“Didn’t the Vestians teach you warriors any meditation techniques? Battle preparations? That kind of thing?” she asked.
“They tried, but I’ve never been capable of it. My mind has two modes: constant assessment of every surrounding piece of sensory information or deep, dark pit of numbness. When that happens, I’m lucky if I can get out of bed in the morning.”
“Too bad you’re not coming back to the colonies. Cass is a master at battle meditation. She might be able to teach you a thing or two.”
“I have no doubt she could.” He stared at Xenia from across the short yet seemingly insurmountable expanse between their beds, his eyes churning. Like he wanted to say something else, but was hesitant to spit it out.
She didn’t know where this shy, vulnerable Cael had come from. But wished he’d show up more often.
“Xenia, I…I’m sorry for kissing you at the oasis. It was…I never should’ve taken advantage of you like that.”
His apology landed like a fist to her gut, and she choked back the hurt and shock. Takenadvantageof her? She’d practically begged him to kiss her.
“I was overcome after I gave you my blood,” he continued, slicing the palpitating organ in her chest to ribbons. “It never would’ve happened if I’d been in my right state of mind.”
Something about the cadence of his voice, the way he wouldn’t, or couldn’t, meet her eyes hinted his words were far from the truth. But it didn’t make her feel any less skewered.
If this is what he wanted, then fine. She’d play his game. A lie for a lie.
“Don’t worry about it,” she said, pulling the covers around her tighter and covering her naked shoulders. She didn’t want to expose any more of herself than she already had.
“I was feeling the effects too.” Lie.
“I never would’ve asked you to do it otherwise.” Lie.
“Probably best if it never happens again.” Huge lie.
She could’ve sworn a flash of disappointment skittered across his face as he turned away from her, his gaze cemented to the ceiling once again.
“So you gonna tell me the full story of how in Ethyrios thatwasn’ta Shrouded Sister’s first kiss?” he asked, his lips curving to expose a pointed canine.
“Only if you agree to tell me one of your own secrets after,” Xenia smirked.
“Deal,” he said. “Spill it, Blondie.”
Xenia shuddered a shallow breath, then pivoted onto her back, unable to look at him as she confessed her deepest, most shameful secret.
“He was a scholar from the university in Delos,” she began. “Beastrunner. A stallion bi-form from the steppes surrounding the capital.”
“So I wasn’t even your firstFaekiss?” Cael mock-whined. “I don’t know if my ego can handle this story.”
She laughed softly, then continued. “He’d come to the Temple library to research some of the older texts. He was studying the ancient human and Fae civilizations of Ethyrios, cataloging the first interactions between the two species. Trying to determine if any cross-breeding had occurred during those early days.”
“When was this?”
“A little over two years ago,” Xenia said. “I’d see him in the reading hall, bent over his books every afternoon. His eyes were constantly darting towards me while I was curled up in an armchair with one of my romantic adventure stories. My choice of reading material likely inspired me to assign far too much weight to his glances.”
Xenia had long ago made peace with herself over her fling with Jaz, the scholar. But that didn’t make recounting it any less painful. Didn’t make her feel any less foolish.
“One day, he mustered the courage to approach me. Made some ridiculous claim about needing a human’s perspective on the passage he was studying. I was terribly flattered, of course. Played right into his hand.”
Xenia dared a glance at Cael. His features were tight, unreadable, his sensuous lips pulled down at the corners. A few weeks ago, she would have dismissed it as his resting face. But she’d studied him enough by now to know there was more behind it. Jealousy, perhaps? She didn’t dare hope.
“He lured me between the stacks. Tolook for more source material, he claimed. But the instant we were alone together, he plied me with compliments. Told me how beautiful I was, how he’d been watching me for days, how he couldn’t stop thinking about me each night when he left the library.”
Xenia still vividly recalled how she’d felt in those stolen moments: exhilarated and terrified. Not only by Jaz’s words, but by the thought of getting caught. Cass had been a year into her robberies by that point, and Xenia was envious of her friend’s rebellions. Pining for a bit of danger and intrigue to pierce the veil of her own mundane existence. Jaz had come along at the perfect time.
“We spent an entire week meeting in quiet, dark corners of the library every afternoon after my Temple shifts, each encounter more heated than the one before. I thought…” Xenia paused, ashamed of how naïve she’d been. “I thought he was falling in love with me.”
