“What is with you, Ar?” Mike caught the bitterness in my turned lip, reaching across to take Emily’s hand, despite that she hadn't actually seen me look at her that way.
“Nothing.” I picked up my spoon again and gracelessly shovelled the slop into my gob, stealing myself a moment inside my own head.
The morning light moved across the glossy floorboards of the Great Hall in giant rectangles, spilling over the table and the vampires like they were nuisances in its path, warming one side of the room, giving halos to the heads closest to the giant windows. I turned my gaze to the painting behind me—the giant oil depiction of Lilith mounting the fireplace—and gave her a weak smile, wondering if she’d hated keeping up with appearances as much as I did. She didn’t smile back—not any more than she usually did and, even then, it was fake—a waning smile frozen in time, as if she’d sat for that portrait on a day that had broken her heart. Now, it sat gloriously overlooking the Great Hall and all its occupants, but I got the feeling she just wanted to be covered over and stored in a dark room—away from it all.
A bright flicker of white light flashed across her nose for a second, blinding me as I turned back to face the front. I put my hand up to shield my eyes, frowning at Jase until I saw his smile, saw his gaze flick to the silver culprit, floating a few inches into the air above the table, shining the glare in my direction.
What are you doing?
David looked up. What do you mean?
I wasn't talking to you.
His head turned slowly to look at Jason. “Brother,” he said in a tone so sharp the spoon fell onto the tabletop with a clunk.
Only a few people in their immediate vicinity noticed, but respectfully averted their eyes and attention until David drew his murderous gaze back from Jason. But the sheepish smile Jason flicked my way then made me smile, and now I couldn't quite drop it. It might have been an unofficial, albeit firm, ruling that he and I couldn't be friends, but that didn't mean he was gone. He was still here for me, and I felt that, even if I wasn’t allowed to.
“Yes?” I said, turning to the person who tapped my shoulder, but there was no one there. I looked behind me, beside me, frowning in Morg’s then Mike’s direction every few seconds, wondering if they’d tapped me. And as I turned back to the front, something tapped me again, this time on my left shoulder.
“Stop that,” Arthur whispered gruffly, and metal clanged loudly on the ground by my foot.
Jason laughed, catching my eye, making the burning stare I could feel from my husband hotter as the room silenced.
“That’s two, brother,” David said.
“Apologies, my king.” Jason stood, clearing his throat, and looked down at me. “Can you pass my spoon, please, Your Majesty?”
All eyes slowly drifted from Jason to David to me.
The shoulder-tapping offender lay on the floor by my feet, hesitation rising off it like stilling fumes, turning a simple metal kitchen implement into a do or don’t.
I bent down, grasped it softly and sat straight again, the spoon flat on my palm. “You want it? Get it yourself.”
Jason grinned, accepting my challenge, but instead of using his mind to carry the spoon, defying all laws of gravity, he pushed his chair out with the backs of his legs and walked calmly past each head, defying his king. “My lady.” He bowed, scooping the spoon right out of my palm before turning my hand and brushing his lips across my knuckles in a very polite, but ultimately cheeky, kiss.
Blade and Nathan were the only two brave enough to laugh. Everyone else practically held their breath, and when I looked upon David’s tight jaw as the table chatter slowly resumed again, I feared a little for Jason’s well-being.
He’s just teasing you, David, I thought.
A grey cloud of irritation passed over him. He exhaled, going back to his conversation with a coating of less-than-amused paint reddening his face. Even he knew it was all in fun. Those two had been stirring each other since conception. It was just so funny to see it firsthand.
You shouldn’t press him that way, Jase, I thought, not really sure if David could hear it, too. But if he did, he didn’t bother to look up.
Jason offered an apologetic half-turn of his lip, lifting one shoulder slightly. He looked so cute and boyish then that I laughed, stifling it quickly before David could notice we were ‘interacting.’ Then again, he seemed quite distracted with being king. I could tell from the way he smiled, the way he sat so tall and straight, the way he moved his hands in a slow, regal manner, that he was having the time of his life. He was born for this role, and I was merely a bystander in the awe of his radiance. His people had fallen at his feet, showering him with their love and respect from the moment he came back from the dead. They didn’t really need a queen to guide them out all this time. They needed a king, but not any king. They needed, we all needed, David.
He looked my way for a second, a glance that made me curious about which thoughts he could access in my head. So far, according to him, it was only projected thoughts he could hear, but with that look he just gave me, it seemed as if maybe he was hearing more than he let on.
I smiled to myself, coming up with a clever way to test it, then looked over at Jason and focused only on him.
Jase?
He slowly set his eyes on me, his head staying forward.
