Page 19 of Enchantment of Silver and Sea
He finished eating first. Then he flopped back on the bed, sighing contentedly, and closed his eyes.
When Nya finished, she grabbed Kieran’s empty plate and carried both dishes to the sink. She turned on the faucet to rinse them.
“Just leave them,” I called over the running water. “I’ll wash them later.”
Nya obliged and sat back down at the desk.
“Since you shared something with us,” she began carefully. “I’ll share with you that we followed your advice, and we got what we needed from the marsh wolf pack. With no losses on our end.”
A smile spread across my face.
She added quickly, “Don’t make me regret telling you that.”
“I won’t,” I promised. My body felt suddenly light, as if releasing tension that I hadn’t even realized had been there. “So what can I help with this time?”
“One second, let me grab the map.” Nya reached under the desk and pulled out her same blue backpack. She began digging through it. “I’ll go ahead and warn you that this map is as skillfully drawn as the last one.”
I chuckled.
While she was doing that, I felt a chill coming from the glass door beside me, creeping in between the shoddy weather stripping. I tried to remember another time when I had had a reason to sit on the carpet, against the wall like this.
I couldn’t think of one. I had never had to make space for guests before.
I began to unravel my braid. I ran my hand through the roots a few times, loosening the strands against my scalp, then let the soft waves fall over my shoulders, savoring the warmth.
A rustle on the bed caught my attention.
Kieran’s eyes were open now, and he was staring at me.
I was so surprised that I couldn’t stop myself from staring back at him.
His eyes narrowed almost imperceptibly, and the corner of his mouth turned up.
Heat flooded my cheeks. Then it proceeded to flood my whole body.
I had tried to write it off as curiosity. As the piqued interest that anyone would have observing someone with such unusual features. But in that moment, I knew it was time to be honest with myself.
I was incredibly attracted to him.
And I suddenly, overwhelmingly, did not want him to know this.
“Your eyes,” I blurted out. “I did some research on them.”
His smile widened. He rolled lazily onto his side, propping his head on his hand. “You researched me, huh?”
“No,” I said quickly. Too quickly.
His eyes were an almost shimmering silver now, dancing with amusement.
“What I mean is that your eyes are very…interesting. And I kept thinking that I had seen eyes like those before, in one of the books in the Library. Turns out, I did.”
“Did you?” he asked, his voice dripping with the over-the-top enthusiasm that you might use when speaking to a child.
Annoyance prickled in me at his tone. “I did. Years ago, a citizen of Cyllene saw a being with eyes like yours outside the walls. Right before he and almost everyone in his party disappeared.”
“No way.”
I don’t know what I had expected his response to be. But the sarcasm made me wish I had something to throw at him. I was more than just annoyed now.
