Page 54 of A Curse of Hope and Shadows: Part I
Dimitri tugged at her elbow. “Are you all right?” he said. “You went somewhere.”
“The past,” she admitted. “Not nearly as enjoyable as the present.”
“Are you flattering me?”
“Just my job.” She smirked at him, setting out the paper on the desk. “Now, what should I write to your cousin?”
Chapter Fourteen: Recovery
A strange period of deliciousness followed Dimitri’s recovery, a time where days blurred together, as indistinct as before but far from endless. Time slipped through his fingers, minutes and hours racing towards the end of the day, stilling only whenever Adeline was gone from his side.
They’d spend their days all over the place, in the library reading aloud or side by side, engaged in chess (he was trying to teach her how to beat him) or a variety of card games. They tried to design their own and kept disagreeing over rules. They’d spend hours in the garden, drawing away from the stream as a coolness settled in the grounds, but would run about playing chase like children, and although Dimitri couldn’t stomach the swing, he was more than happy to rock her on it.
One day, on their way out for a walk, Adeline stopped at the top of the stairs, looking about her furtively.
“What is it?” Dimitri asked.
Adeline paused. “I’m thinking about sliding down these banisters.”
Dimitiri laughed. “I hope you’re not looking at me to dissuade you.”
She flashed him a grin, the sort that lodged against his chest, and jumped up onto the polished wood, skidding all the way down and only fumbling slightly with the landing. Dimitri, quite forgetting that he had terrible balance and a tendency to get extremely dizzy, jumped up too and followed her.
The room started to spin, he shut his eyes tight, and toppled over towards the end.
Adeline let out a shriek and hurtled across to where he lay, wide brown eyes filled with fear. “Dimitri! Are you—”
He grabbed her hovering hands and pulled her down to the floor with him, sides hurting with laughter. They lay on the white marble, staring up at the ceiling.
“I never noticed how splendid the ceiling was before,” he told her. “It must have taken weeks to paint a sky like that, and in almost seventeen years, I have never noticed it.”
“Ah, the idle rich,” Adeline sighed. “To have so much, and appreciate so little.”
“Manners cost nothing, Adeline.”
She snorted. “We should get up off the floor.”
“Worried I’ll hurt my delicate body?”
“Worried about getting trampled on, or tripping someone up. You I don’t much care for.”
“I do believe you’re lying, Adeline.”
“I do believe you’re right.” She crawled to her feet and held out her hand. “Come on.”
Although the pain was still there, he noticed it less, and one night as he was falling asleep, thinking of Adeline’s sweet voice, he realised that the part of him that ached the most was his cheeks, from spending too much of the day smiling.
He knew, somewhere, that it was silly to flirt with her, to crave any more than her friendship, but he also knew it was fruitless to try and stop, to fight against his feelings, to try and reel them back in. He missed her in the few hours they were apart, he felt physically better beside her, and she’d invaded every thought he had. It was a pointless crush he was powerless to resist.
The massage therapy her sister had prescribed began in earnest. It was a daily dose of threefold torture, often leaving his muscles sore and aching (though he never complained) while he waited for her to be disgusted, only she never was, chatting amiably and singing as she did so.
That was the worst of it; her proximity, and her utter unshakable character. He tried to find something to focus on every time she did it, a fleck in the paint, a petal on a flower, a crease in the bedsheets. Anything to ignore her breath on the back of his hand, her fingers working into his palm, the lavender scent of her soap.
Her smile.
Of all the things he’d ever experienced, hope was by far the worst.
She’d adapted his clothes for him, too, allowing his tail to roam freely behind him, at least whenever they were inside the grounds. Itwasmore comfortable, and if the appendage had a habit of sometimes wagging whenever she entered the room, she said nothing about it.
