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Rochelle tried to focus on breathing through her nose as her tumultuous emotions spiked higher. It hurt to even swallow, and she suspected Lennart’s backhand had actually fractured her jaw. Her whole face hurt, in addition to the all-too-familiar burn of an intense cry. She wanted to heal the injury, but if she summoned up her magic while her emotional state was so unstable something worse could happen.
She remembered what she’d done to Aric’s reading room. In her sleep.
A gentle hand stroked down her hair, startling her, before she registered another presence tucked up against her in the small space.
“Measured breaths,” Aric said quietly. He pulled some of her hair over her shoulder, away from her face, and his other hand settled over one of her own clutching her raised knees. “What happened?”
More tears rushed up, stinging her eyes and choking her throat. He couldn’t possibly have finished whatever he still needed to discuss with the elder Lamont, could he? Did that mean he’d come looking for her? She tried swallowing, to clear her throat or find her voice, but all the action did was increase her pain. A sound somewhere between a moan and a whimper escaped her, and Rochelle couldn’t find it in herself to look for his gaze.
After all he’d done for her in the past several months, she felt like she’d let him down.
Aric curved his arm around her back and moved his hand up to her chin, lightly encouraging her to face him. Even that pressure hurt, though, and she winced. He immediately retracted his hand, lifting it instead to sweep away the other side of her loose hair. “You’re hurt.” He wasn’t asking, and this time his tone held a roughness to it she hadn’t heard since the first day they’d met.
Rochelle reached out as his hand fell away, catching it in hers, and held tightly. She drew a deeper, shaky breath and turned her head enough to let him see her face. The cubby under the stairs was dark, but when the green of his eyes glowed as they were in that moment, she knew he wasn’t looking with ordinary sight—if there was anything ordinary about him to begin with.
This close, even she could see his jaw tighten with displeasure when he spotted the problem. The outward problem, at least.
“Lennart?” he asked in a low, unreadable tone.
She nodded carefully.
Aric gave her fingers a squeeze, then released her hand in favor of wrapping her properly in his embrace. Her face had somehow become tucked into the groove of his throat—uninjured side down—without her registering the movement, and he lifted her from the floor. “Let’s find somewhere more comfortable.”
No other words were spoken as his magic washed over them and the confining nook under the stairs disappeared. For a split-second, all Rochelle knew was the sensation of Aric surrounding her, supporting her. Then the room she’d left her travel bag in back at the Seaside Sleeper came into view around them, just as she remembered it.
Aric set her down on the edge of her bed, then leaned in and ghosted his lips over the swollen swell of her cheek.
Rochelle felt her heart flutter as her breath stuck in her throat. She’d barely processed his tender kiss before it was gone, and as he straightened, she realized the brush of his lips had entirely distracted her from his healing magic. She only knew he’d healed her because the pain was gone. Even the stinging in her eyes had subsided.
Aric moved her bag to the floor at the foot of the bed and took a seat beside her, enough space between them to keep from crowding her. Not enough for either of them to stretch out an arm. “Can you tell me what happened? Why didn’t you come get me?”
She heard no accusation in his questions and hoped that meant the faint narrowing of his eyes wasn’t directed at her. Her heart was still working on recovering from its emotional one-eighty.
Rochelle folded her hands in her lap, mostly to remind herself to keep them there, and explained the altercation that had taken place with Lennart. “I honestly don’t know whether he left or came back inside,” she said as she finished. “I knew I’d get in trouble if I struck back, so I left the situation, but I couldn’t focus well enough to remember how to heal myself.”
Aric laid a hand gently on her shoulder and waited for her to meet his stare again. “Theonlytime I can’t promise you won’t get in trouble for defending yourself is if doing so means striking royalty. While I would prefer you not need to remember that, it’s better that you do, so make sure you hear me.”
Rochelle managed a small smile. “Thank you. That is reassuring.”
Aric inclined his head and lowered his hand to the mattress between them. “And?”
She blinked for a delayed moment. “What?”
“You had every right to be shaken after that scene,” Aric said, “so I don’t want to demean what you may have been feeling, but it doesn’t seem to me that Lamont’s behavior was solely to blame for your reaction.” His brow furrowed as he stared ahead, toward the window. “Is there something else?”
Rochelle dragged in a sharp breath. How was she supposed to explain the answer to that, when she hadn’t yet figured out how or when to tell him everything surrounding it? She tangled her fingers together in her lap and whispered, “It’s stupid.”
Aric reached over and covered her hands with one of his, squeezing. “Nothing that affects you so deeply can be stupid.”
She lifted her gaze to his again and willed herself to tell him at least a fragment of the truth. The truth inside the truth, as it were. She swore, when the time was right, she’d tell him everything. But he was still supposed to be working, so for the time being, this would have to do. “His name reminded me of my father, and I had a poor relationship with my father. My father blamed me for my mother’s death, said often how he couldn’t stand the sight of me and wished I were dead. He eventually killed himself.”
Aric stared at her for a long second, lips a thin line, before suddenly pulling her into his arms in an almost too tight embrace. He threaded a hand into her hair until he’d cupped the back of her head, his other arm curled low around her back, and his voice was a fierce whisper against her ear when he spoke. “Nothing about that is stupid.” He pressed his lips to her temple for a mind-altering second. “And you have no idea how grateful I am for you.”
Chapter Seven
Aric did his best to tamp down on his swirling agitation as he stepped again into Harald’s office. He’d stayed with Rochelle until after lunch and opted not to bring her with him on his return. For as much as he hoped he’d settled her he himself was still of a mind to set Lennart’s skin on fire and laugh while the fool threw himself into the sea in a panic. The disappointment he felt at not encountering the other male alarmed him almost as much as his fury.
He bit all of that back, for the time being, and strode up to Harald’s desk. “Did you get through to Vanarré?” Before he’d left previously, in search of Rochelle and the cause of her distress, Aric had instructed the nobleman to contact the Border Council’s functioning branch office in Yafae’s most notorious trade town.
