Page 113 of A Curse of Hope and Shadows: Part I
“Downplay it. Call her ‘pretty enough.’ She’s more than that. Itmeantmore than that. At least, I thought it did.” He groaned, running a hand through his hair.
“I see.” Alexei’s mouth narrowed. “Your first kiss, I take it?”
“Obviously.”
“And you initiated?”
Dimitri paused. He was fairly sure he’d been the one to move first, but looking back he remembered her face coming towards him, a pull between them, magnets and metal. “I think so.”
“She kissed you back?”
“Yes.”
“What happened next?”
“She… she stopped. Said we shouldn’t.”
“Well, that makes sense.”
“A minute again you were cheering me on!”
“It’s all right to kiss your maids,” Alexei said. “It’s all right to kiss anyone who wants to be kissed. It’s not all right to fall in love with them.”
Dimitri opened his mouth to argue—to deny his feelings, or that it was perfectly acceptable to feel the way he did, he wasn’t entirely sure. But he found he could not lie, that nothing like denial could pass his lips. “What if it’s too late for that?”
“Then I’d remind you that you are not yet seventeenand that there will be many other women in your life. Women that you’reallowedto love.”
“Not for me,” Dimitri said, with unusual boldness. “For me, there’s only her.”
Alexei sighed, taking a sip of his tea. “I shan’t lecture you any more—”
“Good.”
“I just don’t want to see you hurt.”
The impulse to tip the table over and fling the plates at the wall rose within him, but he managed to swallow it. Instead, words punched out of him. “I’ve beenhurtalmost my entire life, or enough of it! She doesn’t hurt me, she’s the cure, the one good thing in my life—”
“No one should be that,” Alexei said, in a voice like steel. “No one should have to be all of that for anyone. They’d break under the pressure.”
“I don’t care!” he yelled, which was ridiculous, awful, because he did care. More than anything. Being with Adeline was like a delicious kind of pain, like loving the thing that could kill you, like a drowning man finally letting go. It was all the agony of being ripped apart and all the pleasure of…
Of knowing her. He knew no other great thing. Her company was beyond compare, beyond expression. She was the greatest, most wonderful thing in his life.
And he would fold away his life itself for the chance to make her happy. He would not let her break for him. He cared about her more than anything else.
He sighed, turning back to his plate. “Let’s just finish breakfast. I daresay you’ll have something amusing planned for afterwards.”
Alexei, as it turned out, fancied a morning ride. Dimitri hadn’t ridden in a long time as he had no one to ride with him and his balance wasn’t what it was, but it wasn’t too unpleasant and he was keen for the distraction, even if the short gallop Alexei thrust them into made him feel physically sick.
Alexei was just as he remembered him—carefree, effortlessly charming, easy to be around. It was a good morning for riding, too. The woodlands had begun the descent into autumn, the trees ablaze with brown. A damp, earthy scent settled in the air, and he wondered if Adeline would enjoy a ride out here some time.
No, no, don’t think like that.
He focused instead on Alexei, on his tales of life in the capital, of their shared memories of boyhood long ago. Alexei had a tendency to exaggerate the ones of getting into trouble, but Dimitri let him.
Don’t think of her, don’t think of her, don’t think of her.
And yet, when the day ended, and he had passed the whole of it without even a glimpse or word, it unsettled him in a way that crawled into his bones.
