Page 57 of A Curse of Hope and Shadows: Part I
“Oh, hang Minty!” he hissed, resisting the urge to thump the railing.
“You don’t mean that.”
“No, I mean—”I mean away with whatever nonsense says it’s unacceptable to give you my cloak. Damn whatever says we can’t…
He waited for Adeline to press him, but she didn’t. Of course she didn’t.
She leant against the railing, gaze away from him. “The rain will let up, soon. Downpours never last long.”
He felt like he’d been trapped in one for the better part of five years, with only a few rays of sunlight to tide him over between tempests, largely all caused by her company.
He gripped the side of the bandstand, his talons scraping against the wood. “If you say so.”
They stood for a moment together in uneasy silence, and he found that even when he didn’t want to look at her, his gaze wandered, like a leaf caught in a current. She glanced out over the gardens, rain dusting her eyelashes, looking as if she’d never seen anything quite so beautiful.
He could not find beauty in the world the way she did. The world was cold and broken, even sunlight bitter and jarring to his ruined body. Nothing in it reached him.
Nothing but her.
“Adie,” he started, quite unsure of what he was going to say.
His left arm pulsed, pain spiking through him. He gripped the side of the railing, wood shrieking beneath him, sponging into splinters.
Adeline flinched but took a step towards him.
He jerked backwards, taking half of the plank with him, and cursed on the decking.
Adeline hovered over him. “Is it over?”
He gritted his teeth, offering a silent nod. Adeline crouched behind him, tugging his hand into her lap. He could not meet her eyes as her fingers moved between his, rubbing each digit, soothing monstrous muscles and pressing out pain.
“We should have a code word,” she suggested.
“What?”
“For whenithappens. Just so I know when to step back… and when to step closer.” She paused. “My instinct, see, when you’re in pain, is not to run away.”
“You’re like that with everyone,” he said, unaware why that thought upset him so.
“Maybe,” she said, “but nevertheless…”
Her fingers worked up his arm, and he bit down anything that sounded like a whimper or a groan. It would be better when she had finished, but worse, too. He did not want her to stop.
“Your beast form,” Adeline continued, “is it something like a wolf?”
He had never seen it in a mirror, but he assumed so from the reports. The ear and tail gave a bit of a clue. “Yes.”
“How about ‘wolf out’?” she offered. “You say that, and I’ll step back. And when it’s over, when you’re ready for me to come back… ‘wolf in’.”
It was so silly and ridiculous and perfect, that a smile tugged at his lips. He finally caught her gaze. “Wolf in,” he said, with what he was sure was probably a wolfish grin.
“But I’m already—”
He yanked his arm away from her, and pulled her against him, ignoring the hard, almost painful warmth spreading across his chest, and other, deeper parts of him. She smelled of lemons and lavender and freshly mown grass, and for a moment, he saw all the beauty in the world that she did.
Chapter Fifteen: The Uninvited Guest
The next morning, thinking Dimitri had dozed off under the book he was reading, Adeline started to clean up his room. She hadn’t done much cleaning of late, partly because Dimitri had suddenly become much better at tidying up after himself, and partly because she just kept getting distracted. It wasn’t like Dimitri kept giving her work to do, it was just that the two of them kept getting swept up in conversation. She was generally an excellent multi-tasker, but when he spoke, she’d found herself giving him her full attention.
