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His mouth tightened, but he picked up the paper and slowly read the prophecy. Once I had a version in English, I set down the pen and crossed my arms on the table, looking the entire thing over.
“It’s credited as 486 PE. What does PE mean?”
Callum set the paper back on the table. “Post Exodus, meaning after the last of the gods and their children returned to Althea and closed the pathways that connect the realms behind them.”
“What year is it now?”
“1156.”
“So whatever this war it references, it could have been the Great War?”
He nodded. “Possibly. I asked the librarians to pull records as far back as the Great Exodus. It could be talking about a more local war, maybe one that happened in the Far Lands, but I thought it would be best to start with the oldest history first and work toward more modern events and see if one lines up.”
“It would be helpful to know which portion this is,” I said after a minute. “If we’re missing before or after this part.”
“I think it’s a portion before this part,” Callum offered. “It feels like there’s something that’s mentioned, something that happens until this blood releases the trammels.”
“Trammels are locks, right?”
Callum nodded. I didn’t really want to know what kind of enchanted locks would require someone’s blood to unlock them. Instead, I looked over the rest of the words.
“A woman sundered,” I muttered. “Isn’t that what that woman said when we first arrived?”
Callum’s brows narrowed. “Which woman?”
“She had blonde hair with snowdrops in her braid. You were making a paper trinket for a child who was watching us as we passed, and I noticed her. She said something to me, and it drew your attention. Then her attention turned to you, and she said something else. Something about salvation maybe? I don’t remember.”
His eyes brightened with understanding. “That’s right. She said ‘a son our salvation’.”
“Beyond that, I don’t really know if anything stands out,” I admitted. “I’m mostly worried about what in that dream made them decide I was supposed to learn about this.”
“Me, too.” Callum pulled one of the books from the stack nearest him. “Maybe something will reveal itself.”
I quietly pulled a different book that looked to be written in Alwesh and flipped it open in an attempt to distract myself with decoding some of it. In reality, though, I was just watching Callum. The way his fingers flexed with each careful page turn, the way he held the fountain pen, the casual grace he used to push the sleeves of his tunic up to his elbows. I now understood at a visceral level why women in romance books went absolutely feral for forearms.
Even if the books had been written in English and a grade was attached to knowing what they said, I wasn’t sure I would have been able to pull my attention from him. More than once, I found myself glancing toward the closed door, wondering if there was a way to lock it.
After an agonizing half hour, I decided it was worth risking some kind of relief from this agony even if there wasn’t a lock. I picked up the book I wasn’t reading and moved to the seat beside him, arranging myself close enough our knees and arms brushed. Wisteria surrounded me in the next heartbeat, and that fire burning in my stomach grew hotter. Callum didn’t resist when I laced our fingers together, a small smile curving his lips even as he continued focusing on a passage in the book he’d been reading this entire time.
I silently slipped the pendant over my head and set it beside the fire jar on the table. Vanilla and oranges flooded the small room, so strong I almost wanted to laugh at the absurdity of it. Instead, I struggled to keep back an embarrassing groan at the desperate edge to my scent that gave away just how miserably I’d been focusing on the books and history.
Callum’s head snapped up fast enough to make even me a bit dizzy. That feeling of being a rabbit caught in the sight of a wolf overwhelmed me again, and I froze.
This was probably way too forward. I should have said something before we’d come here, before I’d agreed to talk about the prophecy when the only thing I really wanted was to trace that tattoo on his sternum I’d only seen glimpses of the last week. Even still, I didn’t pick up the pendant. I didn’t let go of his hand, either.
His Adam’s apple moved as he swallowed heavily. “Amethyst?”
The words fell from my lips without poise or any thought to ensure that they didn’t come across as desperate. Instead, they were a whispered, agonized plea that didn’t care we were in a library and not our bedroom.
“Kiss me.”
To his credit, he didn’t double-check or hesitate. His hands were warm as they cupped my face, the wisteria and pine of his scent the only thing I could smell, could practically taste. But then his lips were on mine, and I didn’t care at all that there was a strange prophecy given to us because I had a dream about my maybe-parents that I hadn’t remembered my entire childhood.
His groan was its own aphrodisiac, racing through my blood like a fire on dried scrub. His lips were hard and demanding against mine, the salt of his skin blended with the lingering sweetness of the tarts he’d eaten. I moved without thought, climbing into his lap and twisting my hands into his hair, arousal so acute it practically burned me I didn’t care my skirt was bunched around my thighs. His touch trailed down my throat and across my shoulders, taking the neckline of the dress with it. Then his lips were there, running across my exposed shoulder. I let my head fall back on a moan.
“This is okay?” The words were rough, like they’d been dragged out of him.
When I nodded, he kissed me again, all teeth and tongue and him. Even as I tried to taste more of him, have more of him, he let his hands fall to the neckline of the dress, carefully easing it to the side. He pushed the utilitarian pair of short stays, too. I gasped as the callouses on his thumb ran across my nipple. Vanilla grew even stronger around us, so dense it felt like I could swim in it. I tightened my hold in his hair and arched toward the touch, desperate for more. Instead, he only slid his touch to my other breast, carefully dropping the dress off that shoulder, too, so that it pooled at my waist. The stays were even faster, the bit of lacing along the back undone before I realized he’d even begun. He shallowed the kiss, and I let my eyes open, focusing on him. A second later, he pulled the entire set of stays away from me and dropped them to the floor behind him.
