He’s just more alive when he’s with you.
Placing the brush on the floor, I closed my eyes and thought of Shea. Had he been that way with her? I doubted he’d donned any masks with her. Most likely, he had been an entirely different person then.
What’d happened to her? All I knew was that the Ascended were involved in her fate. How did she die? How long were she and Casteel together? Did she love him, too?
Of course, she did.
Even with little to no experience, I knew better than to travel down that road. I’d seen how Casteel reacted before, and while I might not have ever been in a relationship or loved, I knew people either wouldn’t or couldn’t talk about certain things. Things that could only be shared with those you loved, those you truly trusted.
I think you’re heartmates.
There was a snag in my chest as I bit down on my lower lip. After learning about the Joining, I knew Kieran was totally off-base on the whole heartmates thing, but I still wanted to travel that road with Casteel. I wanted to know about who he used to be before he lost Shea, lost his brother. And I wanted to know all of that because I…I cared about him. Because I’d never stopped falling.
Gods.
I was in so much trouble.
And there was a high likelihood that Alastir had realized what I had when we spoke. That Casteel hadn’t trusted me with the knowledge of Spessa’s End. Worse yet, there was no way he believed our engagement was real.
Sitting with my head tipped back and eyes closed was how Casteel found me when he walked into the room. Impossibly, all thoughts I’d been wrapped up in vanished, replaced by what I made up my mind to do.
“What are you doing?” he asked, and I heard the door close behind him.
“Brushing my hair.” Straightening, I opened my eyes, but I didn’t turn around.
“Wouldn’t you need the brush in your hand to do that?” He sounded closer.
“Yes.” A hundred silver hawks fluttered in my chest.
A moment later, he was sitting beside me, one knee bent and the other curled, resting against mine. Slowly, I looked over at him. The moment our gazes connected, the air whooshed out of my lungs. I didn’t know if it had to do with what Kieran had told me or everything else.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m sorry about this morning—about losing control like that. It will never happen again.”
My skin pimpled. His apology was unexpected, but I wasn’t sure if I wanted it. What happened seemed mostly out of his control, and his apology…it made me respect him. I nodded.
“I planned on talking to you earlier than this. I came back after…well, I came back, and you were gone.”
“I was with Kieran,” I told him. “We went down to the Bay and then had breakfast.”
A faint smile appeared. “I heard.”
My brows lifted. “You did?”
He nodded. “The people here told me.”
I didn’t point out how the people here hadn’t spoken to me during our brief encounter but felt the need to report to him that they had seen me.
“I came back to see if you had returned as soon as I could.”
“It’s okay.” I swallowed. “Thank you for the bath.”
“I should be the one thanking you.”
“For what?”
“For knowing how to reach me this morning,” he said, and heat raced across my face.
I toyed with the end of the sash as I glanced at him. Words rose and died on the tip of my tongue. He stared at the flames, the lines of his face nowhere near relaxed. Something occurred to me then, in my desperation to not think about this morning. “Whenever you introduce me to people, why are you so insistent that no one refers to me as the Maiden?”
“That’s an incredibly random question.”
It was. “I’m beginning to realize I’m an incredibly random person.”
The half-smile returned. “I like it. Forces me to stay on my toes when I’m around you. But to answer your question, the less people think of you as the Maiden, the more they will think of you as the half-Atlantian who’s captured my heart.” There was an odd hollowness to his words, and when he looked at me, I noticed faint blue shadows under his eyes. “And the less likely they will be to want to harm you.”
I nodded as I opened my senses to him. The connection was shockingly fast, and within a heartbeat, his hunger hit me—his hunger and his sadness, the latter more bitter than normal, and heavy—so damn heavy. He hadn’t felt that way earlier. Was it because of what’d happened this morning or something else?