Page 6 of The Duke and the Disciple

Everything within him skidded to a halt. His pulse. His breath. His resolve. Rahn. Not duke. Not scholar. “Of course.” He swallowed and tried again when his voice broke. “Of course, Aesylt.”

She rolled her face back toward his leg and breathed deep. “I suppose Drazhan will be relieved to find my honor is still unblemished. All the real action is happening in the forest. Not much I can get up to at the top of a tree.”

“Was it ever in question?”

“Iwish,” she said, and they both laughed. “You know how impossible he is.”

“He’ll relent one day,” Rahn said, shocked at how hard the words were to say, to hear. “He wants you to be happy.”

“I am happy,” she said. She drew her hands up and propped them under her head. “I’m happy with you, in the library. I’m happy to be learning something new every day, to be spreading the knowledge to others. There’s just something missing is all, a piece of me I’m bursting to share with more than just Draz and Imryll. To be close to someone...” She shook her head. “Oof, forgive me. You didn’t climb a tree in the dark to hear me whine.”

A knot formed in his chest at how familiar, how aching her confession was. To be close to someone... He’d given up on that dream a long time ago. King Carrow had offered him several brides, perfectly wonderful women Rahn had known all or most of his life, who would have made perfectly wonderful wives. But none of themsawhim. They smiled patiently at his passion for learning but never shared it. They warmed his bed but never his heart. Even Teleria, who hadn’t been much older than him when she’d taken him in as a young orphaned duke and had mentored him, loved him but didn’t fully understand him. “It’s a privilege to listen to you whine.”

She removed her hands from under her face and swatted his knee. “You think I don’t know when someone is messing with me?”

“I wouldn’t presume anything to get past you,” Rahn said and squeezed her arm. “It never does.”

He felt her smile form against his thigh. “I don’t know what I expected from this evening, but I can say with certainty, I never would have imaginedthis.”

Rahn chuckled. “Nor I.”

“But you know, Scholar? There’s no one I’d rather be stuck up a tree with.”

“Not Nik or Val?”

“Valran.” She shifted. “Nik... He wouldn’t have run, but he’s not built for this kind of excitement either.”

Aesylt’s two closest friends could not be more different men, in or outside of the library. But Rahn would take sensitive, thoughtful Niklaus over hothead Valerian any day. “And we are?”

“We’re here, aren’t we?” She leaned her head upward to look at him. “You were right. This is fine.” Her eyes closed. “I might just...” Her words faded, her shock becoming a crash.

Rahn traced his hand once more along her arm, eyes pointed at the forest and the gentle silence blanketed by an eerie veil of fresh snow. A few rogue flakes landed on them through the gap in the bows, restoring peace to his harried thoughts. “Rest, Squish. I have you.”

You don’t bother tryingto figure out who your wulf is. You don’t care because he will not catch you, right? Run. Run hard and far. You know these forests better than most, and you’ll know where to hide until the time runs down.

It’s not like it used to be, Draz. No one has to marry the wulf who catches them.

But you’d be alone with him, and there will be no one to... look after you. None except yourself.

And I cannot look after myself? Have I not, for most of my life?

Aesylt’s consciousness danced between past and present, the boundaries so distorted, she couldn’t anchor herself to any point in time.

She was both at the top of a tree and in Fanghelm Keep.

With Rahn. With Drazhan. With Tasmin.

She was accustomed to living between realities, being the only individual in the Cross to have the curse of starwalking. But this was not that.

You are as inimitable as a star in our interminable sky.Rahn’s words, but not from that night.He’d said them months ago, before the others had joined in their library endeavors. When it had only been the two of them—the duke and his eager disciple—and their thirst for mining and sharing knowledge.

Aesylt moaned and twisted. A warm hand stayed her from shifting into danger.

Draz didn’t want me to go, but he’s worried about the unrest if he exempts his own sister.

There’s already unrest.Tasmin.

More of it then.

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