Page 55 of Acedia

“Meera, would it be horribly rude of me to head back inside now? I’m so sorry—”

“Please don’t apologize,” she said hastily. “I can’t emphasize enough how much you don’t owe me an apology. We can talk later. When you’re ready. I’ll leave you guys to it.”

I listened as her footsteps retreated, wondering idly if she was going to her vegetable garden now. That seemed to be her place of peace, and it sounded like she needed it.

“Do you want to go back to your room?” Damen asked.

“Yes, please.”

I waited in place for a second for him to speak to someone else, but it appeared that we were alone. Instead of linking our arms together like he usually did, Damen draped his arm over my shoulders and tucked me tightly into his side.

“I’m okay, really,” I assured Damen, not wanting him to worry. “Meera was just telling me that my mother was arrested and her career at the Council is over, and I suppose I don’t know what to make of that.”

He squeezed my shoulder sympathetically.

“Did you know?” I asked, suspecting that information wasn’t news to him based on his silence.

“Yes,” he admitted guiltily. “Trust me, I wanted to tell you yesterday more than anything. But Meera asked that she be the one to break it to you—she feels terrible about it.”

I mulled it over and decided I didn’t feel upset about it the way I had when everyone had hidden me away from the new Hunters without saying a word. I didn’t begrudge Meera wanting to be the one who told me.

“It’s okay if you’re mad at me about that, Iris.”

“I’m not mad. It’s fine. I don’t want to complain—”

“Complain,” Damen interjected firmly. “Complain to your heart’s content. Talking about something that’s weighing on your mind doesn’t make you ungrateful. Having a bit of a whine from time to time to those who you trust and those who care about you isn’t a poor reflection of your character. Or, at least, I hope it’s not since I whine almost constantly to everyone about everything.”

I laughed. “You do not. You’re just saying that to make me feel better.”

“I swear to you, Iris,” Damen began solemnly. “I am the whiniest Shade in the entire realm. You just haven’t seen it yet because I’ve been trying to impress you.”

His words made me feel all soft and squishy on the inside. “I have always been very impressed by you, Damen. I’m sure everyone is, even the ones you whine at.”

“We’d have to ask my brother about that—I’m sure he’d have an opinion on it,” Damen replied wryly. “He has an opinion on everything.”

“He loves you,” I chided gently. “That was very clear from speaking to him yesterday. He cares about you so much.”

I could make a direct comparison there. My brothers absolutely didn’t feel that way about me.

“He’s not so bad,” Damen admitted begrudgingly. “Can’t we go hang out in my room instead? It’s bigger and there’s still an outdoor area for Tilly. We can lounge around and I’ll read us a book.”

“You’d do that?” I asked, my voice wavering slightly.

Damen turned toward me, his jaw brushing the top of my head as he inhaled deeply. “Of course. Today is going to be a relaxation day—I’m excellent at those. I’ll send for tea and cake. You with me?”

“I’m with you.”

“That was nice,” I murmured, lying back on the sofa in Damen’s room as he finished reading a story about a Shade who lost his shadows. It was clearly a children’s story—the moral being that he needed to believe in himself—but it was lovely to listen to, regardless.

It reminded me of listening to fairy tales when I was young and Nana used to read me. There was more about the shadow realm that was similar to life in the human realm than wasn’t. It seemed baffling in hindsight that the Hunters Council had been able to villainize the Shades so effectively when they really weren’t so different from us.

“There’s still a little while before dinner. Should I run you a bath? That might make you feel better. And my bath tub is nice—yours is wholly inadequate for relaxing in. Of course, I would stay out of the room,” he added hastily.

“You would do that for me?” I asked, surprised. Not that Damen hadn’t always been generous with me, but this felt different.

Intimate.

The attraction to Damen—to his voice, and the feel of him, and the way he treated me—had always been there, but I’d done my best to squash it down and I was pretty sure I’d been succeeding at it. I didn’t understand the nuances of romantic relationships, but even I knew that once someone had proposed to you and you said no, things got a little more complicated.

---