Page 16 of Little Witch

"There's a tree in there. The one from my dreams." I wrapped my hands tighter around the mug. "And Rowan."

The name landed harder than I meant it to. Orias's expression did something complicated and fast, gone before I could fully read it.

"Rowan's back," he said, flat.

"You knew?"

"I felt him cross back into town, so I met him at the border. Didn't want to say anything until I knew what kind of mood he was in about it." He leaned against the counter, arms crossed, studying me with an intensity that made the mug in my hands feel suddenly very interesting. "How was that? Running into your childhood best friend in a cursed forest at dawn."

He said the word friend like it was a lie too.

Only he was smirking at me now and I couldn't work out why.

"Terrifying. Confusing." I took a sip of the wine, warm and spiced and doing absolutely nothing to steady the mess going on in my chest. "He told me to leave. Said it wasn't safe."

"For once, I agree with my brother." Orias's jaw tightened, but he reached out anyway, tucking a strand of hair back from my face with a gentleness that didn't match the tension still sitting in his shoulders. His thumb dragged slow along my cheekbone before he pulled his hand back, like he'd caught himself doing something he shouldn't. "You scared the hell out of me, you know. I didn't know you were gone for a whole ten minutes."

"I know. I'm sorry." I meant it, and it still didn't feel like enough. "I won't do it again."

"You will." He said it without malice, just tired certainty, and the ghost of a smile finally cracked through. "You're exactly as reckless as you've always been, little witch. I've just apparently decided I like you enough to keep forgiving you for it."

We stood there a moment, mugs warming our hands, the kitchen quiet except for the low simmer still going on the stove, and something about the closeness of him, the steady weight of his attention, unwound a knot in my chest I hadn't realized was there.

"I should sleep," he said eventually, voice rough with exhaustion he'd clearly been hiding under the teasing the whole time. "Been up most of the night. Long story."

"Go," I said. "I'll clean up down here."

He set his mug in the sink, pressed a kiss to the top of my head on his way past — the kind of thing he'd done a thousand times before it started meaning something different to me — and headed for the stairs, exhaustion dragging at every step.

I watched him go, watched the whole shape of him disappear up toward the second floor, and felt the words leave me before I'd properly decided to say them.

"Wait."

He stopped on the third step, turning his head back toward me, eyebrow raised.

My heart was going so hard I could feel it in my throat, in my fingertips, in the stupid, reckless place behind my ribs that had been getting me into trouble all morning already. But I didn't take it back.

I didn't take it back because I knew he could hear it anyway.

"Can I stay in your room?"

Something shifted across his face — surprise, and underneath it something hungrier he didn't quite manage to hide fast enough. He didn't ask why. Didn't make me explain the forest, or Rowan, or the thread of fear still sitting cold in my chest that wanted somewhere safe to unravel.

He just nodded.

I set my mug down on the counter with hands that weren't quite steady and followed him up the stairs.

Chapter Nine

Amber fell asleep almost instantly.

I hadn't expected that. I'd half braced myself for a long night of careful distance, both of us pretending the space between us on the mattress was wider than it actually was, some stilted conversation about nothing dragged out until exhaustion finally won. Instead she'd curled onto her side the second her head hit the pillow, breath evening out within minutes, like whatever fear had driven her up those stairs had burned itself out the moment she got where she was going and decided she was safe enough to stop fighting it.

I didn't sleep. I never really did anymore, not properly, not since the whispers had started climbing louder in the Pines. Tonight there was an added, very specific reason for it, lying eighteen inches away from me under my own duvet, breathing slow and even like she belonged there.

I lay on my back and stared at the ceiling and told myself I wasn't watching her. I gave up on that lie somewhere around the twenty-minute mark and just watched her properly instead, because apparently that was the kind of man I'd become — the kind who lay awake in the dark cataloguing the exact rhythm of someone else's breathing like it was a language worth learning.

It was a good thing there was nobody around who could read minds. I was sure I would be in trouble.