Page 38 of Fate

“The painting in your room. Your mother did that?”

Lucian eased onto a long sofa beneath the largest of the windows. The suns made his hair shimmer slightly, and it was such a contrast to how she’d seen him thus far. Shadowed and severe. He was not relaxed—nothing in his countenance suggested that he was. But it was a glimpse of how he might look in her mother’s kitchen. Stiff perhaps, but... normal.

“Yes.”

Just that. But it was something. More than she’d pulled from him the night before. Not strictly true... there was the mating bit.

“Why are you smiling?” His tone was almost accusatory, which she supposed was fair given the abysmal introduction they’d just endured.

“I was thinking of last night, if you must know.”

A grunt. Which was not a flattering appraisal, and might have stung if he was not so... Lucian.

“Oh, come now,” she countered, determined to ease some of the tension from him. It was over. There would be more—she was not so deluded as to think that Oberon would leave them be without consequence. But they needn’t dwell solely on it. “You cannot tell me you can’t think back on it withsomefondness.”

She sat beside him and placed her hand on his leg as she leaned closer.

“You are not to seduce me in my mother’s room.”

Her eyes widened, and her hand retreated. “I wasn’t!”

Another huff, and he shifted away from her.

Which... did sting.

Quite a bit, actually.

“Lucian,” she murmured, closer to tears from his movement than she was from his father’s upset. “I was only...”

He glared at the floor, which was an improvement from sending his ire toward her directly. “I cannot shift my feelings as easily as you do,” he managed to get out from between gritted teeth and the urgency she felt welling in him to either pace or run away entirely.

She clasped her hands tightly together to keep from reaching for him. Wanting to rub at his shoulders. The sensitive spot between his wings he’d liked so much the night before.

“All right,” she agreed. Eris had often complained of much the same. Da said that Firen burned brightly. Fast and fierce, and then she was ready to move on. Back to smiles and pleasant matters. Eris liked to simmer. To brood.

Lucian must like the same.

She took a deep breath and tried to let the hurt pass through her. She should have taken the pastries back to his bed. Cared nothing for the crumbs they might have left, but indulged herself and him until they were both full and wanted only for kisses and the feel of one another moving together instead.

But she hadn’t.

She did not bring up her parents. Or her trunk. Or where they might sleep tonight.

Instead, she allowed the silence to settle over them. To work on feeding calm and peace through the bond until she actually felt it in herself as well.

Eventually, he looked at her. And though he frowned slightly, it lacked the undercurrent of anger it had before. “I take it that your parents are not like mine.”

It was the most invitation he’d offered her to speak of her own life, and she brightened considerably. “I should hate to make judgements after only one meeting, but I think I am safe to say that no, they are not.” The chatter came easily. Of Da and his creations. Of practical Mama and her firm, yet loving manner. Chimes in her market stall, some made by her, others by her father. The way they tinkled merrily in the breeze, inviting more custom.

She hadn’t expected the sadness to come. The one that reminded her that those days might be quite behind her. Would be. If Lucian had his way and he continued as apprentice to his father, his future one of law rather than craft.

“And you’ve... siblings.”

“Oh yes. All mated now. And me, the last of them.”

She’d an elder brother, but she was the one that had to wait longest. A pity, Da would say. Since she was the one that wanted it most.

She wanted to pry into his family, in turn. That was the nature of a conversation, wasn’t it? To give and receive. Until at the end, everyone knew each other a little better for it.

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