Total pages in book: 208
Estimated words: 209645 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1048(@200wpm)___ 839(@250wpm)___ 699(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 209645 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1048(@200wpm)___ 839(@250wpm)___ 699(@300wpm)
“Well…yes,” I answered, before I stated the obvious. “I mean, you can’t go in.”
“Why not?”
I wasn’t sure there was time to enumerate all the reasons.
I decided to prioritize.
“You’re a man.”
“I’m your betrothed.”
“That makes you no less a man,” I pointed out.
“Where you go, I go,” he declared.
“Forever?” I asked, my voice pitched higher.
“That is what marriage is, Elena.”
My night was not improving.
“We’re not married yet,” I noted.
“Let’s call this practice then,” he drawled.
“Cassius—”
“You can let me in,” he declared. “You have that power. Am I correct?”
Oh goddess.
“Not any Nadirii can let in a male,” he continued. “It has to be by agreement, sanctioned by the queen, and accomplished by a coven. But the direct royal line can. This is true, right?”
It was.
A nifty trick my many-greats grandmother had given us for reasons she wrote in her diaries had to do with emergencies.
As far as I knew, only one former queen had used it, and that had been to let in a contingent of Go’Doan to assist in healing efforts when an epidemic was threatening our sisterhood.
“Elena,” he said in a warning tone.
“Cassius, I can’t just let you in. Like you said, it has to be sanctioned by the queen.”
“You can send a bird, informing your mother we’re coming. She won’t object.”
“She might.”
“She won’t.”
She wouldn’t. She was very much all for Cassius and I being a Cassius and I.
“She might,” I repeated, though not very convincingly this time.
“Does everything have to be a struggle with you?” he asked.
Truly?
“Does everything have to be a struggle with you?” I asked in return.
He fell silent.
I was beginning to feel somewhat pleased with myself that I might have gotten the upper hand (rightly) when he changed strategies.
“I wish to see your home,” he said quietly. “Meet Dora, finally. See where you live. Where you were raised. Be amongst your people. As dire as it will be, I’ll be giving all of that to you.”
As dire as it would be?
Before I could recover from his quiet, cajoling tone and ask about that remark, he carried on.
“Has True seen your home?” he inquired.
“This isn’t about True,” I replied.
“Has he been in your home?”
I decided not to answer that.
“He’s been in your home,” he muttered.
“You really must stop pushing True between us,” I advised.
“A man has the mother of his future children under him in their bed, there’s another man who has more of her and will always have more of her if she keeps things of herself from her lover that she’s given that other man, then that man will always be between them.”
I could not argue that.
Though True was not between us because I wanted Cassius, Cassius, Cassius.
I couldn’t tell him that either.
“This is actually my bed, you’re just in it,” I mumbled.
“Your bed is my bed, Elena,” he gritted.
I could argue that.
I just didn’t have the energy.
“Cassius, maybe we should go to sleep,” I suggested.
He did not acquiesce to my suggestion.
He asked, “Why did you ask me to go see the pixies with you?”
By the mercy of the goddess.
“Elena,” he prompted.
I’d had enough.
He wanted to know?
I’d tell him.
“Their flight is beautiful,” I whispered, and felt his body go still over mine when he heard the reverence in my tone. “The pixie dust that soars from their wings, the contrails they leave, it’s breathtaking. Especially in the dark. The magic of the forest…it’s always the strongest magic. It feels like home.”
I took more of his weight into me as his body relaxed into mine in a way that was less relaxing and felt more like it was…melding.
I needed to ignore this, and how good it felt, and I did it by carrying on speaking.
“They’re this world within a world. This beautiful culture with their own clothes and music and traditions. I wished to share that with you. And we would be away. Away from the camp. Away from all these people. I like to be social, but I also like to have quiet times, to think, to reflect, to meditate. I do this in nature, staring at the moon or the sun filtering through a canopy of trees. And I thought, if you went with me, I might not be alone, but there wouldn’t be so many people around. I could introduce you to the magic of the pixies and we could talk, away from the activity and all the company of the camp.”
Cassius was whispering too, when he queried, “What did you wish to talk about, my princess?”
“It doesn’t matter now.”
“It does.”
“It doesn’t.”
“You’re very wrong.”
“All right then,” I said quietly. “It did matter. But you made it so it doesn’t matter any longer. Now will you slide off so I can go to sleep?”
“We’re not doing so very well, you and I,” he stated pensively.
“I do not wish to broaden the distance between us, but I’m uncertain that has much to do with me.”