Page 51 of Ex Somnis

A jaw I know from somewhere.

I gasp at the now yellow rose before I look up at him. He’s watching me with his green eyes and his patient, curious expression.

“Are you all right, Lenny?” Tessa touches my arm.

“I…” I swallow. “Yes, sorry.”

He offers me the rose again, and I take it, because refusing feels like more of a statement than I’m ready to make.

“I was thinking we might take a walk. You and I.” He tilts his head at the garden ahead of us, the section we haven’t reached.

I shoot Tessa a look, but she smiles at me and gives a small nod, easy, like this is the obvious next thing.

He turns to the nearest white rosebush, draws a small pair of scissors from somewhere, cuts a stem at exactly the right angle, then holds it out to her. “Would you mind bringing this to Lennon’s mother? I believe she’d appreciate it.”

“Of course.” Tessa takes it, squeezes my arm once, and turns back down the path toward my parents.

I watch her go, standing there with the yellow rose in my hand and the crystal burning against my chest. Something is forming at the edge of my thinking, some thought that keeps almost finishing and then doesn’t.

“Shall we?” he asks.

I look down at my fingers.

Normal.

“You still haven’t told me your name,” I murmur. “That’s a little awkward, don’t you think?”

Amusement flickers across his expression when I look back up at him.

“Lucien,” he says softly.

“Nice to meet you, Lucien.” I’m walking and turning the rose stem as a thorn catches my index finger, and a small bead of blood wells at the tip.

I stare at it.

It doesn’t hurt.

But it should hurt. Not badly, but enough. A sting or a pulse.

I press the finger to my thumb, watching the blood move, and it’s there, it’s real, but the pain that should have accompanied it isn’t.

Lucien stops beside me and takes my hand before I’ve offered it, turning it over gently to examine the small wound. His expression does something, a brief, almost invisible frown, then he blows across my finger, very gently, and the blood is gone.

Not cleaned away or wiped, but gone, the skin smooth and unbroken as if the thorn never found it.

“Looks like you don’t like roses?” He chuckles, raising a brow at my expression, which is probably doing something complicated.

“No, I… yeah. Of course.” I tuck the wrongness of the last thirty seconds somewhere and find a normal thing to say. “Who doesn’t like roses?”

“Most people like them in theory.” He starts walking again, and I fall into step. “What I love about them is the growing and tending to them. You put so much care into something until it becomes exactly what you wanted. The patience of it. The sustained attention.”

A weird feeling spreads in my chest, but I can’t quite place it.

“It’s similar to cooking, isn’t it?” He glances at me. “Putting knowledge and care into something until it becomes what you want it to be. Until the outcome is exactly right.”

“Yeah,” I murmur. “Maybe it is.”

“It is. Skill and patience. The same principles. Not everyone can do it.”