Still Water, Sharp Edges
1572 Words
Chapter Seven
Cassian found her in the library that afternoon, curled into a window seat with a book she wasn’t truly reading, her mind still half-tangled in the strange, sweet unreality of the past two days.
“Come with me tonight,” he said, without preamble, settling beside her with the easy grace that seemed to come naturally to everything he did. “There’s somewhere I’d like to show you.”
“Where?”
“A surprise.” His smile was warm, faintly teasing. “You mentioned, at the ball, how you missed the sound of water near your family’s land. A stream, I believe you called it.”
She hadn’t thought he’d remember something so small, tossed off in passing during a conversation thick with wine and nerves. “I did say that.”
“Then trust me tonight.” He took her hand, pressing a kiss to her knuckles, his eyes holding hers with a warmth that made the request feel like far less of a risk than it should have. “I only ever want to give you back pieces of what you’ve lost.”
She should have questioned how he’d catalogued that detail so precisely, filed away for later use. Instead, she found herself nodding, already looking forward to the evening ahead.
The lake lay a short ride from the estate, tucked into a hollow of trees that opened suddenly onto still, silver water, the moon hanging low and full above it, its reflection unbroken across the surface like a second sky sunk beneath the first. Cassian led her down a gentle slope toward the shore, his hand steady at the small of her back, and for a long moment neither of them spoke, letting the quiet settle around them—crickets humming somewhere in the reeds, water lapping soft against stone.
“It’s beautiful,” Maren said, finally, because it was, and because the silence had begun to feel too full of things she didn’t know how to say.
“I used to come here often, when I was young.”His grey eyes, pale as moonlight on still water, held a distant softness as he looked toward the lake. “Before Duskmoor was mine to run. Before there was no one left to answer to but myself.” He didn’t look at her as he spoke, his gaze fixed instead on the water, something unguarded flickering across his face. “It’s strange, the things you miss most, once everyone who mattered is gone. Not the grand things. Just—water at night. The quiet of it.”
Maren reached for his hand without deciding to, some instinct pulling her toward the ache in his voice. “You’re not alone anymore.”
He looked at her then, and something in his expression cracked open entirely—raw, almost startled, as though her simple words had struck somewhere deep and unguarded. “No,” he murmured. “I suppose I’m not.”
He turned to face her fully, moonlight silvering the sharp planes of his face, and lifted a hand to cup her cheek with a tenderness that made her breath catch. “Maren.” Her name, in his mouth, sounded like something he’d been circling for a long while before finally letting himself land on it. “I don’t know how to tell you what you’ve come to mean to me, in so short a time. I only know that I haven’t wanted anything the way I want to keep you close, not in longer than I can remember.”
She didn’t trust her own voice to answer. She didn’t need to.
He kissed her slowly, softly, his lips cool against hers in a way that should have startled her and somehow didn’t—it felt instead like sinking into still water, gentle and enveloping, his hand cradling her jaw as though she were something infinitely breakable and infinitely precious all at once. She kissed him back, letting herself, for once, simply feel rather than examine, her fingers curling into the front of his coat.
When he pulled away, it was sudden—too sudden, a sharp inhale through his nose, his whole body going rigid.
His eyes had gone red.
Not the pale grey she’d grown used to, but a deep, glowing crimson, vivid even in the moonlight, fixed on her with an intensity that made her pulse stutter. For one long moment he simply stared, his jaw tight, some visible war playing out behind his gaze—before he stepped back, putting careful distance between them, his hands curling into fists at his sides.
“Cassian?” Her voice came out smaller than she meant it to. “Are you—is something wrong?”
“No.” The word came clipped, controlled, though his chest rose and fell too quickly for the calm he was clearly trying to project. He kept his back half-turned from her, giving himself, she realized, a moment to recover before facing her again. “No, nothing is wrong. I only need a moment.”
“Did I do something?”
“No.” He finally turned back, and his eyes had cleared. pale grey restored, though something haunted still lingered in the set of his mouth. He reached for her hand again, gentler now, almost apologetic. “You did nothing wrong, Maren. I promise you that. It’s only—” He hesitated, choosing his words with visible care. “What we are, what I am, comes with hungers I don’t always trust myself to master. I would rather step back a hundred times than risk hurting you once.”
The admission settled into her chest, warm despite the strangeness of it—not fear, she realized, but something closer to tenderness. A man who would rather deny himself than risk her safety. What else could that be, if not love?
“Thank you,” she said quietly, “for telling me.”
“Always,” he murmured, pressing a kiss to her forehead instead, careful now, restrained. “I would rather you know the truth of me than let you wonder.”
She did not sleep well that night.
Maren lay in the dark long after the estate had gone quiet, turning restlessly beneath the sheets, the memory of his eyes—that sudden, glowing red—replaying over and over behind her closed lids. She told herself it wasn’t fear that kept her awake. It was something closer to worry, aching and tender, for a man who fought so hard against his own nature for her sake.
What we are comes with hungers I don’t always trust myself to master.
She thought of the way he’d stepped back, the visible strain in his shoulders, the careful, apologetic softness after. Surely that was restraint. Surely that was devotion, not danger.
She turned onto her side, then her back, then her side again, sleep refusing to settle no matter how she arranged herself, her mind circling the same worry again and again—not is he dangerous, but is he alright, is he suffering, is there anything I can do to ease whatever burden he carries alone.
It was well past midnight before exhaustion finally won out, and even then, her dreams were full of red eyes and still water and a voice murmuring apologies into her hair.
Bryn, meanwhile, had woken with an entirely different sort of restlessness.
“I want to see the market,” she announced at breakfast, to no one in particular, already halfway through planning her day aloud. “The real one. Not whatever the kitchens send for—I want to see the stalls, the silk merchants, the sweets Odera keeps mentioning.”
“I could accompany you,” Maren offered, still heavy-eyed from her sleepless night.
“No, no, you look positively wilted. Stay here and rest.” Bryn waved her off with the breezy authority of a girl who had clearly already decided the shape of her own day. “Elsie can come with me.”
Elsie, a young maid barely older than Bryn herself, arrived shortly after, looking faintly nervous at the prospect of chaperoning a girl whose reputation for chaos had apparently already spread through the household staff. The two of them set off not long after, Bryn practically skipping ahead through the estate gates and into the bustle of the capital’s market square.
Bryn moved from stall to stall, half her attention on a bolt of deep green silk still clutched in her hands, admiring the way the color shifted in the light—which was precisely why she didn’t see the man stepping out from the merchant’s row until she collided with him directly, silk and parcels nearly scattering between them.
“Watch where you’re—” she started, sharp with the reflexive irritation of anyone caught off guard, before she looked up and recognized exactly who she’d walked into.
Karl steadied her elbow with one hand, entirely unbothered, already stepping back once she’d found her footing. “You might try looking where you’re going,” he said, voice as maddeningly even as it had been at the ball.
“I was looking at silk.”
“Clearly not at anything in front of you.”
Bryn’s cheeks flushed, embarrassment sharpening instantly into indignation. “You,” she said, “are the insufferable one from the ball.”
- Writer
