“Like?”
I laughed. “I’d rather not embarrass myself by sharing the things that cross my mind.”
“Well, now I’m all the more interested.”
Snorting, I sent him a look.
There was a pause as we neared the wisteria trees. Only then did I realize how far we’d walked. “Do you wonder about me?”
I had, many times over the years, and even more between the time he first appeared in Archwood and his return. Stopping, I trailed a finger over the lavender-hued blossoms. I’d wondered all sorts of random, irrelevant things. I had questions that were far less important than what I should be thinking about then.
“Do you have family?” I asked, which was something I’d wondered. “I mean, obviously not by blood but something similar?”
“Deminyens do have what would be similar to family— to a sibling,” he answered, lifting a hand. His fingers folded around the thick braid of hair resting over my shoulder. “We are never created alone.” He ran his thumb along the top of the braid as he drew his hand down. “Usually there are two or three created at the same time, sharing the same earth, the same Wychwood.”
“So, in a way, you do have blood . . . siblings?”
His fingers reached the middle of the braid, where it crested over my breast. “In a way.”
“And you? Do you have one? Or two?”
In the soft glow of the sōls, there was a tightening to his jaw. “Just one now.” His brows knitted. “A brother.”
“There was another?”
“A sister,” he said. “Do you ever wonder if you had siblings?”
“I used to.”
“But not anymore?” he surmised.
“No.” Without his focus on the braid, I openly studied the striking lines and angles of his features. “What do you do when— ” My breath caught as the back of his hand brushed against the tip of my breast. The buttery-yellow muslin gown was no barrier to the heat of his touch.
His lashes lifted. Eyes more blue than green or brown met mine. “You were saying?”
“What do you do while you’re at home?”
“Read.”
“What?” I said with a short laugh.
The half grin reappeared. “You seem surprised. Is it that hard to believe that I enjoy reading?”
I reached up to brush his hand away, but my fingers curled around his forearm and remained there. No thoughts intruded, but I did . . . I felt something. The warm whisper against the back of my neck. The sensation I’d felt earlier. Rightness. But was it from me?
Or him?
And what did it even mean?
“Na’laa?”
Clearing my throat, I refocused. “What do you like to read then?”
“Old texts. Journals of those who lived before my creation,” he said. “Things most would find boring.”
“It sounds interesting to me.” Beneath my fingers I could feel the tendons of his arms moving under his hard flesh as he drew his fingers down to the tail end of my braid. “I’ve only ever seen a few history tomes in Claude’s studies.”
“Have you read them?”
I shook my head, realizing that he was being serious. After all, Hyhborn couldn’t lie. Why I kept forgetting that was beyond me. “The pages appear ancient, and I’m too afraid of accidentally damaging them.”
“What else?” His hand left my braid, grazing my stomach to stop along the curve of my waist, and my hand followed as if it were attached to his arm. It was the silent, simple contact I couldn’t let go of. “What else have you wondered?”
If he ever thought of the young girl he’d met in Union City. I’d wondered that many times, but those words wouldn’t come to my tongue. Instead, I asked only what I’d started to wonder today. “If you believed in old legends and rumors.”
“Like?” His hand glided to my hip.
“Like the . . . the old stories of those starborn,” I said, and his gaze shot to mine. “Mortals made divine or something of the sort?”
The blots of brown in his irises suddenly cast shadows against the vibrant blue. “What has made you think of that?”
I lifted a shoulder, willing my heart to remain slow. “It’s just something I heard an older person talking about once. It all sounded fantastical,” I added. “I’m not even sure if it’s something real, so maybe you have no idea what I’m speaking of.”
“No, it was real.”
Was.