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Reading the next page, Marek’s brows furrowed. His lips moved slightly as he muttered under his breath. Olivia studied his profile, from his wide forehead to the thick, long lashes to the patrician arch of his nose.
When her eyes landed on his full lips, a shiver ran through her, recalling how they brushed her collar. Her fingers around the tablet tightened and she shifted to get more comfortable.
“It’s a spell for ensuring a healthy harvest,” Marek said without looking at her.
“Oh, okay.” She typed it on the tablet.
Marek moved on to the next page. As they worked, joy suffused her, confusing in its sheer simplicity. She’d always had a weakness for intelligent men, except most intelligent men didn’t look like Adonis.
“Can you speak it?” she asked while watching him sound out the words.
In response, Marek rattled off a bunch of words in a foreign language that sounded lovely. She didn’t know Greek from Latin, so he could totally be making it up, but she doubted it.
“You said your father taught it to you?”
He scoffed. “My father hired tutors. He didn’t believe in teaching his children himself. We were to stay out of his sight unless he needed us.”
Her heart ached for him, ached for the hidden pain under his tough words. She had vague yet treasured memories of her father teaching her to read. She couldn’t imagine her parents not being involved in her upbringing. Did the scars of one’s adolescence ever leave them?
If somehow both she and Betsy lived to be seven hundred, would she ever stop treating Betsy like a wayward younger sister? Would she ever stop picking up after Betsy?
She certainly hoped so.
“You said children. You had siblings? How many?”
“Two older brothers. I’m the youngest.” There was something there, in the way he said the words, in the way his jaw locked.
“Are they vampires?” If they were, she’d love to meet them.
“No, they died a long time ago.” He looked back down at the page and said, “This spell is replenishing grass for cattle.”
Olivia didn’t keep pushing and recorded the translation. They worked until her stomach grumbled, cutting off Marek’s words. Her face warmed as he raised a questioning brow.
“Have you eaten yet?”
“No.”
“When’s the last time you had something to eat?”
Her ire rose at his interrogation. “You’re way too obsessed with my eating habits.”
Annoyance flashed over his features, matching hers. “If I were obsessed, we wouldn’t be having this conversation because you would never go hungry. So, tell me, when’s the last time you ate?”
Another loud growl stopped her comeback. Why was she even arguing with him? She was starving.
Olivia played back the day and grumbled, “Around ten this morning.”
Marek glanced at his watch. “That was twelve hours ago.”
“It’s not that long.” She refrained from mentioning she’d gone more than twenty-four hours without eating before. Making food and eating was a waste of time when she had so many other things on her plate.
“Give me that.” He gestured to the tablet.
“Why?”
“So I can order you some food,” he bit out and snatched it from her hands.
“Hey! That’s mine!” Technically, it belonged to Vegas, but she was using it.
