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“I, um, no,” she said without peering in his direction, her voice painfully tense. “No, we can’t do that.”
His cheeks burned hot, and he wondered if she thought him scandalous. “I didn’t mean—of course, we can’t sleep here. Of course. It’s just that the bedrooms are very far away right now. I’m tired.”
“Of course.” A little warmth crept back into her voice. She graced him with a tiny smile then. “Before we go, I wanted to thank you.” Her whisper carried across the narrow space between his chair and her rocker.
He straightened and dropped his hands against his thighs. “I’m sorry?”
“For trying to help me.” She stared at the embers as if mesmerized by their scarlet glow, stark against the blackened fireplace. “I realize I have made things difficult for you. I never intended to be here or to cause anyone grief. If I could go back and change what happened in the forest...” She didn’t finish the thought.
He released a tight breath, unaware he had been holding it during her brief speech. Why did it matter so much to him what this girl had to say? A strange tightness in his chest hinted that something wasn’t quite right with him, that this human girl held some sort of magic over him even when humans had no magic to wield. Whatever the cause, whatever the reason, Anrid Fray mattered.
To him. She mattered to him.
“I don’t know you well,” he answered at last, that tightness tugging more painfully. He splayed a hand against his chest as if he might ease the discomfort. “But I suspect you would follow Rig into the forest all over again. It’s in your nature.”
Perhaps that was what drew him to her, her compassion.
She choked on a laugh and met his gaze then, her freckled cheeks rounding beneath eyes that glinted with runelight. “I believe you’re right. When I saw him crying on that stump...”
For the first time, Jael considered the notion that perhaps Rig had not bespelled Anrid and that she had come of her own accord. But, no, she had mentioned a lapse in memory. Rig had broken the rules and summoned her to him. Although he may not have needed to.
Anrid would have come anyway.
Perhaps it made the goblinborn’s actions not so heinous. Perhaps. Another problem for him to stew on later. For now, he filed it away and returned to the task at hand.
“I will walk you to your chamber,” he said around a yawn, one hand massaging the back of his neck as he clumsily found his feet. He hesitated and then offered his other hand to assist her from the rocker.
She studied his hand before raising her gaze to meet his. Then she put her narrow, warm hand into his large one and he realized the truth with shocking clarity.
He liked this human girl.
Chapter 15
The moment Jael’s hand closed over hers, Anrid froze in her rocker.
That had been a mistake, one she had not realized she was in danger of making. But the pressure of his callused palm against hers, the way his strong fingers curled around her chilled ones...
He held her shocked gaze with fierce intensity as if he too felt the power of the moment. The vulnerability of her situation washed over her. She was alone in the dark with a man—no, a goblin—no, with a stranger. And she had freely given him her hand.
That wasn’t the worst of it though. The worst part occurred to her in a slow trickle of clarity.
She liked it.
Her brain whispered that she shouldn’t, that the wise thing to do would be to pull away and put a respectable distance between them. But another voice also spoke to her, one from the secret place inside that longed for love and happiness and a home full of children. A part of her that dreamed of sitting in a room like this one and listening to the thunder of small feet on the floor above. Of holding a brawny hand while sitting beside a warm, intimate fire.
A girl like her shouldn’t allow this moment to continue. Someone else waited for her, and a moment of weakness now could ruin her chances with him.
She wasn’t supposed to be here; as pleasant as this moment was, it couldn’t last. She had duties to perform.
Duties that didn’t include indulging the secret whispers in her heart.
When his thumb rubbed across the back of her hand in a slow, feather-light motion, terror doused her in an icy flood. She yanked free of his gentle hold and scrambled out of the rocker so quickly she almost knocked it over and sent herself tumbling into the fireplace. Had he not caught her, she might have set herself on fire. But he grabbed her by both elbows and spun her so that he stood between her and the smoldering runestones.
To her relief, he released her and stepped away, locking his hands behind his back. A cold, empty expression schooled his features. Something lifeless and aloof replaced the intensity from moments earlier.
“Perhaps,” he said, with forced coolness, “it would be better if we parted ways here. Goodnight, Anrid.” He dipped his head once, eased past without brushing against her, and strode from the kitchen.
Anrid pressed both hands to her flaming cheeks and wondered what in the world had just happened.
