25. Chapter 25

Chapter 25

“ I need to wash,” I murmured sleepily, dozing with my head resting on Damen’s shoulder. I was in a postsex haze that I had no desire to emerge from, and I knew that a bath would ruin it, but I was very conscious of how wet and sticky I was between my thighs.

“I’ll carry you,” Damen said easily, slipping away and climbing off the bed. He politely didn’t say anything as I wrapped the towel I was lying on around my waist before he scooped me into his arms.

“Am I not too heavy for you?”

Damen scoffed. “No.”

“You must be very strong. I struggle to lift some of the older children at the nursery.”

“You probably haven’t had much of an opportunity to strengthen your muscles, Iris,” he pointed out gently.

Right. No, I hadn’t. I’d never had to lift anything heavy when I was in the attic. Occasionally, Nana said we needed to exercise and we’d go for a short walk, but I knew I wasn’t training the way people in movie montages did.

“Maybe I could start?” I wondered aloud. “I don’t want to be too weak to lift the children.”

Damen mumbled something that sounded suspiciously like the children can walk before clearing his throat. “Astrid and Soren are running training sessions for the ex-Hunters who want to learn to fight.”

“I couldn’t do that, Damen. I’d be a liability.”

Damen’s arms tightened around me. “You’re never a liability. Soren and Astrid are great at what they do—they’ll be able to tailor it to you, no problem. Would you want to learn to fight?”

I nodded, a sudden rush of emotion making it hard to speak. To learn to defend myself was an ability that I never thought I’d be capable of. I wanted it more than anything.

Nana wouldn’t approve of course. Fighting wasn’t kind. The only acceptable form of it was killing Shades, and I had no interest in that, of course.

I wanted to learn to fight for a purely selfish reason: to keep myself safe.

And maybe…

Maybe that was okay.

Maybe being selfish a little bit of the time didn’t make me unkind or difficult or less worthy of love.

Maybe Nana had been wrong about that—and a few other things too. It was a liberating, terrifying thought.

“Oh, Iris,” Damen murmured, squeezing me tightly as he climbed the stairs into the washroom. Instead of depositing me in the tub like I’d expected, he climbed in with me, so I was only touching his warm skin instead of the cold stone.

“Do I smell funny?” I asked, trying to lighten the mood. Of all the times to get overwhelmed, Iris. How unsexy of you .

“Just like you have a lot going on in that head of yours,” Damen assured me, carefully unwrapping the towel and tossing it aside before turning on the water. Thankfully, it seemed like he was going to let it run for a bit so I could wash away the grossness rather than filling up the tub. “You’re also coated in my scent, which I am very fond of and sad to be washing away.”

I mustered up my limited courage. It was funny that it had been so easy to leave everything I knew behind and come here, and yet talking about my feelings seemed to be the scariest prospect I’d ever faced. “Well, you’ll just have to cover me in it again.”

Damen hummed, arranging me so I was leaning back against his chest and pressing his nose to my neck. “Would you like that? I am your boyfriend, after all.”

“Are you teasing me?” I asked suspiciously, absently running my hands over his firm thighs.

“Only a little. It’s been a long time since I was referred to as a boy .”

“Shade-friend, then?”

Damen laughed, the sound echoing in the cavernous washroom. “You can call me whatever you want, Iris. What matters to me is that you’re mine and I’m yours. I won’t share you.”

The words send a tremor of something down my spine. “You don’t have to.”

He made a rumbling sound of approval before encouraging me to lie back, gently pushing my knees apart and running a wet washcloth between them.

“You don’t have to do that,” I mumbled, trying to decide whether or not to be embarrassed. I knew the mechanics of sex, but I didn’t know the norms around what happened afterward. And even if I did, the norms in the human realm might not apply here.

“I made a mess of you, it’s only right that I clean you up. Are you sore?”

“A little tender,” I admitted.

Damen gave me an apologetic squeeze. “I’ll send for some healing tea.” He hesitated for a moment. “You don’t have any regrets, do you?”

“None,” I replied firmly. “Do you?”

“Fuck no.”

I exhaled a little. “Can we do it again?”

He shook with laughter. “Let’s wait until you’re not hurting, hm? For tonight, we’re going to wash up, have tea, and rest. Sound good?”

“That sounds incredible.”

I didn’t have the courage to ask the question I wanted to ask. To find out if my rejection of Damen’s proposal meant that marriage—and mating—was off the table for us forever.

