Page 89 of The Witch Queen

She studies my face quietly, eyes searching. For what, I’m not sure. “You must have had the weight of many problems on your shoulders there,” she finally says. Her honesty cuts like a knife. She’s so quick to spot the truth of my feelings. But somehow, her calling them out so openly and directly makes them easier to talk about.

“Not so much in recent years. But after the war with Velmara… I disappeared into that cabin for far too long. Left my friend to deal with the aftermath on her own. I couldn’t bear the weight of my guilt. My mother had always taught me thatthemost important battle strategy is knowing which you can win and which you can’t. Laurel—the Queen—and I, we forgot that lesson after our parents died. And it cost useverything.” My eyes drop to the ground as I think about what thateverythingentailed. Our childhood and young adulthood, the safety of the kingdom, thousands of Thayarian lives, our sense of hope for anything good in the world. Our ability to form meaningful relationships with anyone but each other.

Genevieve’s soft hand wraps around mine and squeezes.

“You were so young,” she soothes, but I scoff.

“Laurel was younger. And hadn’t received nearly the education I had. I’ve always wondered… if I hadn’t gone to that cabin—if I hadn’t left her—would she have retreated so far into herself. When I finally came back, she wasn’t the same female I knew. She was cold, calculating. Strategic to a fault at times. And instead of trying to help her find her way back to herself, I mimicked her stoicism, though I couldn’t pull it off like she did. We became an impenetrable force, open only with one another. Neither of us able to move on from what happened. And now, three hundred years later, I’ve left her with no other confidants.” A sob chokes in my throat, and Genevieve rubs soothing circles on my back. Even now, with a female who has experienced more trauma than anyone should have to, I suffocate others with my grief. Shame courses through my body, making the sobs worse. “I’m sorry,” I murmur, and Genevieve lifts my chin, so similar to the way I had in my rooms when she’d told me of the Reshnar scholar.

“You have nothing to apologize for. I think you’ve been carrying this for a very long time. It’s good to let it out.” She smiles, and my heart squeezes in awe of this brave and open female. I wrap my arm around her and pull her in close to me, despite the risk of being so openly affectionate in public. She leans in, and the scent of parchment and vanilla wafts over me. It feels so much like home that my body aches to wrap myself around her and never let go. We finish watching the sunset, then lay on our backs to wait for the sky to fill with stars. When there’s no light but that from the moon, she shimmies away from me and stands. “Time for the main event,” she says with an excited mischief lacing her voice. I stand beside her and panic floods my system thinking about climbing back down the rope ladder in the dark.

“What do you mean? How are we getting down from here?” I ask, the fear in my voice obvious. She laughs.

“Not a fan of the climb?” I shake my head. “Lucky for you, we aren’t going back the way we came. Unlucky for you, the only way back inevitably involves heights.” With that, she turns and begins walking away, and I have to walk fast to catch her.

We stumble through the darkness for twenty minutes, rapidly dropping our elevation. Orbs of light twinkle in the distance, and the faint sounds of water splashing and people yelling tickle my ears.

“Where are we going?” I ask. She just wraps her hand in mine and keeps walking. The movement feels right, like we should never walk unless it’s hand in hand.

The light grows brighter, and a cliff about thirty feet above the water appears. A stranger stands at its edge, soaking wet from head to foot in a short linen swim dress. The brightness allows me to see Genevieve’s face, and her eyes study me for a reaction. I scan the cliff again, just as the female from before leaps off the cliff into the dark water below. I abruptly stop.

“No,” I say involuntarily and pull my hand from Genevieve’s.

“Yes,” she says with a smirk, grabbing my hand and tugging me forward. I follow, despite my blood beating a fast rhythm in my veins. We reach the cliffside, where a dozen fae swim in the water below. Another rope ladder hangs from the cliff, and several people climb it, presumably to jump again.

“No, I can’t—I don’t like—we have to jump?” I ask, body deflating.

