Page 7 of Love, Laugh, Lich

All this thinking about my weird little crush and that kiss is distracting me from my work though. All I’ve done in the last five minutes is doodle hearts and ‘Mrs. Lich’ on my post-its.

I’m going to shove down the want to see him out of his cloak again. There will be no more offering shivers or first kisses to his rituals.

“Uh, Lily?”

I whirl around and maybe glare a little too much at the intern, who shrinks back instantly.

“Um, yes?” I shake myself, trying to show a kinder face to him.

The intern’s shoulders loosen a touch. “Um, Mr. Dark Lord told me I was to-- um. Help you out. With your workload?”

My brow furrows and I frown reflexively. “Why would I need help?”

The intern makes a helpless face and shrugs at me. “It’s what I was told. I can uh, do the spreadsheets and inventory stuff? I did that at my old job.”

I stare at the intern, uncomprehending. That’s my work. The stuff I do. With the exceptionally neat lines and color-coded charts that make me feel at peace with the world. And I’m supposed to what, delegate it?

“You can sort through incoming mail and prioritize it,” I say, instead of ‘No, go back to whatever department you’re actually interning in’.

Half of my irritated mood is fueled by the fact I’m sharing half of my work with the intern and the other half is that I suddenly have all the time in the world to let my mind wander. What, one flubbed kiss and suddenly Soven thinks I can’t do my job?

An hour later, I’mnotthinking about whether he needs to send out to an agency for another first kiss, one he can actually use for his spells. I’mnotsnapping my quills in half in jealousy at the thought of some stranger getting to see him without his cloak, seeing the real Soven,kissingthe real Soven—

The sound of a snap turns three of the nearest heads in neighboring cubicles towards me, including Randall. He gives me a slightly concerned look.

I look down and see that I have broken another quill, and ripped through the paper with it.

Ok, maybe I have been snapping quills in some kind of mood, but it’s not a jealous one.

Eventually, mostly to get away from my new desk buddy, I bring in the daily tea, and find Soven sitting at his desk. I do glance around, making sure there isn’t some secondary personal assistant, or worse, a personal assistant that I’m secondary to. When there isn’t one, I cross the Sanctum and round the desk to his side, setting the tea down.

“I got your flowers,” I say, not letting my frustration color my tone. “They’re lovely.”

He gives me a curt nod. I itch to touch him, to try to rekindle that brief connection from yesterday. I can’t stand the little space between us, the way I can’t discern the feelings under his reactions.

I chew my tongue and try to think how I’m going to bring up my issue with suddenly being saddled with the intern. I can’t tell how receptive he’ll be.

He’s not in the cloak. Something about that makes me warm. He’s got the loincloth wrapped around his middle, though. I craned my neck a little because of the way he’s sitting, knees spread far apart, leaning far back. The stack of papers in his inbox never seems to decrease as he plucks one off the top, makes a notation or signature, and puts it in one of the outgoing boxes.

After a moment, he notices the cup of tea I’ve brought in for him, and he puts aside his quill.

“I don’t know what I would do without you,” he sighs, leaning back in his chair. “Probably the whole Dark Reign would fall apart.”

Like that, all my frustration is extinguished with the sheer validation and appreciation in those words. My heart feels all wobbly and softened, possibly dizzy from the whiplash of my own emotions.

There’s something about standing so near him, the ease between us. Looking upon him however, makes my body stir, my heart beat faster, heat move low in my stomach.

He looks over to me and gives me a smile, and suddenly my chest aches with feeling.

It’s never going to go back to how it was before, I realize with a swallow. We’ve broken a boundary that can’t be rebuilt, whether it was that kiss, that glimpse, or that shiver. Maybe all of them together. I’ve wandered too far into the way his presence affects me, and I can’t imagine pretending to be satisfied with less of it than I’ve managed to steal so far.

I’m staring at the altar in the center of the ritual floor, thinking about how it made me feel to sit there. A hazy thought comes to mind, and before I can consider all its faults, I voice it.

“Is there any other way you can… trap the essence of vulnerability, or whatever?”

My question pauses the Dark Lord in his work.

“Any other true act of vulnerability,” he shrugs after a moment, the answer like a component to an alchemical equation.

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