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Chapter Eleven
If I had to stay in the cafeteria one more minute, I’d be throwing food on everyone. My sense of control was held only by my fingertips, so I turned and raced for the door. Just when I felt like I’d started to fit in a little, something happened to prove me less than prepared to take my place. It took so little to throw me off. Wasn’t it enough that I was struggling just to maintain focus?
The purpose for attending college was to get an education, wasn’t it? To take classes and absorb the materials presented? Teachers in my previous classes had presented their subjects in a variety of ways designed for each student’s learning style. For example, some learned best in a visual way, some by listening, some by speaking...I didn’t know a lot about education, but I did understand that the point was to learn! That was why we often recorded lectures or wrote papers. We read books—why was this place so weird about books?
They had the most extraordinary library I’d ever seen or even heard of. Many of the books weren’t even “books.” They were rolls of parchment or even, as the librarian showed me one day when I was feeling down, inscribed in some kind of ancient ink on animal skins. I couldn’t read those, and even she could only give me the vaguest idea of what they related to, but this collection should be famous worldwide. Every table crowded with scholars gleaning knowledge unavailable anywhere else. Instead, most of those who actually attended the school ignored the books, and the library was usually almost empty.
The headmistress loved the books, collected them...but she didn’t seem to spend much time there, either.
Thinking about the books calmed me down quite a bit, but a roar of laughter from in the dining hall had me moving again. Fast, until I slammed right into a hard chest and all the rest of Zephyr.
“Whoa.” He closed his hands around my upper arms and steadied me. “Where are you going in such a hurry?”
“I-I —”
“And why are you covered with food? Did you trip and fall or something?”
“I’m fine, now. You can let go.” I tried to step back, but he held me still. “Seriously.”
“Not until you tell me what happened.” He let his hand slide down my arms to my hands. “Are you sure you’re not hurt?”
“No, just a mess, and I need to get changed. So if you’ll excuse me?”
His eyes held concern, but he did let go. Of one hand. “I’ll walk you to your suite. I’ve been wanting to talk to you about what happened the other day on the field.”
“There’s no need.” If women wanted to hang all over him, so be it. “I get that things are different here. Fairies can be with whoever they want. But where I was raised, you stayed with one person, at least at a time.”
“I think you sell humans short. They have some pretty crazy relationships, but that has nothing to do with what you saw. That was a coed hitting on me pure and simple. And not with my permission or interest.”
Guilt suffused me. I was making him feel bad about himself while interested in both Bain and him and giving Adair, who was with someone else, far too many interested glances. “Oh, I don’t judge, honest.”
“I’ve always been told, never believe anyone who says ‘honest.’” He led me down the hallway and out a door into one of the many gardens that seemed around every turn. “Are you trying to tell me you weren’t bothered by her? Because I could feel your stare burning a hole in me, and I expected you to come slap that girl silly.”
I dropped onto a bench under an arbor filled with white blossoms. The scent filled my head, adding to his clean masculine fragrance and making it hard to think and impossible to lie. Before I could stop myself, I blurted out, “I wanted to scratch her eyes out.”
“That’s my girl.” He sat as well and brushed his lips over mine, murmuring, “I have to admit, it’s flattering that you felt that way. But you know you don’t need to worry, don’t you?” Then he kissed me in earnest, and I couldn’t even remember what I’d been worried about. His arms closed around me, bringing me against his body. My heart pounded in my ears, and I didn’t care that we were in a public garden where anyone who was finishing dinner could wander out and see us. I looped my arms around his neck and held on.
“I wasn’t really worried,” I told him when we paused to take a breath. “I just didn’t like her attitude. Bitch.”
He chuckled but didn’t say anything. And then I was laughing, too. This world I’d stepped into, one I had been born to join, had rules different than the town where I was raised. It was going to take me time to figure it out, and I needed to stop thinking that I had it all down. If I was having to bring my mind into line for a whole new kind of learning in class, so were relationships going to challenge me. But for right this moment, it was enough to be sitting in a beautiful garden being kissed by a man who dressed all in black and who thought it was cute that I wanted to destroy a woman who flirted with him.
Yet, who seemingly had no concerns about the fact that I was also interested in Bain.
Nissa was way off track. No way could I put a third guy into the rotation, even if he hadn’t been taken. But I had to figure out a way to make sure I didn’t end up coated with food...food! I jerked back and looked at his black T-shirt with dismay. “Oh no! I got you all dirty. I’m so sorry. You make me forget myself. You’re going to have to change clothes, too, now.”
“Do you think I care?”
“I suppose the damage is done.” I tipped my face back. “We might as well keep kissing.”
“If you insist.”
Chapter Twelve
I sat straight up in bed and shivered against the cold that bit at my skin and brought out goose bumps all over me. My comforter and sheets pooled at my feet as shudders racked my body. Even my breath made a funnel cloud in front of my mouth.
I turned, putting my feet on the frigid marble floors, and walked over to the window, expecting snow or a blizzard to greet me that morning, but instead, there was nothing but darkness and the slight glow of the sun deciding whether or not she wanted to make the day happen or not. Robe now in hand, I pulled it over my shoulders and tied the knot tightly. Alara muttered something in her sleep and then rolled over, tugging the covers around her face and burying herself in the warmth of her bed.
With my gaze back outside, my body swayed toward the window as though it were inviting me to simply faze right through the glass and fly away.