“It’s either this or climb back down the rope from earlier. It’s really fun, I promise. You’ll be safe.” I swallow, then search the ground for grass, a shrub, a small flower—anything I can grow to ease me down the cliffside. But Velmara isn’t known for its smooth, rocky cliffs without reason.

Genevieve pulls her dress over her head, and my mouth goes dry at the nearly sheer shift she wears underneath, her small frame on full display. Then she turns back to me with a question in her eyes before pulling my tunic over my head. Lust heats her gaze when she exposes the bandeau I wear underneath. I’ve never been shy about my body or my sexuality, but now I shiver under her heated gaze.

“Do you want to stay in your leggings? Or take them off?” she asks quietly with a deep swallow. Her delicate throat moves with the motion, drawing my attention down to it and then farther down to the small, pert nipples that peek under her chemise.

“I’ll take them off,” I say with a husky voice, not recognizing myself. She nods, then helps me pull the fighting leathers off my body, fingers lingering over my skin as she pulls them down. I stand there in only my undergarments, unaware of our surroundings, attention focused solely on Genevieve. She scans my body, and I grin, confident in the line of my feminine figure toned with muscle. “Like what you see?” The words come out of me unbidden, and I tense. We’vedefinitelyflirted, but never this openly, especially not in public. I scan our surroundings. Thankfully, we’re still alone up here. I’m about to apologize, or murmur some excuse, when her lips part and she exhales with a breathy sigh thatalmostsounds like a moan.

“I do.” Her eyes meet mine, gaze unflinching. She’s confident, no seed of doubt in her words or posture. I swallow, and that makes her break out in a cocky grin of her own. “Ready to jump?” I freeze. I’d somewhat forgotten about the reason we were undressing in my lust-addled distraction. While I fight the urge to run back away from the cliff edge, she picks up our clothes and places them in a basket that she lowers down toward the water. “No turning back now,” she says with a glint in her eye. “Our clothes are at the bottom. Unless you want to stay standing up here half-naked, we have to jump in the water.”

“I wouldn’t mind staying half-naked,” I involuntarily murmur, and her cheeks turn pink. But she takes my hand and leads me to the very edge of the rock. I look down and pale, trying to take a step back, but she holds me firmly in place, deceptively strong for her small stature. My palm sweats in hers, but she strokes my thumb.

“I’ve got you,” she soothes. “On the count of three. One. Two.”

Pulse racing, I close my eyes.

“Three!”

My thighs coil, and I lift myself up and out over the edge of the bluff. We both free fall, but Genevieve’s hand never leaves mine. Air whooshes around me, and the white-blonde tendrils of my hair slap my face. An involuntary shriek leaves my lips, and Genevieve giggles in the air beside me. For a moment that could be seconds or hours, we fly through the air, adrenaline pumping through my veins as I face this fear with a female I’ve come to care deeply for at my side.

We slam into the water, the brisk, salty waves washing over us as we sink below the surface. Bubbles float around us as Genevieve hauls me upward, cresting the surface before me.

“You did it,” she cheers and wraps her arms around me. As I tread water, I pull her into an embrace, and her arms circle my neck. We stare at one another for a beat. Her tongue brushes over her lower lip, and I track the movement. She wraps her legs around me, then leans in—

Someone yells at us to swim away from the landing spot so another can jump. Smiling, we both swim toward the sandy beach that was hidden behind the cliff face.

“We could have walked down to this beach all along!” I chide, but she only grins with an roguish glint in her eyes.

“We could have, but that wouldn’t have been nearly as much fun.”

Once we reach the beach, we quickly pull our clothes over our wet bodies and walk back to the castle, our hands brushing every few minutes. When we reach the wing where the archives and my room are located, I don’t hesitate, pulling Genevieve toward my room. She doesn’t protest, only gives me a suggestive look that has my body tingling. We missed the dinner hour, so a food tray filled with enough for two waits for us when we arrive.Someone has noticed our frequent shared dinners.I vow to consider the implications tomorrow, not wanting to ruin this perfect evening with my paranoia.

---