Page 95 of Fate's Sweetest Curse
“I sleep naked,” he answered. “I wasasleep. What areyoudoing here in the middle of the night?” He considered his own question, and concern swept through him. He gripped the doorjamb, knuckles paling. “What’s wrong?”
Hattie’s arm was still extended, shielding her from his body, her head turned away as if his nakedness would bring her peril. Which, come to think of it, if they gave in to their urges, it probably would. “I came totalk,” she enunciated.
Of course, she had.
After the incident in the training yard earlier today, he’d skipped the lab and instead taken a walk to clear his head. Avoiding Hattie wasn’t the most mature way to handle the situation, but the shock and hurt on her face had pained him—cut him to the bone. He’d wanted to give himself time to come up with a plan for how to circumvent the verbal limits of his Oath enough to at least offer her ascrapof honesty. A satisfactory answer. The problem was, there was nothing honest or satisfactory about the secrets of the Orders. And there was nothing he coulddo.
A part of him still wondered if the greatest mercy he could offer Hattie would be to disappear from her life. At least if he was far away, he couldn’t disappoint her any more than he already had. More than anything, Noble wanted to minimize Hattie’s hurt. He couldn’t stand to see any more pain on her pretty face.
But she didn’t look pained now. Her bun was coming undone, curls frizzing; her dress was filthy, palms scraped; she was still blushing furiously—but she lookeddetermined. Fierce.
What had she done? Where had she been tonight? Why wasn’t she afraid of him?
Noble opened the door wider and stepped aside, allowing Hattie entry into his room. She brushed by without looking at him, her attention flicking over the four-poster bed and the tangle of blankets on the floor.
“I take it you weren’t sleeping peacefully,” she said. “Maybe it’s a good thing I woke you.”
Noble closed the door with a softclickand turned the lock. “What did you do?” he asked, his voice rough with concern.
Hattie turned. “Pants first, then we talk.”
34
Not Afraid
Hattie
Istood at Noble’s window with my back to him, listening to him dress.
My thoughts had been swirling on the way here, trying to make sense of what I’d learned over the past twelve hours, but the moment he opened his door—bare and obscenely,unfairlyperfect—the chaos in my mind had ceased. It was hard to think about anything with Noble standing naked in front of me.
After about a minute of rustling fabric, I asked, “Are you decent yet?”
“No,” Noble said, an edge of humor in his tone.
I turned around. He was wearing pants, but he was right, he wasn’t decent. Not with his lean torso on display, broad shoulders tapering into a narrow waist that—I now knew—led to a lower half that the famed sculptors of Lothgaim would probably pay a fortune to study and commit to marble.
When we were adolescents, Noble and I had spent our summers swimming and lazing on the banks of the Wynhaim River, but most of my glimpses of his physique had been stolen and brief. Our bodies had changed since then. My curves had softened, while his lanky frame had filled out with hard muscle.
But we were stillus.
As I regarded him in the dimly lit room, that was what struck me the most. My attraction to him wasn’t simply about the endless smooth skin and brawn—it was the heart that beat inside his chest. Strong. Loyal.Kind. He was always trying to do the right thing for others—even if it meant hurting himself.
The man before me didn’t look like a monster; he just looked likeNoble. Best friend. Forbidden love.Home.
He took a seat on the edge of a small writing desk opposite the bed. “You came to talk?” he prompted. With his hands flat on its worn surface, I noticed a bandage wrapped around his forearm. The white fabric was stained black. When Noble clocked my observation, his jaw ticked.
I cleared my throat, suddenly unprepared to discuss his condition. “Not yet.”
When he met my eyes again, he wore a confident grin. “Too stunned by my beauty to speak?” he asked, bouncing his eyebrows. He always knew when I needed levity.
I chuckled halfheartedly. “Something like that.”
“Why don’t we talk about something easy, first?” he suggested. “How are your classes?”
I let out a long sigh. “Fascinating. Overwhelming. Sometimes I feel like the weight of all the new information is crushing me like a toppled bookcase, but in an exhilarating way.”
“You always wanted to be an alchemist.” He sounded happy for me, proud.