I'm going to think something for the purpose of a test. They’re not my real thoughts, okay? I said.
He turned in his seat, intrigue lighting up his eyes and the sudden smile that slipped across his lips.
I tried not to smile back, making my jaw tight as I leaned on my hand and, without sending the thought to anyone at all, told myself how lovely Jason looked in that white shirt, with his hair smoothly brushed back, one thick lock falling against his brow, his bright green eyes casting beams of excitement across my heart every time they met mine. But David didn't even flinch. Nothing. There was no way he could hold the anger in if he heard that kind of thought.
It was confirmed. He couldn’t hear me unless I projected a thought.
Okay, test done. I smiled at Jase.
He bowed his head, touching his heart.The midday sun sat over the manor, offering more shadows in the corridors than light. I pushed the library door open and my eyes went straight up to the top of the bookshelves wrapping the windows on either side of the fireplace. They were normally decked out, packed tightly with brown spines and a party of dust motes dancing in the sunlight. But, today, the shelves were mostly empty, the books piled up on tables and chairs, making small cities over the wood floors throughout both levels of the room.
The new librarian looked up from her pile and bowed her head once before going back to her all-important task of cataloguing and labelling. She hadn’t been made immortal yet, and the sound of her very human heart caught me off guard a little, a part of me wondering then if she was safe in here without a knight on watch. Then again, she was still alive, wasn’t she? No one had eaten her yet. So, I shrugged it off and grabbed the gold railing, my hand sliding over it on the way up the stairs to the second floor. As I reached the top, though, a cold palm cupped my mouth, gagging my scream. The mighty force of my elbow went into the person’s ribs, but he just laughed, dragging me by the waist into a nook between two shelves.
“So what was that all about?” he said, releasing me.
“Jase!” I slapped his chest lightly, not really able to pull my hand back far enough to do it hard in this tiny space. “You scared me. And what was what all about?”
“At breakfast this morning.” He grinned. “That sweet train of thought you went off on.”
“Oh. Um.” I poked my head out and checked down both corridors of the balcony, peering into the lower level as well before sliding back into our little niche. “David has a new power.”
“Broader mind reading.”
“Yeah.”
He ran his hand through his hair. “I knew it. I just knew it.”
“Why do you say that?”
We walked out of the space and into the openness of the library again. “And you were testing if he could read random thoughts?”
“Yeah,” I said with a bit of irritation. “But you didn't answer my question. What do you know about all this?”
He sat down on the armchair by the shelf, sighing. “He can't read random thoughts. But he can read projected thoughts, and not just your projected thoughts, either.”
“Yours too?” My eyes widened.
“Yeah.”
“Oh my god.” I sat down on the lamp table beside him. “Are you serious? I mean, how do you know?”
“I was walking the labyrinth the other day, and our paths crossed. He greeted me as usual and, in my solemn state, I thought how nice it’d be to punch him in the jaw.”
My mouth dropped a little.
“Anyway, it was weird. He kinda . . . he smiled like something was funny, then continued on his way without saying anything.”
“So you think he heard your thought?”
“I…well, yeah. I pretty much screamed it to the gods.” He laughed.
“You hate him—David?”
“No.” His shoulders slumped and he looked down at his thumbs, running one over the other a few times. “I don't. But I wish I had his life.”
I smiled softly. “I didn't take you for the kingly sort.”
“Not his life as king, Ara.” He bumped me softly with his elbow. “If I were David, I would have run away with you, lived a normal life, free of all this.”
I placed both hands gently in my lap, looking around at all this. “It’s safer here.”
“No, it’s not. And David knows that, but he cares more about the throne than he does about—” He swallowed his own words, almost physically choking on them. “I'm sorry. I shouldn’t speak that way about him. I—”
“Jase?” I stood as he walked across the room. “It’s okay, really. You—”
“I better go,” he cut in, turning around to face me again. “I'm not supposed to be alone with you.”
“We’re not alone.” I motioned to the librarian downstairs.
Jase gave her a quick smile, which landed on his feet after. “This is too alone for my brother’s wishes. I’ll see ya at dinner.” He patted my shoulder then disappeared, and I stood for a few moments among the shelves and the smell of old pages trying to remember what I came into the library for in the first place.
The housekeeper said he was in the study, the librarian said he was in the garden, and the gardener told me to look in the Throne Room. But as I climbed the stairs of the Great Hall after searching all those places, I heard him call my name.
“Arthur, there you are.”
“You were looking for me?” He caught up on the midway, casually leaning on the railing when he stopped. He looked like human-Arthur today with his hair still wet from a shower, a white T-shirt over denim jeans, sporting that unshaven look that suited his nephews so well.