Page 113 of Bane of the Wild Hunt

I moved along, this time allowing my hand to brush over the handles of his knives that were carefully oiled and arrayed from largest to smallest. My fingers tightened fully around the last one which was heavier than it looked despite being the smallest as I lifted it up for inspection.

I heard a light tread behind me and assumed it was my handmaid approaching more closely.

“What are you doing?” demanded Orion unexpectedly, and I jolted with a startled gasp, nearly losing my grip on the rather enormous knife in my hand.

Orion reacted with reflexes that had been honed from centuries of battle. Both of his hands seized over mine to keep me from dropping the lethally sharpened blade.

“Ilíthios,” he muttered as he carefully took the knife away from me and shook his head.

He was suddenly very close to me, and for some very stupid reason, not even the eight inch knife that I’d almost impaled myself with could distract me from it. Orion had been careful to stay away and had not touched me since the day I came to Kórinthos. Now he was standing close enough for his scent of leather and amber to completely flood my senses, and his left wing brushed my back.

I glanced behind and saw Sofia had abandoned her place by the door.

“Should we be alone?” I pointed out, and he snorted in dismissal as he stepped up beside me to put the knife back on the table. I noted the careful way that he positioned it.

“We are notskiá, nor will we ever be romantic, so it does not matter,” he assured me.

“You are all too right, but you know the Imítheos do not think like that,” I retorted.

He did not respond, merely took a step back from me and crossed his arms as if expecting me to leave.

I wasn’t ready to go yet, so I turned to continue on my way around the room. Orion sighed and followed much more closely behind me than Sofia ever did.

“Must you touch everything?” he demanded while I marvelled at the texture of one of Riordan’s shields.

“You are the one who has spent a lot of time oiling and polishing everything in here to perfection,” I guessed.

“I am. And now I must hunt down all the greasy little finger marks you undoubtedly left all over everything.”

“Sounds like you’re looking forward to it,” I answered, keeping my face turned away when I saw his head turn in my peripheral vision. His glare burned into the side of my face as I continued onward, but he did not respond.

I got to the wall which was hung with all manner of weapons from kopis swords with their curved blades to battle axes and maces.

“Are some of these antique? They don’t look like the same weapons that the soldiers carry,” I noted aloud.

Orion heaved another heavy exhale out of his nostrils and seemed to resign himself to addressing me.

“Yes. All antiques,” he confirmed. “Riordan has been collecting them since before we came to the Vale.”

“Does he have a favourite?” I asked, and thankfully he pointed to a kopis blade without getting snarky with me.

“Theschístis,” Orion answered. “He has used all these weapons at least once in battle but that one he liked best. He was sorry to see it exchanged when the general at the time opted for us to carry a longer standard sword.”

“Huh. That is an advantage to living so long which I’d never considered. Humans have museums filled with this kind of thing, but they can only ever speculate about how it was used since none of them were alive,” I explained.

“Then why hold onto it at all?” he pointed out.

“I’m not sure. I suppose they want to learn about their past and who they used to be,” I answered with a shrug.

“Did they not record history?” he asked.

“I think they did, but they burned a lot of their books,” I recalled as I continued along the display of antiques.

I could feel him looking at me so I turned my head over my shoulder to meet his mildly horrified eyes.

“They burned their own books?” he verified, and I was a little surprised by the offense he seemed to take.

“Yeah. Religion and—”

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