Page 84 of Adam, Mine

Elias nodded and looked down his body to the fire.

Brogan pressed his forehead hard and the bridge of his nose, then laid her hand in the center of his chest. Elias almost remarked that it didn’t feel good and just made his nose hurt, when a sensation rushed over him from the top of his head down.

It was like . . . lying in the rushes would feel like as a child. Just coolness and motion, no choking on splashes or the itch of bugs and frogs. It felt like the wind on a blistering day was traveling the hills and valleys of him.

Elias gasped and arched up into it. He could feel his hands reaching up and Brogan grabbed them, pressing his wrists into her knees so he could brace himself against it.

“Ah, there you are,” Brogan said, and Elias could hear her smiling.

It was still so lush, he wanted to roll in this sensation. Elias could feel tears wet his face for the thousandth time, it seemed. But Brogan was holding his arms and he could not brush them.

The thread was thicker than before, felt stronger, and it buzzed in vibration with greater subtlety. In the madness of his pleasure, Elias strummed it to share this with Victor—or at least to lessen it for himself so he could breathe and think.

He could feel Victor snatching on to the feeling. Gratefulness and delight surged to him from Victor’s side, flavored with tiny pricks of pain.

“Interesting.”

Elias, embarrassed, began to pull back, but Victor yanked him forward, taking of this sensation to help with something going on in his world. Elias just lay there and let him, though it ruined this just a bit.

When Victor let go, the feeling rushed back to him at full intensity. Elias moaned, shamelessly.

“Such a creature,” Brogan said, and released him.

Elias wrapped his arms around himself, still quaking. He felt strange and new, like he’d been scrubbed all over with wire, dashed through hot water, then tossed in the sea.

“Hmm,” Brogan said over his gasping. “Margarite’s child.”

“How do you know my mother?” Elias rasped, fear beginning to leak through this glow.

Brogan shrugged. “I don’t. That is how your soul spells your name.”

Elias closed his eyes and struggled to sit up. “I cannot spell,” he admitted. “The letters move before my eyes.”

Brogan put a hand on his cheek. “Your heart does not need letters to know who loves you.”

Crisp

He was allowed to sleep in an unused bedroom, then pushed outside the door at dawn.

Brogan did not want him weakening her barrier any longer with his “strange energies” as she put it.

She kept calling him an alchemist for the rest of the visit, and it made Elias feel uncomfortable. Brogan was kind and interesting but frightening. He was glad to leave.

As he mounted his horse, she came after him with a wrapped gift and told him he had no need to visit Bradley King. The package was for her apprentice Willem in the Netherlands, who would see him to the end of his journey.

He asked if that meant Willem was to be taking him to Russia, but Brogan refused to clarify. She squeezed his shoe affectionately, because his hand was a bit too high for her to reach. Then she left him, like all the others.

Dawn

People were singing in the tavern beneath the inn as Elias lay in bed too far from sleep. He’d had to wait two days for a boat heading as far as the Netherlands.

Ships to England came and went often, but heading that far north was a special occasion.

Elias liked Ireland, though not as much as Italy. He was aware that it had something to do with the weather. Perhaps he would come back in the summer and see if that changed.

He huffed a laugh, thinking again. Perhaps in the summer. He probably wouldn’t have money for travel next year. This was probably the only travel he would get to have in his entire life.

Elias turned over, rested his chin in his arms, and breathed in the scent of crisp Irish linen.