Page 67 of Haunted

She nods and picks up a knife to butter her bread. “You didn’t tell me you were Lord of Rolant.” She peeks at me from her downward focus.

Never look away. “Didn’t I? I hate to throw titles around. Please, I’m just Caedryn to you.”

Her cheeks pink like a blush-colored rose. I sample the eggs on my plate but cannot contain my smile. Everything about Niawen intrigues me. She forces the grin playing at her lips.

She wants to be stern with me, but something in her demeanor changes, and she drops her bread.

“I hope you haven’t lost your appetite already.” I’m using every ounce of my control not to take her hand in mine, but I must not reach out. I need to let her unfold the details of her traumatic experience in her own time.

She takes my comment as cheek. I don’t realize this until she probes with her light into my mind.

Ah, nosy emrys.

But I’m used to probing, to spies, to half-emrys looking inside.

“You’ll have to tell me if you like what you see,” I say.

She gasps and fumbles with her fork as it clatters against her plate.

“Don’t you think it’s more challenging to figure each other out with time instead of using our gifts?” I ask.

“Like a mortal would?”

“If that’s how you’d prefer to think of it, yes.”

She smirks. “Humans are quite perceptive.”

“You’ve learned this in the few weeks you’ve associated with them?” Over the egg and sausage aroma, I smell her enticing scent, of soaring on the wind, of a bird in flight. Fresh and wind swept. I ache for Neifion and let thoughts of him take me for just a second.

“They aren’t as inept as I was led to believe.” She drinks from her goblet while staring over the edge at me.

I could drink from the green of her eyes. “You thought humans were inept? Please, enlighten me.”

“No one from Gorlassar has ever been around humans. We’ve made so many assumptions.”

I’m intrigued and want to hear more of Gorlassar but am also curious about what she makes of me. “Just as you are making assumptions about me, I imagine.” Yes, tell me what you see. Who am I, this half-human sitting in front of you?

“What do you know of the emrys?”

“I’m sure just as much as you know about humans,” I say.

“You are coy.”

“Is that what you sensed in me?” I laugh. “I’m so much more.”

She chokes on a morsel of her food but manages to clear her throat. “I wouldn’t doubt.”

Her awkwardness appeals to me. “You find my meekness alluring?”

“No, not coy in that sense. You’re vague. Reluctant to reveal much.”

I hesitate to divulge anything of myself. “Would you rather I bared my soul… as you did last night?”

She swallows after a moment, the time in which I can only guess she uses to confer with her dragon, because she has a faraway look in her eyes. She then takes a deep breath. “Lord Caedryn—”

“Caedryn—”

“Okay. Caedryn, forgive me. I don’t know how to describe—”

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