“I don’t think anyone would report you for cold-blooded murder around here, let alone taking a bath.”
“Lieutenants aren’t exactly supposed to be sleeping in cadets’ quarters when they visit,” he tells me. “We’re breaking a few rules.”
“Never bothered you before.” Letting his assumption that he’s sleeping here slide, I glance up from the book and immediately regret it when I see that he’s shirtless. Gods help me if he strips off anything else.
“Didn’t say it bothered me now.” He stands, his arms full of fresh clothes from his pack. “Just don’t want to see you punished for my actions. I thought they were going to find a way to send you on maneuvers today, or just lock you away.”
“Me too.” Awareness spreads through every part of my body as I lock eyes with him. “I’m sure they’ll find a dark cellar for you next week, so we should try to enjoy this one.”
“You and I have different definitions of the word ‘enjoy.’” He gestures to the books scattered on my floor.
“Not really.” I scan the page quickly and flip to the next. “I think spending the day tangled up in that bed together would be enjoyable, but since you drew your line, here I am with boring, sexless books.”
“Say those three little words, and I’ll have you naked in seconds.” He looks at me with so much heat that I do a double take when I glance up, my breath catching.
“I want you.” All day. Every day.
“Those are not the three words I need.” He slides into my mind like a caress. “And why aren’t your shields up?”
“Well, those are the words you get without full disclosure.” I rip my gaze away. “And it’s just us in here.”
“Hmmm.” He gives me a look I can’t decipher. “I’ll be right back.”
“You don’t really smell,” I whisper, loath to let him out of my sight for even a second.
“Get any closer, and you’ll take that back.” He leaves, and I do my best to concentrate on the book in front of me and not the thought that he’s about to be naked down the hall.
All I have to do is be honest with him about how I feel, and I can have him. His body, at least. But isn’t that all I really had before? Ironic that it’s my truthfulness that can put me out of my own misery when it’s his candor I crave. I guess in that way, we’re alike, both wanting more than the other person is willing to risk.
A few minutes later, he walks back in and the room feels instantly smaller, or maybe it’s the jump in my heart rate making it feel harder to breathe and not the lack of air.
“That was quick.” I’ve only read another twenty pages or so but I don’t bother hiding the two books I need to return. It’s not like he’d know which are mine and which are borrowed. The less I have to hide, the better.
“I could make so many innuendos, but I’ll refrain.” He tosses his things into his pack, then sinks into the armchair and leans forward, bracing his forearms on spread knees. He picks a book up off the floor. “Where are all the books from? You didn’t have this many last year.”
“Mostly from my old room in the main college.” I skim the current page and sigh. This book is mostly scribe-centric stories about the Great War that are heavily redacted, with one vague passage about discovering the ability to extend the wards. “I crated them before Parapet and thought my mother would have shipped them off to storage, but it appears she is more sentimental than Mira or I thought. They were right where I left them.” It had been a surprising discovery. Nothing had been touched in my old room, like I was expected back at any minute. “Really, you should get some sleep.”
Jesinia will be pissed if I miss our appointment.
“Colonel Daxton’s Guide to Excelling in the Scribe Quadrant,” he reads from the spine.
“That one wasn’t as useful as I thought it would be the first time I read it,” I joke.
“I would say not.” He sets the book down and then tilts his head, reading the book I have open in front of me. “The Journey of the First Six, a Secondhand Account.”
“Yes.” My pulse leaps, and my stomach gets the same weightless feeling that usually comes when Tairn makes a steep dive. I should have hidden the damned books.
“Or maybe you want him to know,” Tairn interjects.
“Go…be busy.”
“A class assignment?” Xaden’s eyes narrow when I don’t answer.
“For research.” For some reason I can’t fathom, I draw the line at outright lying to him.
“I don’t remember anything about the First Six being…” A tick of his jaw later, his gaze jumps to mine. “You’re hiding something from me.”
Shit. He knows. Or he guesses. That was fast.
“Violet?” It’s practically a growl. He definitely knows. “Why are you researching the First Six?”
“For Aretia.” I shut the book. There’s nothing in it that’s going to help, anyway.
Xaden draws a deep breath, and shadows extend from under the chair, rolling over his feet like a dark fog.
“For you, really.” The admission is soft.
He stills so completely that I’m not sure he’s even breathing.
“Brennan told you we have a wardstone.” His words are clipped, controlled. The shadows begin moving like hands, gathering all the books around me but the one I’m holding and stacking them. “I’m going to fucking kill him.”
“Why? Because he’s more forthcoming with me than you are?” I close the book. “Relax, it’s not like he gave me your journal or something.”
“I don’t keep one, but that would have been far preferable,” he snaps. “Digging around for information on Navarre’s most classified defense will get you killed.”
“Civilians are fleeing for our borders, no one in Navarre knows the truth, and Aretia needs to defend itself—to protect the people I’m guessing you’re prepared to take in when venin inevitably reach Tyrrendor.” I clutch the old tome to my chest. “You are going to take people in, aren’t you?”
“Of course we are.”
“Good.” At least my faith isn’t misplaced. I glance over my shoulder at the clock on my desk. Twenty minutes until I have to return the book.
“But it’s weapons that are going to defend Tyrrendor.”
“I beg to differ, and I’ll keep researching until I figure out how the First Six put these wards in place so we can duplicate the process in Aretia.” I tilt my chin at him.
“No one knows how it was originally done, only how to maintain them.” He rises from the chair, and his shadows follow as he paces, a barometer for his mood. “It’s a lost magic, and you can’t deny that it was probably lost on purpose.”
“Someone knows,” I counter, tracking his movements. “There’s no chance that someone didn’t leave a record somewhere in case they fail. We aren’t going to destroy the only thing that could save us. We would hide it, but we wouldn’t destroy it.”
“And how the hell do you propose finding that record without letting the scribes know what you’re up to?” he challenges, turning at the edge of my bed with his hands laced behind his neck and pinning me with a stare that might have sent me running last year.
The click of my teeth is audible as I snap my mouth shut.
He takes one deep breath, then another, closing his eyes. “The book you’re clutching like a newborn. It’s not one of yours, is it?”
“It’s currently in my possession.”
“Violet.” I can practically feel him counting to ten in his head for patience.
“Fine. I borrowed it from the Archives. Are you really going to yell at me for trying to help?”
“Who knows?” The question is so soft that I almost wish he would just yell. He’s always at his most lethal when he’s calm like this.
“A friend.”
His eyes snap open. “There’s a reason we don’t fuck around in the Archives. That’s the beating heart of the enemy.” His gaze bores into mine. “We don’t have any friends there.”
“Well, I do.” I stand slowly. “And I’m going to be late to return the book if I don’t head down there now. So why don’t you get some sleep while I—”
“I’m coming with you.”