Page 7 of Veradel
Taika blinks with a mortified expression. “What? No, of course not. I’m not forcing you, Saskia. It’s completely up to you. I just…” He steals a glance at Lucan’s turned back. “Though rare, it’s possible for werewolves and humans to conceive.”
“Oh,” I whisper, dissolving into a puddle on the spot as I reach out and take the pouch. I might as well. Just in case. I don’t have any expectations, but I know whatIwant.
“Just brew it like tea,” he tells me, back to a modicum of professionalism.
“Thank you, Taika.” I glance around at all the medical equipment again, noting the scale in the corner, a glass thermometer, and a variety of other tongs or scalpels. “Maybe…” I begin hesitantly. “Maybe I could help you, in the future. If someone’s sick or injured or just, you know, if you need someone to polish…”
I’m rambling now, but Taika just bows his head with a smile.
“It would be my pleasure, dear. I’ve greatly missed having an apprentice.”
When we finally get to my house, Saskia stops in front of it with her mouth agape.
I halt alongside her, painfully in tune with each of her movements, the way her fingers rise to her mouth, and how her eyes skate along every feature I’ve never looked at twice.
A wooden porch wraps around the stone structure, every hole and crack repaired by me over the last few hundred years. Wild creepers twine along the railing. Two wicker chairs sit by the front door, although I’ve never lounged in either one of them. They used to belong to my parents, but my mother insisted I take them after my father died.
Saskia’s attention grazes the chairs, then raises up to my second floor, where my bedroom door leads out to a small, rounded balcony that looks out over the whole town.
“I can tear that down,” I say quickly, noting how pale her face looks, “if it bothers you…”
I have half a mind to leap upward and rip the balcony off my house here and now, on the chance that it will remind her of the Blood Moon Palace balconies she had to wave from. I told her she’s sleeping where I can monitor her, but if any part of my house triggers her…
“No.” She shakes her head, wrapping her arms around herself. “It’s just… what do you even use that balcony for?”
I blink at her, a twisting kind of heat coaxing out my inner beast at the question. But in this moment, I push it back, remaining calm for her.
“On clear nights, I lean over the railing to look at the stars.”
“The stars?” she asks, and glances up at the cloud-smeared night sky.
That’s when I remember her only experiences of the nighttime before now have been the Choosings and the catacombs, and my anger rears its head again. I swallow. Flex my fingers.
“I’ll show you how beautiful it can be the first cloudless night we get. But for now, let’s get you warm.” I don’t dare touch her again. Not yet. As soon as I do, I know I’ll lose every fraction of control I’ve managed to maintain since she opened her eyes, so I just lead the way up the porch and push open my front door.
Inside, Saskia once again takes her time on the first floor, observing every seemingly mundane thing. But to her, it’s not. When we pass through my kitchen, she trails her fingers along my wood-burning stove, gaping at it like it’s the most fascinating thing in the world.
“Are you hungry?” I ask, my voice tight. Controlled. “I can make you something.”
“No.” She shakes her head. “I just didn’t get a chance to look at these things when I was in the kitchen in the Blood Moon Palace. Whoa.” Her head jerks up, her eyes widening at my living room beyond the kitchen, where the floor-to-ceiling windows stretch from one side of the house to the other. “What a view.”
I glance at the forest spreading beyond the windowpanes before fixing my attention back on her. “Yes, it is.” My eyes skate over her body again, trying to unearth any clues that she’s in distress or pain, but she just hurries toward my spiral staircase as if wooden banisters are the most exciting thing she’s ever seen. Which, considering the hellhole she’s been locked in all her life, maybe theyare.
I flex my fingers again, trying to contain my irritation at everything and everyone who has kept this beautiful woman locked away from a world that could be equally as beautiful.
“Is your room up there?” Saskia asks, maybe a little eagerly as she traces the lower banister with a feather-light touch. “I mean…” She coughs, her cheeks flushing with the loveliest hue. “Not that I’m trying to intrude. I can sleep on the sofas down here if you want. I was just cur—”
“You’re not sleeping on any sofas, Saskia.” I nod at the stairs. “Go on up. My bed’s waiting for you if you want to go to sleep.”
“Oh, I’m not tired in the slightest.” She starts up the stairs, and I’m left staring after the sway of her hips for a moment, viciously trying to shove my desires way down, where they can’t touch me. After such a long night and such a great fall, she should be hungry and fatigued, not practically bouncing on the balls of her feet, fracturing my restraint more and more with each passing second.
Cursing to myself, I follow her up the stairs, where her wide, hazel eyes scan around the room slowly, stopping on each and every thing that graces my walls. My fireplace still simmering with red-hot coals. The glass door that leads to that balcony we saw from below. My bed, situated on a sprawling, four-post frame I made myself when I was twenty years old.
She smiles at everything as if she didn’t almost die a million times in the last twenty-four hours. As if the way she sacrificed herself—fully believing she would perish despite all my attempts to beg her to reconsider—means nothing.
And now my anger simmers, bubbling along my spine as I watch her take everything in, clad in that green dress that I want to rip off her body.
She’s fascinated with my things, and I’m fascinated by her. And we’re finally alone.
