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)
Caught them hard.
The pads of his fingers digging.
And he was staring at me through the lamplight, right at me, but also right through me.
It was clear he didn’t see me.
I didn’t know what he saw.
But I knew it was terrible.
“True,” I whispered, lifting a hand between us.
He made no response, just sat there, his grip tight, his eyes haunted.
I had to stop this.
“True!” I called sharply, wrapping my fingers hard around his neck.
With a violent shake of his body, and of me in his hands, his head jerked, and I knew the moment his focus had returned.
“Farah?” He looked down, saw he had a hold on me and his grasp loosened, but he did not let go entirely. “What on—?”
“You seemed to be having an…” What word to use? “Odd dream.”
He stared at my torso.
I tried not to stare at his.
True slept in loose pants made of a lightweight material that were held up by a string tied under his navel.
Although the Dellish way of men dressing—with frock coats and waistcoats and high-collared shirts, some with neckcloths (though True didn’t often wear these) and frilly, lace cuffs frothing out from the sleeves of their jackets (and True did not wear these either, though I had seen a straight edge with a protruding point at the cuff and the wink of a malachite on the shirt he’d worn to Mars and Silence’s wedding)—I felt was actually quite attractive (the way True wore them).
That said, his sleep pants were by far my favorite item of his attire.
Because he looked good in them.
Also because they left his chest bare.
His stomach was trim, flat and boxed.
His ribs were ridged.
His chest defined.
His shoulders dented by the deep cut of his collarbone.
And he was hairless there.
All of this was attractive.
Very attractive.
But it was the veins.
The veins that traced up his forearms and over the bulges of his upper arms.
Though mostly it was the veins that tracked from underneath his sleep pants at his pelvis up the plane of his flat stomach toward his navel.
Not to mention the deep indentations that circled his hips, something I could see as sometimes those pants rode low, and I watched avidly when they did as he walked about my room and then our tent, blowing out lamps of an evening.
He was lean and sinewy up top in a way that, even then, with all that was happening, made my mouth water.
So much, with him staring at my torso like that, my eyes could not deny themselves the opportunity to return the favor.
At first look, I bit my lower lip.
“Farah.”
I forced my gaze back to his.
This was not entirely difficult.
He had the most beautiful green eyes in the world.
“The light is on,” he noted. “Are you all right?”
No.
I was not all right.
My mother was dead.
I was to be made princess of a foreign land, doing this being wed to a man I was falling in love with. A man who was in love with another woman.
And he was plagued by ghosts that haunted his dreams and I had no idea what to do about it.
“I, yes…well, no. You…that is, I was sleeping and…”
It occurred to me as I blathered that this was True.
The only way to make him all right was to make him feel useful.
“We near Notting Thicket,” I blurted.
“Not really,” he muttered. “At this pace, we’ll be there next year.”
I felt my lips quirk for he was right. We were proceeding very slowly.
“We’re nevertheless no longer in Firenze,” I told him.
Understanding, or the understanding I wished him to believe, dawned in his eyes and they grew gentle.
“This is true,” he said, falling back with his hands on me so I fell with him.
He then slid his arms around and cuddled me close.
This was not an unusual circumstance. In fact, I fell asleep in his arms every night.
But he’d never kissed me.
He hadn’t even tried.
He hadn’t even appeared like he was going to try.
“It’ll be all right,” he assured. “And as we’re both awake, I’ll share what I decided earlier. We shall delay our wedding further. At least a month. I’ll speak with mother about it in the morning.”
I lifted my head, which had fallen to rest on his shoulder, to look at his face.
“A month?”
He tipped his chin to catch my eyes.
“I wish you to see the Doors. I also wish you to see the Lights.”
“The Doors and the Lights?”
He nodded and explained.
“The Doors are in the southern part of the Great Thicket Forest. Centuries ago, gnomes made their homes in the trees, using magic. They carved out the trunks and built up, but in so doing, their castings kept the trees alive, which they still are to this day. The gnomes still live in them, and if they allow you in,” he grinned at me, “and they like me, so they allow me in, they’ll show you.”