I’d said that I needed to find a sense of purpose, and in hindsight—so had he. It was increasingly clear that Damen now wasn’t the Damen who had proposed to me then.

He’d come into himself a lot more. He had a clearer sense of direction in life. He knew who he was and he wasn’t afraid to speak up when the occasion called for it.

I’d always liked Damen. And since we’d started getting intimate, I’d definitely been attracted to him. But it felt like more than that now. When he wasn’t around, I missed him. When he was near, everything felt easier. Better.

And the idea of him moving on, finding someone else, proposing to them… It was excruciating. It made my stomach lurch violently, like the time I’d had food poisoning.

I hadn’t known what I’d been giving up when I gave him up, and now I was in love with him and I had no idea what to do about it.

Then again, maybe I didn’t need to worry about it right this second. Things were going well. I could just… go with the flow , as they say. Focus on the present. Not worry about the future.

I could do that. I could be chill . I would so chill.

“I need to go make arrangements for the first feeding trip back to the human realm,” Damen whispered, gently rolling me off his chest and back to my side of the bed before tucking the blankets in tightly around me. “I’ll open the outside door for Tilly. Keep sleeping, princess.”

“Okay,” I mumbled into the pillow, burrowing down further in the blankets to ward off the chill without Damen’s body wrapped around me.

I gave up on sleeping not long after he left, climbing out of bed to get ready for the day. The process was much more seamless since he’d rearranged my room and had the drapes taken off the bed. There was a little flutter in my chest every time I reached out and found them gone, followed by a slightly panicky feeling because being in love was a lot more frightening than I predicted it would be.

Relax , I reminded myself. You’re going to relax. You’re focusing on the present. You’re enjoying this moment .

“Knock, knock,” Hela called, bustling in with my breakfast. “You’ve got visitors. I’ll return downstairs for more tea and food.”

“Oh, you don’t have to do that,” Cora said hurriedly. “We don’t want to put you out. It’s Cora, Iris. And Jade is here too. Have we caught you at a bad time? We can come back later—”

“Not at all. Please, sit. There are enough floor cushions for all of us, right?”

“There are,” Hela agreed in a no-nonsense voice. “And I’ll be back shortly with more breakfast.”

I made my way over, hearing them sit down, and Cora immediately guided me to the free cushion. Tilly wriggled between me and her, resting her jaw on my leg, sniffing wildly in the direction of the breakfast tray.

“You’ve become very spoiled since we’ve moved here,” I told her with mock sternness.

“There’s a little bowl of plain meat over here,” Jade said, tapping the side with her nail. “Is this for Tilly?”

“Probably,” I admitted ruefully. “She’s quite the pampered princess now. Would you mind setting it down on the floor for her?”

“No problem,” Jade replied. Tilly’s head vanished from my leg like it had never been there as she clumsily rushed behind me to get to her prize.

“What brings you to the palace so early this morning?” I asked as Hela quietly set down a second tray of items and excused herself.

“We came because it was early,” Jade replied. “I’m trying to get out and explore more. Get used to the place, you know? But I find it easier to do when the corridors aren’t crowded.”

“Very understandable,” I said sympathetically. For the most part, I preferred the hustle and bustle because it was so different from the silence of the attic. But I understood that we all handled change differently, and I could absolutely understand how it might be overwhelming.

“We were wondering whether or not to visit,” Cora began, her voice deceptively light. “We suspected you might be awake since you already had a visitor this morning.”

Jade laughed. “Don’t be coy, Cora. Iris, we saw the prince leaving your room this morning. Or at least leaving the corridor, and apparently you’re the only one staying down here.”

My face felt unusually warm. “Yes. Damen stayed here last night.”

“Get it, girl,” Cora replied, impressed. “You’re courting the prince?”

“Umm.” My cheeks grew even hotter. Someone whistled, probably Jade. “He’s my… boyfriend? I don’t know if that means we’re courting or not. He proposed quite early on when I moved here.” I swallowed thickly. “I said no.”

“Badass,” Jade muttered.

“Why?” Cora asked curiously. “I mean, it seems like you like him at least a little bit if you’re having sleepovers.”

“I like him a lot. A lot . At the time, marriage felt like a bit too much of a leap to take—we’d just met.”

“Yeah, rookie move proposing right away,” Jade agreed, which did make me feel slightly better about saying no. I hadn’t brought the topic up with the others because I was worried that I’d acted strangely with no frame of reference to go by, and they would think less of me for it.

