Page 21 of Fate

The mantle held more personal items. A silvery ball balancing on a simple wooden cup. A watercolour of a womanwith a child still young enough to be held in her arms. “Your mother?” she asked, hoping that did not count as prying.

He shifted, his eyes drifting up from the fire to settle on the picture. He stood. Walked over and quickly picked it up. “Yes,” he answered, more a grumble than a proper response, then took it to his trunk and hastily lifted the lid and stowed it inside.

All right. Possibly prying.

His shoulders were tense. His back too. And she felt so lost as she watched him, uncertain how she’d hurt him but very aware that she had.

Had she died?

She could ask it gently. Her voice low and full of compassion. Birth wasn’t always easy. Or perhaps it was a sickness.

She could take the chair. Other mates would offer immediately since there was only one to be had in the entire chamber. But things were already so...difficult.

Firen settled on the floor. It wasn’t uncomfortable—the rug was so plush and fine that she did not think she’d felt anything like it. But she was met with another of his scowls when he turned and saw her there. “I don’t know what to do,” she admitted. She wanted to tell him he was nothing like she expected. Wanted to tell him she was sorry if something had happened to his mother. That she wanted to go home, but only if he was willing to take her and be pleasant to her parents.

She crossed her legs and stared into the fire. Bright and cheerful. Just the same as any other. Its surroundings might be fancier, but the rest of it...

“You should... take the chair,” Lucian got out, although nothing in his tone suggested he truly meant it.

Irritation would only lead to sharp words. She knew that. One did not grow up with a house full of siblings without knowing that harsh tones and biting words would lead to altercations. Some verbal, others physical.

Andallof them would mean talking to by either Mama or Da. Sometimes both.

But there was no interfering with mates, was there? They had to work it out themselves.

“I don’t need your chair, Lucian,” she insisted. “But I would like for you to talk with me.”

He crossed his arms. “About what?”

Firen shook her head, praying for calm that felt entirely too far away. “Anything.Anything at all.” Which led him to looking as lost as she felt, and she did not know if she intended to laugh or cry at the mess of it. “What would you have liked to have done tonight? Instead of attending the fete. There must have been something. You were late.”

He glanced away from her. “As were you,” he added tersely.

“Yes. But it was my second for the evening. You’ve already admitted you only attend the one.”

That was enough to set him pacing, and she tried desperately to contain her sigh.

“If I was from a tower,” Firen asked, picking at her skirt over and over. Easier not to look. Easier to say it to the room rather than to him. He stilled. “If I was from anoldhouse,” which was still an absurd notion to her, but she wouldn’t argue over it. “And your parents would be delighted with me. Would you be so different?”

Still, she did not look.

“In what way?” he asked lowly.

He could not be serious. What sorts of matches had he witnessed that would lead him to believe thatthiswas common? Most of her friends would have already made use of the bed once they found their mate, not these stuttering conversations that were so unbearably awkward and too often steeped with insult.

She wasn’t angry. Not exactly. But she was sad enough that she could look at him. To gesture toward the space betweenthem. “Would you answer her questions? Would you sit with her and touch her, and make her feel as if she was not the greatest inconvenience thrust upon you?”

It ended more harshly than she meant it to be, but she could not call back the words, or the hardness of her tone.

He took a step forward, his hands curling. “In that scenario, we would have known one another from our fledgling days. You would know my family and I would know yours. Talk and... personal items would not hold such interest!”

She rubbed at her chest, trying to soothe a bond that she hadn’t created. Not all on her own. And she wasn’t the one that was jangling it about, causing it to hum discordantly between them. Didn’t he feel it? Didn’t he hate how uncomfortable it was when they were at odds?

Better when they were kissing.Farbetter. When it was warm and intoxicating. Plying them with sensations and...

Firen shook her head. She would not cry. She wouldn’t.

But she did not have to sit here and tolerate his anger, either. “I think I shall go home after all. To sleep,” she clarified, although she could not promise that it would not be a longer separation than that. He should sort through his disappointment, and she would try not to allow hers to curdle to resentment. “Things often look better in daylight.” Those were Da’s words. When she worked too long in the shop, her eyes tired and finger fatigued, and the piece she’d been so passionate about suddenly looked ugly and wrong in the moment.

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