After we’d finished eating, I poked at the kitchen fire, carefully taking out a few bits of charcoal as Kael made quick work of cleaning our dishes. I sat down at the table and began sketching in my book, little diagrams of the most common ingredients needed for my potions. After a moment, I looked up to see Kael staring at me with interest.
“I’m having a hard time getting these leaves right,” I said with a frown. As I expected, Kael drifted closer to have a look.
He glanced at me, his brow furrowing slightly. “Leaves?”
“Yes.” I opened my notebook, showing him the crude drawing I’d attempted. “Sage, specifically. I need to identify the plants quickly in the forest, and this…” I gestured at the page with a grimace. “…isn’t going to help.”
He leaned closer, his interest piqued. “Would you like to me help?”
I looked up with a raised eyebrow, feigning surprise. “With the sketches?”
“I have some talent.”
Grinning to myself, I handed him the charcoal and my book, watching as he pulled his chair closer to mine. His movements were deliberate, almost reverent, as he began sketching.
“So, you would like me to draw sage leaves here?”
I nodded, and watched quietly as he spent the next few minutes sketching. The room fell silent except for the soft scratch of charcoal against paper. I found myself captivated by the way his hands moved, the sure, fluid strokes that brought the image to life.
His big hands were gentle as he clutched the charcoal, moving over the paper in sure, slow strokes…
I squirmed in my seat as I thought of where else I would like those slow, gentle hands. But Kael was finally looking more relaxed than he had all week, and I didn’t want to do anything that would scare him away.
Shaking my head, I bent to look at my own notebook, and soon, the two of us were sitting before the fire, quietly immersed in our own work. “There,” he said finally, sliding the notebook back toward me.
I stared at the drawing, my chest tightening. The sage leaf was perfect, every vein and curve rendered with painstaking detail. But it was more than that. The care he had poured into it was palpable, as if he’d imbued the drawing with a piece of himself.
“It’s beautiful,” I whispered, unable to look away.
Kael cleared his throat, his ears tinged faintly red. “It’s just a leaf.”
“It’s more than that,” I said, my voice soft but firm.
Our eyes met, and for a moment, the barrier between us seemed to waver.
That night, Kael stayed downstairs with me, instead of beating a retreat to his room, and later, when we wished each other goodnight, he smiled at me just as he always had. It was almost like things had gone back to normal again.
That was when the dreams began.
Dreams of those big, gentle hands on me, stroking me, touching me, lighting a fire inside me that would not be doused—dreams where he clutched me to him with those hands, his hot breath a whisper in my ear—
I usually woke up hot and bothered.
And deeply ashamed.
I’d thought that now we were talking again, Kael would make his move, but he had stayed distant, if friendly. And then I’d understood: Kael was making it made it clear that he didn’t want anything more than my friendship. Or worse, that all he needed from me was my skill in deciphering the magic books he found.
He must have drawn that picture just for practise.
And here I was, lusting after him.
It had to stop.
So, two days after I’d first started to pay obsessive attention to Kael’s hands, when he said that he was going to go out after supper on one of his long walks, I only nodded. Best that I absorb myself in my work, too. It would help keep my mind off…other things.
Retiring to my room, I spread my notes and my books open on the table there and went to work, trying to make sense of all the magic books he had found in his room.
Kael had been going through all the books in the tower long before I’d come to live here, and I’d seen him making notes in one of the notebooks he kept in his room. I helped him understand what each of the mage’s books contained—he let me keep the books themselves but made notes of his own. I had no idea what he was researching because he didn’t share his notes with me, but then I was used to secrecy when it came to magic.
