King Among the Dead - Lauren Gilley Page 0,8

head side to side, reading titles. There were dictionaries and encyclopedias, atlases; nonfiction titles on cities, and animals, and rock formations; biographies, and books about battles from history. Books about anatomy, and psychology, and astronomy. Many, many books about the history of England; seven titles alone about the fabled King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table.

She paused there, hand hovering, ready to pull a book down. She supposed Beck was like a knight – like her childhood imaging of one. There’d been no white horse, only blood, and his armor had been combat boots and leather. But. He’d saved her.

She kept moving, though, and finally found the fiction. A wild and varied assortment of it. Poetry, and slim Shakespeare volumes. Classics and fat, dusty paperbacks from the middle of last century. Popular fiction, New York Times hits, and old romances with embracing couples on their faded jackets. Fantasy, and murder mysteries, and mythology retellings. She finally selected a small paperback with a muted, pastel cover and went to snuggle down in the chair that didn’t have a table beside it – that one she’d marked as Beck’s straight away.

The rain drummed outside, on the sidewalks and window ledges, a soothing backdrop of white noise, and it was easy to slip inside the book and forget who and where she was.

It was the blurb from another author whose name she recognized that had urged her to pick this one: epic love. But she hadn’t known what to expect. The protagonist was a girl her own age, homeless, hungry, on the run, living in a kind of terror that had Rose hunching over in her chair, her stomach tight with empathetic nerves that were all-too-familiar. The girl learned to fight, and scrap, and stay alive, but just barely…and then she met the boy with wings. A beautiful boy with white hair, and white, feathered wings. I’ll keep you safe, he whispered, and when the girl shuddered, Rose shuddered, too.

“Good, Kay showed you the library.”

Rose jumped when Beck’s voice sounded behind her. She was half-out of the chair, clutching the book guiltily when he stepped around into view, hands clasped behind his back, a pair of reading glasses perched on his nose. It was…a distracting visual, in the gray, rainy light.

“I’m sorry,” she blurted, feeling caught. This wasn’t her house, or her library, or her chair, or her book, and even though Kay had said…

But he waved her back down and settled in the other chair. “Sit, please.” Offered another of his small smiles that she was beginning to think of as normal already. “I’m glad someone’s in here keeping the books company.” His honey eyes sparkled, and she finally relaxed back into her chair. “Which one did you choose first?”

She showed him the cover, face heating with embarrassment.

But he said, “That’s a good one.”

“You’ve read it?”

“Oh, yes. Twice. It’s got a nice mix of action, romance, and angst.” He rested his elbow on the arm of the chair, and propped his chin on his fist, shiny lock of hair falling over one eye. “Has Emily met Pietro yet?”

“She just did. That’s the scene I’m reading now.”

“I’m sorry to interrupt, then.”

When he smiled this time, she found herself returning it. It felt strange; she wasn’t used to her lips curving upward.

“I thought we might go shopping now, if you’re amenable,” he continued.

She still couldn’t wrap her head around the idea that he would take a stranger shopping for luxuries. Offer her a place in his home – a permanent one, if the breakfast conversation was anything to go by.

She thought to refuse. It was too much. It was ridiculous. But a yearning, hungry part of her won out. If he was offering, then she would take and say thank you.

She nodded. “That sounds good.”

He didn’t move to get up right away, though. Stayed sitting, studying her, his gaze weighty and impossible to decipher. Rose wanted badly to know what he was thinking. No one had ever looked at her this way, and he had a face worth studying, beautiful but enigmatic.

A long few beats passed in which she didn’t breathe, and then Beck came to life, like a video un-paused, and he sat up, stood up, brushed the creases from his jeans. Offered her a hand. “Shall we?”

It was the second time she’d placed her hand in his; his skin felt warmer this time.

~*~

He pulled two jackets out of the hall closet, oilskin rain slickers with deep hoods and deeper pockets;