Page 59 of Across an Endless Sea

Turning my back, I try to occupy myself with what’s in his room, only to realise with dismay that it’s just as bare as the previous one. A stone bed covered in furs takes up one wall, and the other has a dresser on it, where he’s laid out his armbands. Beside the door is a low table and another of those leather mats that the Fomorians use in place of chairs.

I head for that, choosing to ignore the bed in favour of sitting at the table. There’s a single tallow candle stub in the middle, with a well-worn fire striker in front of it.

I originally thought this was a desk of some kind, but I guess that was stupid, considering the lack of written language. So is this some kind of… meditation space?

“You ignored my question,” I say, evenly.

Slow breaths aren’t helping to force the unwanted feelings back into their cage, but perhaps I can distract myself.

“I was banished,” Caed admits, lazily. “Five years ago, my father told me I could only return if I had you with me.”

He hasn’t been home for five years?A part of me pangs in sympathy.

“I’m sorry,” I reply. “I know what it’s like to be cut off from your home.”

Though there will be no returning to my old home now. Tom saw to that.

“Is this the home where I couldn’t find you?” he teases, but there’s a note of curiosity to it. “You should’ve stayed there.”

I shake my head. “That wasn’t possible.” And what future would’ve awaited me if I had? “The mortal realm was no place for me.” As much as a part of me will always be homesick for my old life, I can acknowledge that there’s no going back. “I would’ve been stuck in an abusive marriage to a man I loathed. Or worse, sentenced to life alone as a spinster, constantly ailing because I had no idea iron was slowly killing me.”

Caed has gone deathly still. “You were mated?”

Something in his tone makes me shiver, and I can’t resist the urge to look back at him again.

Only for my breath to catch at the cold, dark look swimming in the turquoise depths of his eyes.

Oh… he thought…

Wait. He can’t be jealous?

“Rhoswyn,” he cautions, possession and death warring in his pale eyes.

“No, I wasn’t,” I reply. “My family wanted the match. None of them believed me when I said he was beating his mother. They thought I was hallucinating, and I couldn’t exactly prove anything…”

The darkness in his gaze ebbs slightly, and he reclines back in the pool.

“The mortal realm… That explains a lot.”

He scrubs a hand down his face, and water drips down his biceps until I’m forced to look away or follow the trail. He has tan lines along his arms. Paler strips of blue that decorate him even when he’s not wearing the iron rings that caused them.

What were we talking about again?

The sounds of Caed washing himself resume, and I wish I still had my hair so I could hide behind it.

Like such a flimsy barrier will stop my thoughts.

The sloshing increases in volume, then stops, becoming a steady dripping instead.

“You can look now, little queen,” Caed teases.

I breathe out a sigh of relief and turn. For a second, I can’t find him, and I breathe a sigh of relief, thinking he’s left, only to whirl back around with an embarrassed squeak.

“You said you were decent!”

He was not.

The image of his blue ass laid out in front of the hearth is burned into my brain.

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