Page 49

Too Rough

Callum

“Cal?”

Rumi asked, breaking the silence.

As he looked up from his plate and met her eyes, he found her smiling.

And though she was a wan, tired thing, her eyes gleamed like obsidian.

He lifted his brows and smiled back.

“After I am back home, where will you go? Do you have plans?”

His eyes lost focus for a few moments as he chewed.

Then he swallowed, still contemplative.

His cheek twitched, the movement as brief and sharp as a twig snapping.

“I don’t rightly know.”

He scooped bits of egg onto his toast and folded the bread around it before taking a generous bite.

His dark and unsettling dreams from the night before threatened to surface so he took another bite.

“I imagine I’ll find somethin’ to do.

Keep busy.”

“Would you stay?”

Her voice, so filled with yearning, interrupted his thoughts.

Her eyes were shining with sparks of hope so bright that it twisted his heart painfully as her fingers slid across the table and gingerly caressed his knuckles.

“With me?”

Her face was so transparent that he could practically see the wish behind her glittering eyes and the flush on her cheeks.

His kind weren’t welcome among the Arryvian.

He would be the outcast in her world.

She would lose the trust of her people if he remained with her.

What would that be like? She was betrothed.

Zinhar waited for her.

There was no place for him among her trees.

Not unless she gave up her people, her culture, her birthright…

He watched as his hand opened, his traitor’s fingers weaving into hers.

His jaw set as he filled his lungs.

“And Zinhar? Where’s my place there? Cooking your meals? Making sure nobody else takes you while you’re out walking in the trees? It ain’t my place.

Arryvians ain’t my people.

They won’t welcome me; I’m…human.”

“Oh, come now, it would not be like that.”

Her teasing smile made his teeth clench.

His heart ached, cracking all over again.

“You’re special.

Magical.

A queen to be.

I’m nothing, not anymore.

But I am a fast learner, and I don’t need anyone to teach me where I don’t belong.”

He couldn’t, wouldn’t, take anything else from her.

“Well, no…but you would be…with me.”

She stumbled over the words, splotches appearing on her cheeks.

“I could talk to him—to them—and…”

The hopeful expression crumbled like a burnt cookie, dimming her eyes and pulling the corners of her mouth down to form a tight line.

Like a flower closing up, the petals folding tightly together into a shriveled bud, she withdrew.

“Forget I spoke.”

Rumi’s voice was rough and lacked the warmth it often had, and when she tugged her hand away from his, it took the little ball of hope with it.

The squeak from the chair as she stood from the table grated his ears.

Rumi hugged her elbows to her middle and kept her eyes downcast, not looking at Cal, but he could see the devastation on her face.

The swish of fabric and soft thumps of her stockings on the floor announced her somber departure.

Cal couldn’t stop staring at his now hollow hand on the table, the phantom touch of her skin electric where her palm had warmed against his.

These hands knew how to do many things.

Strip a piercer.

Weave desert palms into rope.

He could skin a rabbit in mere moments.

He was a pretty decent cook, too.

They could gouge and maim, even kill when he had no other choice.

Maybe they were too rough to hold a woman’s heart.