“Romantic, though,” Cora sighed.

Jade snorted. “Let’s not normalize proposing to strangers.”

“Agree to disagree,” Cora laughed. “What would you say if he proposed now, Iris?”

“Yes, of course. In a heartbeat. But I don’t expect that to happen—I imagine I hurt his feelings by rejecting him, and I understand why he wouldn’t want to put himself through that again.”

“Hurt his ego more like,” Jade scoffed. “He’s obviously still interested in you if he keeps coming back around. Have you asked him whether or not he’s going to try again?”

I hesitated. “I think I might be a coward. If he says no, then everything will change. We won’t be able to ignore the subject anymore. Maybe it’s better to just keep as much of him as I can get, and be satisfied with that rather than risk losing him entirely. Live in the moment, you know?”

“That does seem cowardly,” Jade agreed. There was a gentle thud, followed by a quiet curse word.

“That’s a very understandable fear,” Cora said softly. “But are you truly living in the moment and enjoying your time with him while this unresolved topic is hanging over your head? I get it—I don’t like having difficult conversations either—but if you love him…”

She left the words hanging in the air, and I made a quiet sound of frustration. “I do love him.”

“Yeah, you do!” Cora said enthusiastically, clinking her tea cup against mine on the table. “Then you’ve got to get your man. You can always propose to him, you know. That’s always an option.”

“Is it?” The idea had never occurred to me before. At least in the films that Nana had watched, that never seemed to come up as an option.

“Sure,” Jade replied. “Was his proposal romantic? Would you need to go all out to match it?”

I gnawed on my lower lip. “He was very enthusiastic and eager to ask the question as quickly as possible.”

“So, no then,” she laughed. “Well, something to think about, right?”

It was all I thought about. We finished breakfast, and I made my way to the nursery with the intention of teaching the children some nursery rhymes from my own childhood, but my head wasn’t in it.

I startled as Eadlin’s little claws landed on my head, patting my skull as she sometimes did.

“Are you looking for horns? I don’t have any, remember?”

She babbled something that sounded vaguely concerned, searching a little longer before playing with my hair instead.

“Oh!” I heard Yara exclaim, opening the door. “What’s this?”

“An instrument. For Iris,” someone grunted. I froze.

An instrument?

“Iris,” Yara called tentatively. “There’s a very large… thing here for you. It has strings.”

“A harp?” I breathed. “How did that get here?”

“I suspect I know who might have arranged such a thing,” she said, amused. “Shall we bring it over to you?”

“Okay.” I shifted to the edge of the chair, and Eadlin climbed off my lap, slipping into the gap behind me on the seat to play with my hair. It was a little risky, given her claws. Even though she was the youngest, Eadlin was usually the most careful with her claws.

I exhaled shakily, helping whoever was delivering the harp to situate it in the right position, adjusting my posture to accommodate it. Tentatively, I reached out, sliding my hands up and down the smooth, glossy wooden frame before running my fingers along the strings, and finding the pedals with my feet.

“How does it work?” Jonan asked, startling me. “Can I touch it?”

“Absolutely not,” Yara replied for me. “Only Iris can touch it.”

“Shall I play something for you?” I asked Jonan.

“Yes.” To my surprise—and probably everyone else’s—it wasn’t Jonan who replied, but Eadlin.

I twisted a little in my seat to smile at her. “Okay, then.”

Nana’s favorite piece of music had always been the Waltz of the Flowers from The Nutcracker, and after a few moments of orienting myself, I began to play. It wasn’t my best performance —I was rusty, and this harp didn’t feel quite the same as mine, but it was so nice to play again. To feel at ease and competent, and do something I was truly familiar with.

The nursery was eerily silent by the time I finished. Even Eadlin’s hands had gone still in my hair.

“Iris,” Yara breathed. “That was… I’ve never heard anything like that. This instrument can’t stay in here—it has to go into the dining hall. You have to play for everyone. The court will adore you.”

“Oh no,” I said hastily, slightly horrified at the idea. “Maybe some day. But for now, this is the perfect audience for me.”

“Another song!” Jonan demanded, grabbing my wrist and setting my hand back on the strings. “Play another one, Iris. Please,” he added, somewhat reluctantly.

“Well, since you said please…” I laughed. “I’m a little out of practice, but let’s try Greensleeves .”