“I would have you go, though,” she added with a wry smile, and his eyebrows shot halfway up his forehead. It was, admittedly, very cute.
“Pardon me?”
“I do believe that following the trail of Princess Selenae, and the half of the crown that she may or may not still possess, falls squarely underyourresponsibility, Sir Victor,” she said, clapping him lightly on the shoulder as she began walking again, heading down the hall toward her quarters. “I have an evil sorcerer to hunt down, remember?”
“I . . . suppose you are right,” he conceded, trailing after her.
“Again,” Elyria added, throwing a smirk over her shoulder.
Cedric pressed his lips together, as though trying to keep inwhatever he meant to say next.
Elyria found she didn’t much care for that. “What is it?”
His steps slowed. “I hadn’t quite considered the idea that our priorities might take us in different directions yet again.”
She stopped walking entirely. “The escort you suggested...you wanted to be part of it?”
Cedric shrugged, casting his gaze to the floor. “Were the king to agree,” he said, shoving his hands in his pockets, “I would have volunteered to accompany you, yes.”
Elyria’s heart clenched in her chest.
“I do not delight in the thought of watching you walk away from me again.”
She didn’t know what to say to that. Or perhaps she did know what shewantedto say, but the words wouldn’t form. She tried to escape the tight feeling in her chest by resuming her steady walk back to her quarters, Cedric falling into silent step beside her.
The two of them stopped only when they’d finally reached her bedroom door.
“This is where we part ways, then,” Elyria said, turning to him. “Just for now.”
His face was painted with something that looked close to misery when she looked at him, an unnamed emotion swimming in the golden-brown depths of his gaze. “Elyria, I?—”
“I don’t quite know what to expect from the king after my admittedly unprofessional outburst, but I suppose I will find out soon enough, won’t I? Do let me know if he decides how he best wants to display his two prizes.” The words burst forth in a flurry, a babble meant to distract. Though, to distract whom? Him, from saying anything that would take this nebulous, unformed thing between them to a place they couldn’t return from? Or herself, from facing the notion that she might just want to go there too?
Elyria swiveled back to face the door, her fingers brushing the handle. “Thank you for the company.” The door cracked open, but she didn’t walk through it. Not yet.
She felt heat at her back as Cedric stepped closer.
“I meant what I said. About not wanting our paths to divergeagain.” His breath grazed the shell of her pointed ear, and it was all Elyria could do not to lean back, to sink into him.
Her pulse quickened. Slowly, she turned around. “I don’t think that’s up to us anymore.”
His answering smile was sad as he drew a hand to her face, brushing a lock of hair that had come loose from her braid off her cheek. “I don’t think it ever was.”
Elyria’s breath caught in her throat as he pressed his palm to the doorframe, warmth radiating off him. He was close now. Closer than he had any right to be. Not close enough. In the periphery of her vision, his forearm flexed, the corded muscles there tense. It stirred something in her, a flare of heat all her own, a tightening behind her navel.
As if he could hear the thoughts forming in her head, Cedric leaned down, his face only inches from hers, his eyes lowering to her mouth. Her shadows stirred, that rattling box in her chest ready to burst open, the emotions she’d kept buried there for months threatening to spill out, to overwhelm her, to consume her.
She wondered what it would feel like if she let them.
It would be so easy, after all.
All she had to do was tilt her head, tip her chin, move a fraction to the right, and her lips would brush his.
And so, that’s what she did.
Elyria pushed up onto her toes, until with just the barest hint, the slightest contact, their lips met.
She pulled back, just far enough to study the glorious rings of gold in Cedric’s warm brown eyes. Just for a second. Half a second. Less.
