5. Read

“You sure this is how you want to do this?”

Yes.

No.

He was right to ask. She’d changed her mind at least three times already.

First had been the kitchen table. But that had become a... nice place for her. Somewhere to share and learn as she watched him cook. He’d even let her handle one of the smallest knives as she cut one of the shrivelled roots she’d handled and come to learn were not in fact spoiled as she’d first feared.

So not the table.

Not outside either. Because what if the papers blew away in the breeze and someone else found them and they saw, and that was intolerable.

She’d caught a glimpse of one page, and there were diagrams.

Rudimentary, without shape and shading like a true artist might have done to represent a living person, but it was enough to make her stomach roil at even Athan seeing them.

Which meant inside. To a sitting room that held yet another over-large cushion next to a plush armchair, the fabric worn thin in places. Her mother would have allowed no one to see her furniture in such a state, but Athan merely brushed his hand over it fondly. “I’ll share,” he offered, although the setup clearly suggested this was his seat and the Brum sat on the pillow at his feet.

The chaise, then. The cushions were stiff from disuse, but they might yield with a little time on her part. There was a hearth and a table with a lamp, and it would be quite cosy in the wintertime.

Now it felt stuffy and closed in, and the hearth was just empty stone and she glanced about the unfamiliar room.

Which made Athan ask her again if she was really ready.

Which she wasn’t.

But she was also tired of the delay.

Things were still new between them, but they were less strangers and more... not friends exactly. Not mates, either. Companions, perhaps. While she dressed in the washroom and Athan kept Brum to common areas.

It had felt so strange having a man climb into her bed. She tried to think of it as theirs—it helped a little when she’d gone up and found that his coverlet was across the foot of it. But the pillows were hers, and the days and nights spent inside of it, and she peeked over shyly more than once to see him settled there.

“Comfortable?” she asked, because they could switch it back. Or... they could move to the other room. That would be better, wouldn’t it? Rather than fetch the haulers to play with the arrangements.

He’d already lowered the lamp, so he was just a dark figure aside from the wisps of a bond happily settled against his skin. Twining and pulsing because he was looking at her. Was reaching inward to see how she felt in turn, and she shivered a little to feel so exposed and yet...

It wasn’t troublesome. Wasn’t intrusive and horrid as she’d feared.

It was... nice.

To be seen. To be cared about.

The sitting room was wrong. There were no sweet memories there to counteract the bad ones to come. It had potential, but it wasn’t there yet, and she’d not have it become a room she actively avoided.

Which left only one other place she could think of.

Athan followed, arms full of books and papers that made up only a reasonable start, according to her father. Some from the beginning. Some from the end.

She was perilously close to crying already, and Athan could not carry her up the steps, and her wings gave a half-hearted swish when she thought of simply flying up the stairs and asking her hip to take her up there.

“Just let me...” Athan began, but she shook her head. Up she went. Slow, but determined. They needed this behind them. He needed to know who and what she was, and she needed to stop worrying herself sick that he’d think less of her once all the parts of her were exposed.

But there was more, wasn’t there? He might read about it. See pictures that an unskilled healer had attempted to create of her person, but someday there would be more.

Glimpses of her in a bath. An open door before a shift was fully pulled down. Those little happenings that came from living with a person. When knowledge became something more. When it was skin and bone and mate that lived with it all, and there would be no more talk of lovely then.

They were not dressed for bed, but they weren’t exactly in day-clothes. It was a delightful sort of in between as Athan continued to spoil her by sending his patients to another healer if their needs were immediate, or in asking to be given a sennight as he settled into this mating business.

He said it all with a smile, and the people at his door would smile back, often offering an embarrassing tease about those first early days and how exhausted he must be.

Orma was horrified the first time it happened, but by the fifth she had only a lump in her throat as she nervously cast a look at the back of Athan’s head.

Then he would soothe her through the bond. Reminding her they were just fine, and people could think what they liked.

He was getting better at that. She’d had far longer to understand the workings of the bond, but it rarely felt an advantage. It was a friend to him, working with him rather than against her every effort to control it on her own.

She didn’t resent him for it, but she could admit, if only to herself, there was a little bit of envy.

Athan kept pace with her on the stairs, even though she gestured for him to move ahead. “I’m in no hurry,” he answered, which was infuriating on its own. She felt watched and bothered and he was capable and strong and did not need to remain with her. He could have made the trip there and back twice over if he wanted to, but instead he took each step as she did while pushing patience at her.

