Months ago, there’s no chance in hell he would have answered me. He probably would’ve shoved a gag in my mouth just for parting my lips.
I finish the stew. Before I’ve even set the spoon down in the bowl, Samick takes it from my hands, then passes it off to the edge of the sink.
He’s in no rush.
So I guess I’m not either.
I sink into the bath again, the filmy water coming up to my chin.
My lips move carefully around a murmured question, “You and Arwyn…”
I trail off—and Samick lifts a faint frown to me. Waiting for me to continue.
Distractedly, he runs his thumb over the hilt of a blade, the glassy one with gold and black flecked through it.
I think it’s a favourite of his.
Less practical, more sentimental.
“Why are you so different to the others?” I ask, my voice small. “You move differently,” I add. “You knew the hail was coming before it did. Arwyn, too. And some of the other fae… they’re afraid of you, I think. Not Rust, but like… most of them.”
The frown smoothens—and his stare becomes steady, cool, unreadable.
Frost cracks those wintery eyes.
Then he blinks—and the faint green returns, like the sun coming out over the arctic, but only for a moment.
I think I’ve stepped onto a minefield.
But the bath has me too soothed, and the questions I’ve stored are coming out now.
“I saw you do that thing with the water in the prison,” I say. “You turned the shower water into… like, icicles or something.I haven’t seen any other fae do things like that. And sometimes you seem to know exactly what I’m thinking—”
“No.”
Still, that stare chills me, cold and steady.
My lashes flutter. “No?”
His breath loosens, almost like a sigh, and he watches the waterline sway over my chin. “I do not know your thoughts. Fae and humans are alike in feeling. Emotions surround them.”
I nod, because I know this. I figured it out that he can’tliterallyread my mind. I was being hyperbolic.
Samick sweeps his hand away from his chest, like he’s imitating something swelling off of him. “The stronger the emotion, the stronger I feel it.”
“Youfeelit,” I echo.
I guessed that, too. Well, more like I fleetingly suspected it.
But it’s crazy.
It was a crazy thought back then, and a crazier confession now.
Hefeelsothers’ emotions, and that’s just something my brain can’t fully process.
Samick’s cheek is stroked with shadows as he looks to the drawn curtains, but they aren’t even remotely interesting, so I suspect he just wants to look anywhere but me.
I consider him, the light dancing over the corner of his pink mouth and the angle of his jaw, chilling his complexion even more.
