Saving the Immortal

Chapter Ten: Something Foolish

He left again after we returned to our quarters, some matter of the court requiring his attention once more, and I found myself alone through the remainder of that long afternoon with little to occupy my thoughts save the events of the morning.

I did not mind the solitude, precisely.

I had grown accustomed to it, in a manner of speaking, over nineteen years of a life largely dictated by others' expectations, and there was something almost restful in having an entire afternoon belong to no one but myself. I read a little, from the small collection of books left in our sitting room. I walked the garden once more, though I did not seek out the swing this time, content instead to simply wander the paths and admire the strange, beautiful roses that grew nowhere else in any kingdom I had known.

But as the afternoon stretched into evening, and evening began its slow descent into night, I found my thoughts returning, with increasing frequency, to the corridor where he had found me.

To the steadiness of his arm about my waist.

To the particular quality of his voice when he had said my name.

I told myself this was simply gratitude, misplaced and swelling larger than the moment warranted. I told myself a great many things, in fact, over the course of that long afternoon, none of which I entirely believed by the time the candles were lit and dinner had come and gone without him.

He returned well after the last light had faded from the sky.

I had settled into the chair nearest the fire, a book open in my lap though I had read very little of it in truth, and looked up when the door finally opened to admit him.

He had removed his coat somewhere along the way, and his dark hair — usually kept in some semblance of order, however loosely — had come entirely free, falling past his shoulders in a manner that caught the candlelight and seemed almost to hold shadow within its depths rather than simply reflecting it. His collar had been loosened. He looked tired, in a way I had not yet seen from him, the careful composure of the court finally allowed to slip now that no audience remained to demand it.

And his eyes.

I had thought them simply dark, in the daylight and the torchlight both — dark enough to swallow illumination rather than reflect it. But in the low, warm glow of the fire, something else emerged entirely. A blue, deep and clear, shining through the darkness like the last hour of twilight before true night finally claims the sky.

I felt something in my chest give way entirely.

A spring uncoiling, I thought, absurdly, some tension I had not fully realized I was carrying suddenly released all at once, replaced by a warmth that had nothing at all to do with the fire before me.

"You are still awake," he said, crossing toward the hearth, apparently unaware of the particular effect his own appearance had just produced in me.

"I was not tired," I said, which was, I realized even as I spoke it, no longer entirely true. I felt considerably more awake now than I had a moment before he entered.

"You should not have waited for me," he said, settling into the chair opposite mine, close enough now that I could see the exhaustion properly etched into his features, softened though it was by the firelight's warmth. "The evening's business ran longer than anticipated."

"I did not mind the wait," I said.

I cautioned myself, even as the words left me, to control whatever this was building so swiftly and so foolishly within my chest. He was still, however gentle he had proven himself these past two days, a man I had known for scarcely more than that — a demon by his own blood, a stranger by any reasonable measure, bound to me by treaty rather than any true choosing between us.

I told myself, firmly, that whatever warmth I felt looking at him now was simply the lingering gratitude from the corridor, nothing more.

I did not entirely believe myself.

"You are looking at me rather strangely," he observed, something almost amused entering his tired features.

"Am I," I said, quickly returning my attention to the book still open, unread, in my lap.

"You are," he said. "Though I confess I find I do not mind it particularly."

I glanced up at that, and found him watching me with an expression I could not entirely name — something careful and something warm both at once, the specific quality of a man permitting himself, however briefly, to hope for something he had likely never allowed himself to want before.

I closed the book properly.

"It has been a long day," I said, rising from my chair before whatever was building between us in that quiet firelit room could grow into something I was not yet prepared to name aloud. "I believe I shall retire."

"Of course," he said, rising as well, the specific careful distance of a gentleman returning to shape the space between us once more.

I paused at the door to the bedchamber.

"Goodnight, Ruselon," I said.

"Goodnight, Ivy," he said quietly.

I closed the door behind me, and stood for a long moment with my back against the wood, my heart still racing in a manner that had nothing at all to do with fear.

Foolish, I told myself firmly.

Entirely foolish.

I did not, in truth, feel particularly persuaded by my own counsel.