She gave the bond a tug and was gratified how his head popped up to look at her. “This is silly,” she insisted. “Just... go.”

“I could,” Athan agreed. “I could fly up there and come back to get you, and we would establish that I am faster than you and it’s more convenient.” She rolled her shoulders because it was true, and she did not need to be reminded in such a manner. “I would prefer that you come to realise I’d rather go with you at your own pace than speed about and make you feel incompetent.”

“But it’s a waste of your time,” she protested, stopping so she could look at him fully.

For once, he actually looked affronted. “Respecting you and you capabilities is not a waste of my time.”

She flushed deeply. He was missing her point. Or maybe she was missing his. “I don’t like feeling...” she began, then huffed out a breath. He waited. Let her speak. Surely his arms were tired holding all those papers and notes and he was going to get frustrated with her, either with her slowness or by her insistence that he move on and there wasn’t really anything she could do, was there? It was always going to be wrong, and... “You’re going to tire of me,” she finished, because that was the truth of it. Either by what she said, or what she did, or what she couldn’t do. There would come a day, perhaps this season, perhaps the next, that he would long for someone else. Someone better.

He dropped the books on the stairs. The notes. The papers tied in their twine that shuffled and protested and threatened to scatter all the way back down to the first storey. “What are you doing?”

He reached for her.

And it wasn’t the slow, careful movements she was used to from him. The wondering looks and the patient silences while he worked out what the bond was telling him.

This was reactive. Frightening and exhilarating as he pulled her into his arms. Not for the embrace she’d readied herself for as best she could, not a kiss to the top of her head while he poured reassuring words into her heart.

Instead, he pulled her to him. Lifted her high enough where he might meet her in the middle.

And kissed her soundly on the mouth.

It was wildly inappropriate.

She was sickly, after all, and he’d promised her time and wanting and to respect her bed.

She did not know what to do, either with her hands or with her mouth. He was clutching her upper arms, and it should have hurt, except that it didn’t. Not when she settled on holding onto his shirt and tentatively... cautiously...

Seeing how it felt to kiss him back.

It was not how she imagined it might be. Back when she would indulge in fantasising about such things. They’d sit out underneath the largest tree in the courtyard. He’d take her hand. He’d ask if he might kiss her. Just once, he’d say. And it would be chaste and just the brush of lips against lips. She’d smile demurely and say it was quite nice, and they might do it again someday.

This was not like that.

This was frustration and...

He was making some sort of point. But the bond was tangling, trying to insist on something else other than his intent, and it muddled it all until all that was left was a rapid flutter through the cords between them. A tug and a pull in her heart that this was right. She wasn’t broken after all. Orma could feel and she could know passion as any other woman might, and it made her hands leave his shirt to delve into his hair. And that wasn’t proper, was it? She wouldn’t like if he pulled at her hair, would she?

Except he moaned when she did it, and he pulled back, which she didn’t want at all, settling her back on her feet but not releasing her. “Stop deciding I’m going to be horrid to you.” Not a request, not a plea. As close to a demand as he’d ever given her. She was breathless and shaky, and to her great horror, she wanted to wrench him back to her. Make him kiss her again because it made her feel...

Made her feel like the desirable woman she wasn’t.

“Not horrid,” Orma countered when she’d wrestled the pulsing bond into settling enough so she might answer him. “Tired.”

His hand came to the back of her neck, and he pulled her closer. Leaned his forehead to rest against hers. “The same,” he insisted. “If there has ever been anyone did that to you, I am sorry for it. But a mate does not tire of their other half. It simply isn’t possible.”

Those were the romantic promises set deep within the literature handed out to every young person who chafed and wondered at the bond.

She glanced down at the scattered papers and books. Her father would be horrified. Treasures, he called them. And it was a privilege to hold such knowledge in their home, and they should treat every one of them with respect. “Not everyone is happy in their bond,” she murmured. He might not know that. Perhaps his parents had been one of the fortunate. They cared easily and quickly, and it all settled with little fuss. They would have told him to expect the same, brought him up on stories of their meeting and the joy that followed.

She thought of Lucian’s parents. Even her own, although those occasions were few. They were dedicated. Committed, to be certain. But it wasn’t easy.

Or maybe it was. When they were alone, with no one to watch them. To judge. When they could kiss and forget and tell each other to set aside worries and expect it to be possible.

