Page 176 of Plug and Drain

Here, she could read and not worry who would come through the door. The days passed, and she’d stopped flinching every time it opened. Sometimes, it was Arken returning. Her heart always skipped a beat, and he always asked how she was even when he’d only been gone a few minutes. At other times, it was Sarah. The only other person who came was the dwarf healer whose name she could never remember, not that he ceased being grumpy for long enough to exchange more than two words with her.

“They’re all grumpy like that,” Arken had said with a twinkle in his eye.

She couldn’t tell if he was joking. Were they back to smiling at each other? She wasn’t sure.

Another evening arrived with Sarah snoring beside her.

Arken’s quill scratched away at the page. It had become a soothing sound in the background as she read. But it also meant Arken was immersed in whatever he was writing, and that she was safe to steal a glance at him.

He puzzled her. His kindness and attentiveness. His gentlemanly manners and formal clothes, all without Nathaniel’s aristocratic arrogance.

His intelligence. He was well-read, and when he wasn’t writing, he was reading.

She imagined conversations where she asked him what he read.

She imagined scenarios where Henrikk didn’t exist, and she and Arken had met and struck up a conversation in the library. Or he’d found her injured and brought her here and was kind.

She imagined that he was noble and heroic, without ever being put to the test. Where she was never held down on the floor by a cruel king, and he didn’t look on and do nothing.

She swallowed and looked down at her book. The words blurred together, but she imagined the ivy vines twisting around the trees of the magical forest in the story, and she could map out the roads passing through it as vividly as if her own shoes had crunched along it after the protagonists.

Why couldn’t she rewrite her own story?

Why did Henrikk intrude on every thought?

Don’t think about him.

Susie reread the same paragraph multiple times before giving up. She shut the book and set it aside, and her gaze went straight to Arken.

His gaze was cast down, but the moment she looked at him, his glasses flashed as they caught the light, and then his gaze was locked on hers.

He stared at her silently, his expression unreadable.

Susie stared back.

She still couldn’t get over the fact that he wore glasses. He looked…

Like someone who wears glasses, she told herself stubbornly. That’s all.

Her heart squeezed, and heat pooled in her lower region.

She liked him in glasses. It made him even more attractive, and she couldn’t quite breathe as he tilted his head ever so slightly at her in question.

Susie broke the stare first, her heart pounding as she looked up at the ceiling. Henrikk was there, waiting, a shadow hovering over her, gliding down from the ceiling and pressing her into the bed.

She shut her eyes, but that made it worse, and her eyes flew open again. He was gone, but she could feel him. Her heart thundered in her chest.

Wood creaked beside her.

Forgetting to be careful with movements, she snapped her head to the left.

Arken was sitting on a simple chair beside the bed, one that Sarah sometimes occupied.

He gave her a brief smile before nodding at her book. “Would you like me to read to you?”

Relief washed through Susie, and her lungs drew air. He hadn’t asked her about what was wrong, or what she was thinking about, or whether she was imagining Henrikk, or if she was all right, or anything else like that. For which she was grateful.

“Yes please,” she said, holding out the book. Their hands never touched, but she felt the intention in her motion as she held it out, the weight of the book shifting as he took it, the way they both held it a second longer than necessary before she released it.