Page 48 of The Chaosweaver's Daughter
“Yes?”
“You— Were you teasing me about snooping?”
That smirk split into a smile, and her mouth flopped like a fish.
She hadn’t expected a yes, about the teasing or the symposium. She’d hoped for yeses, but expectations and hope were drastically different things. “What about the children?”
“They’ll be on holiday, as will you.”
“All together?”
“No. They’ll stay here.”
She breathed in and forgot to breathe out for a second. She was going alone, with the Duke of Stormhill, to Rohilavol for the Symposium ofProdigious Minds. “What about their magic? What if they lose control?”
Are you trying to ruin this for yourself?!
Chuckling, his fingers brushed the side of her arm as he urged her to retake her seat. “I think they’ll be fine, but shall we come up with a plan, maybe a backup, and a backup for that?”
She nodded, struck dumb, and plopped back onto the couch.
sixteen
Kas goes for a swim.
Thesymposiumwasoneweek away, and things were going better than Kas expected. The scholar who’d taken up residence in his walls—and heart—didn’t seem too angry about the guard anymore. And though she hadn’t brought it up, and he wasn’t willing to touch it with a ten-foot pole, she’d also seemingly forgiven him for sleepwalking into her blasted bed and kissing her awake.
It had been excessively reckless of him totellher he was attracted to her, but he’d done it anyway. Then, her response? That bolstered him immensely, though he did feel bad for springing the question on her in her half-asleep state.
“Yes,”she’d said. Yes, Nesrina was attracted to him, too. He’d thanked the gods every morning, every afternoon, and every evening since.
As far as Kas was concerned, based on his confession and her response, the two of them were as good as courting. That determination was precisely why he decided to tag along on one of her lessons with the twins, visibly this time. He had no reason to hold back on studying her or studying their magic. It was time to go all in.
“Uncle Kas!” Della screeched when he joined them in the clearing.
“Are you going to learn with us?” Ataht beamed.
“Yes,areyou?” Nesrina chimed in.
He grinned. “That was my intent, yes. I have free time these next fewweeks.”
“Oh.”
He wasn’t sure if Miss Kiappa meant to voice that aloud. But she nodded at an empty stump, and he joined them.
As the lesson progressed, Kas didn’t learn much about their magic. He did, however, collect an abundance of data on the scrunch of Nesrina’s nose, her flailing hands as she spoke, and the expressiveness in her eyes. Her freckles were plentiful, more pronounced the longer summer progressed. He caught something about hollow interiors that were not impacted by their power, but that was the sum total of his new knowledge ontishtafiran.
After their lesson, the twins begged him and their tutor to stay and swim for a while. Kas agreed immediately, though Nesrina refrained from responding. When shedidn’tdepart after the lesson, he took it as a good sign. Although, he couldn’t be sure if she was there for the children, or him.
Despite having spent time with two women before meeting Nesrina, and despite being twenty-six and well-educated on nearly every subject in the universe, Kas found he was lacking knowledge on matters of the heart. Books could only take him so far, and he was oft reminded of something Hothan Tarisden once wrote to him in a letter:“You’ll learn far more at the helm than by reading books about boats.”
Kas was fifteen when Nesrina’s father dropped that bit of advice on him, and it stuck with him ever since. It was the impetus for his first rough semblance of a relationship with the banker’s daughter in Stormhill when he’d been a bit older. He’d learned some, but not enough; and the feelings he’d had for that woman paled in comparison to what he felt toward Miss Kiappa.
The problem was, he had no idea how to handle those feelings. For a while there, he’d convinced himself she was uninteresting... half convinced, at least. Now, he settled for wishing she’d think of him the same way he thought of her, which was constantly and with far more detail than one might consider a friend.
He couldn’t force his wishes to become reality, so there was only onething to do: try his damndest to befriend the befuddling and beautiful tutor. She wasn’t a book, she was a woman, and he needed... her.
Not long later, the twins’ nannies and a smattering of servants brought down swimming attire for the children, food, blankets, pillows, towels, and even a screen for them to change behind.
