Page 62 of The Unseen Hour

“I suppose I’d to be open to it, if I found the right man.”

He threw a hand over his heart.

“You haven’t found him? I’m wounded. Tell me then, Starlight, what do you require from a suitor?”

“I want someone I can trust to carry my heart. Someone who has the same thirst to learn, and see, and explore. Someone who sees me. Not a Hipnosi, not a woman who needs to mind her place, but me.”

And I’m pretty sure you’re exactly that man.

Orion put a hand on each side of my face.

“I see you, Starlight. Since the moment you got here, it’s been difficult to look at anything else. Your determination, your resilience, and your light.”

“Ry. I never thought I’d find someone like you. Not here, of all places.”

Then again, I’d been upset over the lack of options in Rayus.

A sudden chill tore through me, and I clung to Orion. Fog circled us.

“Bloody ghosts!” Orion cursed. “I have to go.”

I was ready to march up to Charon myself and tell him off for ruining the moment.

“I know. I’ll be here,” I said instead.

I followed him out to the garden, grabbing a few of the purple potatoes while he walked away. He was lost in the trees in a matter of seconds.

Orion returned late the following night with news.

“He’s growing paranoid. He’s still tight-lipped on details, but he mentioned the other meddling deities. Either Death has been pushier than anticipated, or more of them are involved. Either way, he’s said he plans to ‘see for himself’ what state his Shades are in. He’ll be in the Meadow for the next few days.”

In light of that rather large obstacle, we took the opportunity to spend more time in the forest. We hadn’t gone far from the cottage since our slycat encounter, but it was always possible that’s where my father was, anyway.

I’d felt better about his odds among the Shades or hiding in the Meadow than deep in the woods, with predators. Though perhaps the chances were about even.

I shuddered, picturing Father facing an angry slycat and its claws. He was smart, though. An experienced hunter. Surely he would know how to elude predators? After all, if he was in the forest, he’d also remained a secret to both Orion and Charon.

The following afternoon, we wandered through the trees. Just as we’d mapped out the Shades, Orion had sectioned off areas around his home to begin our search of the woods.

The swirling lights were purple and orange in the trees. The day had been pleasant. My hand was firmly in Orion’s, feeling as if it had belonged there all along.

“I used to love being outdoors at home. Riding Pellix, or sneaking off to bother the gardener.”

“At the rate you’ve gone through them all in the evenings, I’d have thought you spent most of your time reading books,” Orion observed.

He wasn’t wrong. I’d read everything on his shelf at least once, and some as many as three times.

I hopped over a log in our path. Taking a deep breath, I decided this was a good moment to bring up a particular book I still hadn’t mentioned. R.’s words had comforted me and drawn me to the Ether. But it was Orion’s words, and more importantly actions, that had caused me to fall for him once I was here. I wanted to be free of this particular secret, which was starting to seem more silly and less serious the longer I held onto it.

“I do enjoy books, but I like being outdoors even more. The year before I ended up here, there was one particular text that I took with me. In the garden, in the sitting room. It was a constant companion. A diary of one of the doomed Holmes brothers.”

He stopped, eyes going wide.

I barreled on.

“I discovered it quite by accident, and I wasn’t the first Hipnosi to do so. My father had written into the margins, between the lines, in every available space. He was working for the royal family, on a mission to try to figure out the king’s disappearance. He thought the answer lay in the Holmes writings. That’s where he got his idea for Thipp’s root as a means to come down here, and where I did as well.”

I kept walking, avoiding his eyes and waiting to see how he would respond.