firm pads from the weapons he wielded, strong and delicate at the same time. I shivered when his fingertips feathered along the bones of the back of my hand, drawing patterns around my knuckles or stroking gently along the thin skin between my fingers.
I would be reading a passage about grammar variations among modern elvish communities and his hand would sneak across the table to tangle with mine. Every time we laced fingers, I would feel a secret thrill, reveling in the way my body warmed and tingled just from the feel of his skin against mine. It was truly bizarre. I had held hands before. I’d even kissed several boys growing up. Nothing had ever felt as erotic as this. It got to the point where just seeing his fingers twitch made me short of breath.
I noticed that, if I spoke, I had his full attention. He would listen to me talk about anything, but when I asked him about himself, he had a hard time answering with more than a few words and seemed almost bashful. It was very strange to me that someone so powerful and fearsome could be shy, but I couldn’t deny what I was seeing with my own eyes. But what I’d taken for aloofness and possibly even disinterest at first truly appeared to be an acute case of introversion. He didn’t ask me questions often, but when I did speak, he listened with complete focus, able to recall exactly what I’d said later with perfect accuracy. It was the strangest thing. If he was so interested in me, why didn’t heaskme anything? But he rarely did, simply taking what was offered and cataloging it away instead. It was flattering and baffling all at once.
Then I discovered another way to get his attention. We were sitting in the library nibbling on tiny cakes and sipping tea by the fire and I—having crept my way around the table to be closer to him over the past few days—was slowly working on getting him used to my touch in places other than his hands. He was focused on another book from the stack he’d built beside him. This one had illustrations of people contorted into strange postures scattered throughout the pages. I was pretending to be engrossed in some political drivel about goblin territories he’d seemed surprised to see me pick up. I probably should have been a little more careful when choosing my prop. I’d started with “absentmindedly” caressing his fingers while I “read” before trailing the tips of my fingers across his palm to his wrist, drawing non-existent shapes along his skin as I went. I was curious to see if I could give him a dose of his own medicine, honestly. He’d had me squirming in my seat for days with flushed cheeks and hard nipples while he’d sat here stoic and impassive. I might have thought it didn’t have the same effect on him as it did on me, but his fingers twitched in the tiniest of spasms, and as I trailed my hand higher up his arm his skin tightened into prickled gooseflesh. I reached his binding mark, the image that represented our marriage to one another, and began to lightly trace the contours of the image. The tip of the roots and up the trunk of the tree. The bare branches on one side and the lush foliage on the other. His breath hitched, and when I raised my gaze to meet his, I found he was staring me dead in the eye, his pupils completely dilated and his expression as hungry as a wolf.
Chapter 16
Celeste
Idrewmyhandback slowly, skimming my fingers down to his wrist as I wondered if, perhaps, I’d bitten off more than I could chew. His fingers caught mine when I reached his hand, and he held me trapped in his gaze like that for several more moments before heaving a rasping breath, a reminder that I’d forgotten to breathe as well. When he finally turned his head back to his book his eyes followed last. He returned to reading with an audible swallow, and I lowered my gaze to stare at his hand still laced in mine. I sat still as a statue beside him since I didn’t entirely understand his reaction, but I was incredibly intrigued and filed it away for future inspection.
By the time dinner came, I’d managed to shake off the tense feeling between us. Perhaps it was just me feeling that way, I didn’t know, but I began to wonder if I had made a mistake in pushing him as far as I had. I knew it was greedy, but I wanted his bodyandhis heart. I wanted to be a proper husband and wife. I didn’t like the thought that my family wouldn’t see us as truly married in the state of limbo we were in. I’d thought before we married that the most I could really hope for in an arranged marriage was a companionable relationship and wanting more wasn’t in the cards, but I wondered what it would take for me to win the rest of him in addition to his hand. Maybe a spirit guardian’s heart couldn’t be won. Hearts were something I didn’t have a lot of experience with. I fell asleep pondering this dilemma, which probably wasn’t the wisest thing because it affected my dreams.
“Celeste.” Something brushed my cheek. “Celeste, wake up. You’re crying.”
I sucked in a gasping breath, grateful beyond measure that he’d pulled me from that nightmare. I’d been right back in that agonizing moment where I realized that my mother hadn’t been mistaken when she relayed to me, as I was being dressed in my wedding gown, that my closest friend had left the city and wouldn’t be attending my ceremony. I’d been absolutely convinced that she was wrong.Apollo is my oldest friend,I’d thought.Of course he would want to see me off when I left, even if he didn’t care about weddings. We’d played together and gotten into mischief since we were little children. He’d been the golden child, the court’s favorite little ringlet-haired pretty boy who’d snuck me silly books and hung all my terrible paintings on his walls. We’d talked abouteverything. He knew it was a scary moment for me. He knew why I had to do it.Of course he’ll be here,I’d thought. We’dalwaysbeen there for each other. I’d entertained him with puppet shows when he’d flown too close to the cliffs and gotten caught in an updraft as a child, requiring that he convalesce for weeks while his leg and wing healed. When I’d become ill, he had visited and filled me in on all the latest drama between our peers.
When the doors to the great hall had finally opened to reveal my new husband, I had been wracked with anxiety, even in my determination, and Apollo had been nowhere to be found.
The sharp sting of betrayal slowly settled into a melancholy ache, but I couldn’t stop my tears from flowing, much to myVeardur’sdistress. Victor wiped at my tears with his thumb, desperately trying to smooth them away as fast as they came. “You dreamed?” he inquired anxiously as his large form leaned over me, blocking out the flickering firelight.
I reached up and wrapped my hand around his, stilling his frantic movements and holding it to my face as I nodded. His closeness was a balm. I felt cocooned by his presence, and it made me feel safe. I’d been so hurt by my own best friend. My only friend, really. But I’d thought I was doing a good job of moving past it. Or at least starting to.
Victor’s voice was quiet as a breath and almost timid when he asked me, “What can I do?”
It was so desperately sweet that I started crying even harder. How was it that this man who probably hadn’t even known I existed several weeks ago cared more about my feelings than the person who knew me as well as my own siblings? I just needed to be held and I should have asked, but I felt too shy. I reached for him and wrapped my arm across his lap since he was hunched over me from where he sat beside me. He answered my silent request by lowering himself until he lay next to me in the bed and wrapping his arm over me and my wing to pull me against his chest. I pressed my face to his throat and tried to stem my tears.
“You… want a hug?” he asked, sounding apprehensive.
