…it also means that she’s gaining an interest inmeddling.
We wander through the stacks of the Grand Library, headed toward the section for human picture books. Solvi is skipping, eyes darting around the stacks, a little gold charm dangling off her satchel. When we finally reach the section she’s looking for, she leaves me in the dust, eager to look at the books.
I slump to a seat in a little reading nook and sigh, resting my head back against the couch.
It’s been…a very long three days. Solvi has been demanding—a welcome presence, but a demanding one all the same—and I’ve been watching the lab’s entry logs with rapt attention. Lyn hasn’t tried to return to the lab alone, and she said she was feeling normal; she was even willing to share the assessment results of her brain scan and vitals at the clinic, much to my relief.
Everything is normal.
Or it should be.
Solvi skips over to me, clutching a stack of books that she immediately puts down on the table in front of me. I lean forward, sifting through them. They’re…not quite like the ones she was reading last summer; these appear to feature a couple for the most part, hearts around them.
I frown.
“Are these for children…?”
She rolls her eyes, tendrils flicking. “They’re for teenagers.”
“Andyouare eleven.”
“But I’m almost twelve.”
“Which is still not a teenager.”
She scowls, her eyes narrowing now.
“…Wulfric would let me.”
I smirk. “I find that very difficult to believe.”
We stare each other down for a moment.
She finally flips her tendrils, showing even more sass than her mother ever did.
“Are you accusing me oflying?”
I chuckle. “I’m saying that I’m not sure if you should be reading…what is this?”
“It’s romance,” she says. “But—don’t worry, it’s appropriate, okay? Mata says so.”
That, I do believe.
“Do you want me to learn about love or not?” she asks, appealing now to my ethics as an educator.
She doesn’t realize the answer to that question is a definitive no. “I would actually prefer we put off that conversation for at least another ten years,” I reply.
My answer, I suppose, is absurd enough that she knows I’ll let her do whatever she likes.
She saunters off again.
I close my eyes and listen to the comfortable silence of the library—hushed conversations, whispering pages, the occasionalannouncement over the loudspeaker. My thoughts stray to Lyn—to if she’s okay, to her awkward introduction to my family.
…to her voice when she was on the floor of the lab, begging me…begging…
I open my eyes and lean forward in a hurry, snatching one of the books off the table.
It’s a human text, filled with images in greyscale. Solvi wasn’t lying; as far as I can tell, there is nothing explicit here, nothing I wouldn’t want her seeing. Just…lots of hand-holding and kissing andfeelings.
