Page 139 of Fall of Ruin and Wrath

“I used to.”

“But not anymore?” he surmised.

“No.” Without his focus on the braid, I openly studied the striking lines and angles of his features. “What do you do when— ” My breath caught as the back of his hand brushed against the tip of my breast. The buttery-yellow muslin gown was no barrier to the heat of his touch.

His lashes lifted. Eyes more blue than green or brown met mine. “You were saying?”

“What do you do while you’re at home?”

“Read.”

“What?” I said with a short laugh.

The half grin reappeared. “You seem surprised. Is it that hard to believe that I enjoy reading?”

I reached up to brush his hand away, but my fingers curled around his forearm and remained there. No thoughts intruded, but I did . . . I felt something. The warm whisper against the back of my neck. The sensation I’d felt earlier. Rightness. But was it from me?

Or him?

And what did it even mean?

“Na’laa?”

Clearing my throat, I refocused. “What do you like to read then?”

“Old texts. Journals of those who lived before my creation,” he said. “Things most would find boring.”

“It sounds interesting to me.” Beneath my fingers I could feel the tendons of his arms moving under his hard flesh as he drew his fingers down to the tail end of my braid. “I’ve only ever seen a few history tomes in Claude’s studies.”

“Have you read them?”

I shook my head, realizing that he was being serious. After all, Hyhborn couldn’t lie. Why I kept forgetting that was beyond me. “The pages appear ancient, and I’m too afraid of accidentally damaging them.”

“What else?” His hand left my braid, grazing my stomach to stop along the curve of my waist, and my hand followed as if it were attached to his arm. It was the silent, simple contact I couldn’t let go of. “What else have you wondered?”

If he ever thought of the young girl he’d met in Union City. I’d wondered that many times, but those words wouldn’t come to my tongue. Instead, I asked only what I’d started to wonder today. “If you believed in old legends and rumors.”

“Like?” His hand glided to my hip.

“Like the . . . the old stories of those starborn,” I said, and his gaze shot to mine. “Mortals made divine or something of the sort?”

The blots of brown in his irises suddenly cast shadows against the vibrant blue. “What has made you think of that?”

I lifted a shoulder, willing my heart to remain slow. “It’s just something I heard an older person talking about once. It all sounded fantastical,” I added. “I’m not even sure if it’s something real, so maybe you have no idea what I’m speaking of.”

“No, it was real.”

Was.

I stayed silent.

“And I did believe,” he said.

“What does it even mean though?” I asked.

“It . . . it meansny’seraph,” he said. “And that is everything.”

Everything.He’d said that before, when he spoke of any’chora.