Page 11 of Fate

She smiled, then. Not because he was nervous, but because it meant that the bond was real—was working. That it would help her through this just as it worked to help everyone else navigate such a sudden change with a stranger.

She squeezed his hand gently, trying to suffuse as much warmth through the bond as she could. Everything would be all right. He’d see. They could go to her home if he wasn’t quite prepared to take her to his. She had her trunk ready. Her parents would be thrilled for her.

Wouldn’t his feel the same?

She looked over his features. He did not appear younger than herself. Not a great deal older, either. But it still meant that he’d had to wait a rather long time, just as she had done.

And it was over.

Firen stepped nearer to him and rested her head against his arm as she allowed a little sigh to come from her lips. “I’m so glad,” she murmured, more to herself than to him.

Laughter trickled from the open door. And what should have been a moment of peace, of settling and understanding, instead sent another bolt of unease through this strange mate of hers.

She sighed. Just a little. Mama had tried to warn her. Over and over, that she shouldn’t fill herself up with expectations when the truth of it might be utterly different. There wasn’t regret—she refused to even contemplate that. But there were wistful little feelings too near to disappointments that it wasn’t quite as she’d dreamed.

Which was absurd. A private shame, one that she would never, ever share with him.

“And where do you call home?” he asked, looking down at her, but not moving. Which was something. He did not put his arm about her to pull her nearer, but nothing suggested he was truly bothered by her hold on him.

“Third district,” she answered immediately. “Seventh row, crossed with the diagonal. My father is a smithy. Of fine works,” she added hastily, because she was proud of him. He was an artist, even if he was just as capable of making something practical when Mama asked it of him.

Lucian turned, giving her that look again. The one that was a little too critical, a little too appraising. Even as his hand lifted and he ran his finger along the circlet tucked into her hair. “A craftsman,” he repeated, his tone neutral. Which might have meant something if she did not also feel a flare of something a little too near to displeasure through the bond.

She frowned.

Didn’t want to disentangle their hands. Didn’t want to feel the churning unease in her own belly.

“A fine craftsman,” she insisted.

Lucian nodded, humming a little, even as he put his hand on her shoulder. The bond settled. Quieted, and she tried to trust it, tried to lean into the experience and reassure herself that she had misinterpreted it entirely. They were learning, that was all. About each other. She shouldn’t take offense so easily.

“And you?” she asked, and she was pleased that she didn’t sound the least bit cross. She wanted to know everything about him. His favourite meals, if he had any siblings that she would soon befriend. If his parents were living, and were they as eager for him to find her as hers had been?

She was smiling again. Could feel it spread through the rest of her, the warmth and excitement that had momentarily been stifled by too many uncertainties.

Until she watched his eyes narrow. His eyes flashing slightly as he caught her eye and held it. Not grasping at her as he did before, but pinning her with his expression alone. “And you do not know? You did not lie here in wait until you could pounce upon me?”

She did not mean to laugh, but it came anyway, a burst of sound that was more incredulity than sheer humour, although she could not pretend she did not find amusement in it.

“I am not somepredator,” she insisted, wiping at her eyes and wondering if she was meant to take him as seriously as he seemed to take himself. “I am your mate.”

He almost hissed. Caught himself. But he drew back, and his lips moved, and there was no mistaking—yes, he wasglaringat her. As if... as if the reminder was an unwelcome one.

It stung. She could not pretend otherwise.

And it was with a baffling sort of reluctance that she reached for him again. Not his hand. This time, it was his outer robe. A handful, trying to keep him in place as she tried to make sense of the tangle of emotions. The hurt in hers. The wild, jarring snap of his as he went from one to another without lingering on any of them.

He opened his mouth. His eyes were too harsh, his breath too tight in his chest as he glanced down at the hand that held him, and she wanted that warm glow to come back. But it couldn’t be forced, and his discord had jangled the bond between them. Badly.

It was enough to leave her breathless, to send an undercurrent of desperation through her. To fix thing, to smooth them over. To make things gentle and kindly and really, anything at all if it meant he would stop looking at her with something that appeared too much like suspicion.

There was a burst of laughter behind them, and his shoulder was knocked as a few individuals came through the door. They wore the heady smiles of ones too far into the fete casks, although one man had his arm about a giggling woman, so perhaps they were intoxicated on the bond rather than the cider.

Lucian removed her hand from his robe and pushed her behind him, shielding her from view.

As if a few party-goers were a threat, and yet his posture suggested that it was.

It was enough to keep her still. To put her hand on his back, nestled between his wings. To take a private appreciation for the strength she found there, liked the way he stepped between them, keeping her to himself.

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