She would if she could. Didn’t he know that? If she could just shove doubts and old experience aside and accept him at his word?

“No,” Athan granted. “Selfish people can make selfish mates.” He tucked her hair behind her ear and urged her to look at him. “You are not selfish.” He said it with such certainty. He’d known her for such little time, and yet... he knew.

“Neither are you,” she answered back because there was a glow in her chest that told her it was so. He was kind and generous, and he wanted to care for her.

Wanted her to care for him.

Not as patient and healer. But as mates.

She wanted to kiss him again, not to banish sour feelings, but because her skin prickled all over when he looked at her that way. As if she was precious to him, as if she mattered more than anything in the entire world.

Her foot moved, and she stepped on a bundle of papers, and she glanced down, distracted. He’d dropped them because of her, and she could help to pick them up again.

“I’ll get them,” Athan insisted as she began pulling at the papers. A few had broken free of their ties, so she shoved them back where she thought they belonged.

“Let me help,” Orma urged. “I just...” her hip gave a twinge, and her knee threatened likewise, so she sat on the step and pulled it out straight. Athan saw. Or maybe the bond sent flickers of pain, and he frowned at her.

She didn’t rub it, didn’t pay it any mind, and just kept picking up the papers while he attended to the books.

He kept looking at her, then glancing away when she met his eye. He was nervous about something, and it was an odd sort of reversal. It left her strangely calm, and she stood with only the use of the wall and a flutter of her wings to get her upright. “Orma,” Athan said at last, when she managed another two steps while he lingered. Waiting. For what, she couldn’t say.

“Yes?”

He rubbed at the corner of a book. “I do not regret it,” he blurted out. “Kissing you. But I might if you disliked it. If you were not ready for it.”

He did look at her then, his eyes earnest. The bond should have made her feelings quite clear on the matter, but perhaps it had been as murky for him as it was for her.

She hadn’t been ready. Or thought she wasn’t. Was there a difference?

But now that he had, and they had, she wasn’t sorry for it. Not for his boldness and not for her newfound knowledge.

That she liked kisses.

Liked his kisses.

She swallowed, nervous and exhilarated all at once. “I don’t need you to,” Orma offered back, turning so she could climb the last two stairs on her own. “Because I don’t.”

And she smiled softly when the bond burst with something that felt a little bit like love.

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Her chosen place was her bed. Which felt a great deal more like their bed once he was situated beside her. Under the covers, she said once she’d inspected the room and tried to decide what would make her feel best. Not just her, it had to be both of them.

He didn’t question it, just tucked himself in and let her fuss and fiddle with the blankets until she was comfortable.

The shutters were open, the summer breeze catching and filling the room, threatening to ruffle the loose papers if Athan was not careful with them.

She contemplated shutting that too, afraid their voices would catch and carry to some passing by, but she couldn’t abide feeling stifled and stuffy.

And the blanket was necessary. For hiding. Just in case.

“How would you like to do this?” Athan asked, as she kept to her side and he to his.

She frowned, looking up at the ceiling. She didn’t need to look at them at all. But then she wouldn’t know how much he knew, and what more she needed to tell him.

Her throat ached.

She closed the distance between them and was welcomed by his arm coming about her, stroking through her downiest feathers. It tickled, and she squirmed lightly until her attention focused on the book he’d chosen first. The cover held dust about the edges. A cleaner came and wiped down each shelf every so often, but that only did so much to combat age and time.

She’d given him no answer, and his fingers delved and smoothed, applying a delicate pressure that deepened as he sought the tight knots at the base of her wings. Then up toward her shoulder. “I could read aloud,” he offered. “Or we just read it together?”

What she wanted was to scoop them all up and burn them.

They were hers, after all. Little bits of her spread out on parchment and vellum, ready to be analysed by any with access and the ability to read.

“It doesn’t need to be today,” Athan reminded her, not for the first time.

It did, though. Because she’d woken, tired and achy, and she’d wanted an elixir.

And he’d said no. Not until he knew what was safe to give her.

And round and round it went.

She did not want to delve into the texts until she felt better. He refused to make her better until he looked at the texts.

Until she’d been in tears and he’d given her a hunted sort of look because he wanted to help, wanted to give her anything she wanted, but he needed her safe. Couldn’t she understand that?

Then he’d hugged her until the tears dried, and she’d agreed.

