Page 125 of Glitched Fates & Stolen Mates

“What’s that over there?” Felix asked.

I followed his gaze to my cluttered bedside table. My heart plummeted.

“Oh… it’s…”

“Is that A Dance with Dragons?” His voice was bright with surprise.

Fuck. I should have hidden it. Buried it under the lamp or shoved it in a drawer. Instead, there it was—book five, all dog-eared and annotated, sitting right there alongside the other four volumes I’d already devoured.

“I’m about halfway through,” I mumbled.

Felix twisted to look at me properly, eyebrows raised. “Since when do you read fantasy?”

I rubbed my hand over my face. “I… I saw you reading one of them once. In the kitchen. You looked completely absorbed, so I thought I’d try it.”

The admission hung between us. More tangible proof that I’d been watching him, noting his habits, desperate to understand every single piece of him.

“And I sort of… couldn’t stop,” I added quickly. “The military tactics are brilliant. All the strategy and battle planning. I’ve been annotating the Stark chapters—”

“The show is complete rubbish,” Felix said, settling back against me. “They butchered the ending. But the books are brilliant.” His fingers pressed against my chest. “Wait—you’re annotating?”

I blinked. “Is that… weird?”

“Not at all.” A pause. “Can I see?”

My throat tightened. “You’d want to?”

“Of course. We can compare notes. Though fair warning—if you don’t think Tyrion is the best character, we might have to break up.”

The casual joke, the easy acceptance—it all felt too good to be real.

“I quite like him,” I said. “Though I’m more partial to the Stark chapters. You know, Rory’s obsessed with all the new spin-off TV shows. We could try them, if you want? Watch them together?”

Felix nodded against my skin. “Yes. That sounds fun.” I felt him smile. “Any other creepy stalking-related confessions you want to tell me about while we’re here?”

My stomach lurched. He was joking—I could hear the teasing note in his voice—but the question still made me want to disappear into the mattress.

“I… might have tried to learn some Korean. On an app.”

Felix burst into laughter.

“You do speak Korean, right?” I asked, grimacing. “I guess I shouldn’t have assumed…”

He sat up to face me, his expression becoming thoughtful. “Yes, I’m fluent. Ish. Our mum enforced a Korean-only rule in our house when we were kids. No English at all. Lily and I finally put a stop to it when I was about twelve.”

“How come?”

“Well… our parents met while my mum was working in London, and though my dad moved to Korea with her for years, they mainly spoke English together, so he never quite reached full fluency. He says he has a maths brain, not a language brain. But anyway, because he couldn’t quite keep up with it, it felt inconsiderate to exclude him. Plus it was exhausting being policed all the time.” He shrugged. “Don’t get me wrong, I’m so grateful she gave me the language. But anyway…” Felix’s fingers found mine under the covers. “What words did you learn?”

I wanted to sink through the bed into the floor. “Useless shit. I think I’m currently halfway through the animal unit. I can’t ask directions to the nearest bathroom, but I can tell you the word for cow.”

Felix snorted. “That might come in handy. You never know. One time you might be in Korea being trampled by cows.”

I pulled a face, eyes going wide with mock terror. “Baso!” I shouted, then caught myself. “Wait, no. Amso!”

Felix dissolved into laughter, the sound bubbling up from his chest and shaking both of us. “Oh my God, I hope you never really meet an angry cow. Any other animals you’ve mastered?”

I glanced away for a moment. “Well, I… might have learned squirrel. Because they remind me of you.”