Page 37 of A Curse of Hope and Shadows: Part I
Adeline.Adeline who was as free with her smiles as she was with her words, and her barbs and quips more like bandages, a reminder of normalcy, that he wasn’t as inhuman as his appearance suggested, that nothing was wrong with him that couldn’t be fixed with a bit of company.
“You seem happy today,” he observed as she hummed about the room, collecting the dozens of towels that lay discarded over the floor.
“Of course I’m happy today,” she said, “you’re better.”
There was a hotness under his collar, and he wondered if perhaps he should take another bath, and why the thought of such a thing filled him with an equal amount of joy and dread.
Oh gods. She’d seen him naked yesterday too. He’d always managed to avoid being completely naked in her presence before, but yesterday…
She frowned at him. “Are you sure you’re all right? You’re looking very hot.”
“It’s a hot day.”
She smiled again, and his chest radiated with heat.
There was a knock at the door, and the red-haired maid, Posey, appeared in the gap, her eyes darting away from him. Dimitri remembered her from when they were both small. She was only a few years older than him, inheriting the position from her mother. She had smiled at him once, invited him to play with the servants of the other children, before his father told him it wasn’t appropriate to fraternise with the staff.
She would not invite him to anything now.
“Umm, Adeline?” she said, her voice low. “It’s your day off.”
Adeline blinked in response, as if she’d quite forgotten the days of the week. She laughed, and that pleased him; both that she’d utterly forgotten it was her day off, like this wasn’t a job at all, and that she was laughing. She usually looked happy, but he didn’t always hear it.
“Oh my, how silly of me!”
Posey grinned, like she was sharing a secret. “There’s a young man at the gate for you, too.”
All the warmth in Dimitri’s chest iced over, even more so when Adeline rushed over to the curtains, peered out of the window, and broke into the widest of smiles.
She looked at Dimitri, as if asking for permission. “Are you sure—”
“Go,” he barked. “It’s your day off. You’ve earned it.”
She frowned at him, not smiling any more, making him instantly regret his tone. “Right. Well, I’ll see you tomorrow.” She headed outside with Posey, the door closing softly behind them. He could hear them conversing in low voices in the corridor, too far along for even him to hear, although he turned his sharp ear in the direction.
He pushed his tray away, and climbed out of bed. His body felt stiff and not his own, hardly surprising given yesterday’s events and the full moon right around the corner.
The full moon.
He wondered what Adeline had been told about his transformations, what rumours she had heard. He wished her day off had occurred onthatday instead, almost as much as he wished he could order her back.
He sat down on the chaise and sulked, a different kind than usual, spurned by a different kind of pain.
Don’t get too fond of her, warned a voice.She’s only going to leave you. Everyone leaves. You couldn’t convince anyone to stay.
Although he’d never really tried. Not with the maids and schoolmasters. He’d only ever tried to convince one person to stay, and even that had been stupid and foolish, a waste of his time and affections.
But if Adeline tried to go… would he try and stop her?
It wouldn’t be fair to ask her to stay, but he thought, even after just three weeks, he would at least try.
A laugh reached him from the open window, a sound of clanging gates. He turned towards the sound, and braved the fierce light to peer outside the curtains.
Adeline was in the arms of a tall, fair-haired youth. He was tugging on her cap, no doubt teasing her about her attire, and she chuckled and slipped it off, unpinning the long braid that she kept twirled up inside it. He’d not known until he’d summoned her to his room the night before last how long it was, and even though he’d known it was a sort of light, reddish colour, he hadn’t been able to appreciate the shimmer of it before, the shades of gold and chestnut, like warm honey.
But this boy… he got to see her like that all the time, free and unbound and utterly herself. He didn’t think that she held much back when she was with him, but there was definitely something she held back, a secret or a part of herself, he wasn’t sure.
And she’d never mentioned this boy before. Who was he, that he’d come to collect her this early in the day?