Which meant not burning them all in the kitchen stove.

And letting him see all of her, splayed and naked, if only on a page.

“You read to yourself,” Orma said at last. “I’m going to close my eyes and peek every once in a while and see where you’re at.”

His arm about her tightened. “All right.”

He’d have agreed to anything if he thought it would help her. If it meant she wouldn’t burst into tears and demand he give them back to her father for safekeeping.

She felt the conflict on his side. How he wanted to know so he might be a better mate for her. How little he wanted to open it. To begin. To know.

There’d be no going back, afterward. But maybe...

Maybe they could go forward.

She thought of the kiss he’d given her. The one they’d shared after she’d realised what was happening.

She wanted him to be bold with her, she realised. To be kind and thoughtful but also...

To want her.

Every part.

She rubbed at her nose before she nodded to the book. “Let’s get this over with.”

He opened it.

And she was too curious not to read the first of it. The handwriting was small and precise, and she’d made the right decision not closing the shutters so they’d have crisp daylight to read by.

There were lots of little details. Things she could not have remembered. Her height, her wingspan. How responsive she was to the first doses they’d plied her with when she’d cried for the second hour because the bond was cutting her in two.

This was elaborated upon in greater detail. She couldn’t remember the questions they’d posed to her. Was it a sharp pain, or dull? Cutting was an interesting word, did it mean it was a slicing pain or stabbing?

Evidently, her answers had not been satisfactory, and in subsequent days, they’d questioned her again—her responses becoming less coherent as they administered more of the numbing potion.

The ingredients to which Athan moved the book so he could peer at the contents more intently.

She expected to feel his outrage through the bond. There was a tension in his body, which she only knew because she was half lying on top of it. She did not go so far as to tangle her leg over his, but it was still far more than she’d expected she’d want of him.

His emotions were quiet. Contemplative. Which made her nervous for different reasons. If she would become a case to him rather than a person, and it was a gnawing sort of worry that made the next passages less horrific than they might have been.

It was the first posit that surgery might be required. Bonds must have a physical component—he’d theorised on the subject for years. And in a child so young who was responding poorly to the medication, an exploratory exam might become a necessity.

Athan swallowed, but that was the only reaction he gave, turning the page with a sombre look in his eye.

She should keep quiet. Let him keep going without prolonging the process with questions. But there was a strange pull at the bond that made her anxious, and she released a tremulous breath before she shifted, pushing the book slightly to the side so he would look at her instead. “I’m fine,” she reminded him, trying to smile. Trying to soften the serious nature of the texts with a promise that she was all right. Or... mostly all right.

They’d used to do that. When she’d wake from her drugged stupor, they’d give her a pat and assure her that no permanent harm was done.

They had to stop after a while, because... well... because.

He cupped her cheek and smiled back at her, but there was too much sadness in his eyes to make it sincere. “Really,” she urged, wriggling a little higher so she could be the one to look down at him. Her chest was pressed against his, and she should care about that, shouldn’t she? Make sure there was proper distance. Maybe even squish one of the pillows between them.

But he was upset. She could hear the bond more clearly now, and they’d scarcely even begun. “We don’t have to read it,” she reminded him, and it felt good to have reversed their roles. She reached out and smoothed her forefinger down his cheek, then pressed it to the line between his brows. That earned a ripple of amusement through him, and she was glad of it. “We could go play with Brum,” she offered, and it wasn’t because she was cowardly. It was because he hurt, and she wanted to help.

“Brum watches the fish in the stream at this hour. We would bother him.”

“We can’t have that,” Orma agreed, trying to think of something else they might do.

Take a walk. Show her the infirmary. Anything at all, really.

“I need to read it,” Athan countered, smoothing his fingers through her hair and rubbing at the tense muscles in her neck. “I need to understand.”

Her throat burned. “I lived it, Athan,” she murmured. “And even I don’t understand it.” She took a breath and forced herself to meet his eye. “If it’s answers you want, they will not be in there.”

He smiled at her gently. Patiently. “All right,” he amended. “Then I want to know what was done to my mate, and I don’t want her to bear the burden of having to tell it to me.”

She wilted, her forehead resting against his chest as what little strength she had left her. She swallowed back the fears she’d already confessed to him. The arguments.

Instead, she nodded and settled back into his side. Let him hold her for a moment longer before he brought the book back and continued on.

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