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Jules pitched him back towards the bed.
“This is embarrassing,” he mumbled.
He wasn’t sure what response he was expecting, but the one she gave surprised him. “I don’t think youshouldbe embarrassed,“ she said, “given how sick you’ve been. Of course it’s going to take a while for you to build your strength up again. But I think I’d be embarrassed too. I’m not exactly great at relying on other people.”
It was a small admission, but for Jules she might as well have been stripping naked. He let her help him get dressed.
Numerous times she’d assisted him in dressing or undressing when he was too drunk or hungover to do it himself. He’d never cared before, but now he found himself conscious of her brushing his skin, how scrawny he’d become during his illness.
“Are you all right?” she asked. “Your face looks red.”
“Well, I have been very ill…”
“Sure,” she said, buttoning up his shirt. “I’m going to see why breakfast is taking so long.”
Finally, Hawthorn was considered well enough to leave his rooms. He was assigned another guard and Jules was granted a much-deserved break. She disappeared for two days. He couldn’t remember the last time he hadn’t seen her in so long. Even on her days off she was usually still… around.
He didn’t like it.
Princess Serena, his possible future bride, had been removed from the palace the minute he’d fallen ill. Her mothers were very precious about her like that. He had the dimmest recollection of seeing her the first night, but he couldn’t recall. In any case, there was nothing to do whilst she was absent still.
He still didn’t have the strength for revels and formal events, so he retired to his chambers outside of meal times, and sat in the spot Juliana had occupied by the window. It afforded an excellent view of the sea.
The sea.
She’d spoken about it before, how much she longed to visit it. Yet never once in the past two weeks had she ever complained about only being able to see it.
Where else would she have gone?
Certain he knew how to find her—and in an innocent fashion that would not look like he’d been seeking her out—he gave his guard the slip and hurried down to the beach. Fine golden sands stretched towards an azure sea, glistening below a sequined sunset. The tide was low, the waves silken soft, hushed as whispers.
No one was around.
No one except Juliana.
She emerged from the sea like a goddess of stories, as beautiful and fierce as any monster of the deep, her hair a dark flame beneath the dusky sun. Water clung to her slip, illuminating every sharp curve of her. He’d always liked mortal bodies, rounder and less reed-slim than the average faerie woman.
He enjoyed the curves vastly more on Jules.
It wasn’t that he hadn’t noticed before, he’d have to have been blind not to, but there was something about this moment that threw it into stark relief, highlighting every wonderful, awful, distracting inch of her.
He’d heard it said that mortals were frequently struck dumb by the splendour of Faerie, but now he found he was the one rendered speechless by the beautiful mortal creature before him.
“What?” said Jules, stopping in front of him.
It took a painful few seconds for him to find his voice. “The sea suits you,” he managed.
Jules groaned, dropping to the sand where she’d left her clothes, towelling herself dry. “My first day off in two weeks, and you spoil it with your presence.”
“I gave you two days…”
“Are they over already?”
Her barbs prickled in a way they hadn’t before, and he wasn’t sure what to make of that. “How was the sea? Everything you hoped for?”
Jules could only smile, in a way she didn’t very often. He wanted to put his finger against the slight dimple in her cheek, or between the slight lines on her forehead she had from frowning so often, but he did neither, tugging off his shirt instead.
“What are you doing?” asked Juliana.
