Page 8 of Velvet Folds (Velvet)
Chapter 8
In Which our Hero Calls Off the Search
I pace my chambers, waiting for the safety of darkness to venture out after her.
She said I can have her nights. Until she proves that promise incorrect, I can refrain from demanding her days as well.
When the sun sets, Tybald waits for me at the entrance to my rooms. His lips are twisted in a scowl, and I know that he has been disappointed today. She was in the last place he would think to look.
“I can bring you no joy this evening,” he says, dipping his head, “I am sorry.”
“Don’t be. You may stop looking for her.”
Tybald’s eyes narrow. “Why? What changed while you slept.”
“She came to me.”
“Impossible.” Tybald doesn’t call me a liar often.
“I fear that sending you to look for her left me vulnerable to her visit.”
“Even when I am not here, the others would not let a stranger get this far into the castle.”
But she is not a stranger here… her scent lingers in the hall. A frequent visitor, but not one who lives here.
Yet.
The thought makes me smile. “You don’t need to worry about her. If she wanted me dead, she had plenty of opportunity to act upon that desire, and she did not.”
He doesn’t like it, but I know Tybald. He’ll accept it. And he does, with a dip of his head, even if he doesn’t agree to it in words.
“If anyone in this castle was going to try to, and then manage to kill me, it would you, old friend.” His smile is pained… he tried to kill me before. He failed.
“Young men do stupid things.” He leaves me in favor of some other task and I—instead of taking my usual route to the tower to start my nightly flight—follow the trail of her most recent visit to my home.
It is purposeful and direct. She doesn’t wander. She knew where to find me and she went directly to my bed, but where she started…
The rose garden caged inside a courtyard of stone looks like a square ruby from above at this time of year.
I imagine I have her to thank for that.
I inhale her fading scent and know I must learn her name tonight.
I need to know what to call the woman who haunts me. I need to know every detail she will allow me to learn.
With a great flap of my wings, I lift into the night to start the task I must perform before I can go to her.