“If it’s any consolation, Eldas seemed out of sorts this morning.”
I bet he was, I bite back and enter the throne room.
Eldas is seated on his iron throne. His right ankle rests atop the opposite knee. Balanced on his thigh is a familiar journal. His chin rests lightly on his fist as his eyes dart across the page.
I walk silently over and stand right in front of him. But he doesn’t look up. His strong cheekbones frame his thin lips, pursed slightly in thought to match the slight furrow in his brow. I know what those lips feel like now—not cold, not cutting, but velvet.
I wonder if he doesn’t know I’m here. It would seem impossible, but with such a look of intense focus…
“I believe I need to thank you,” he says, finally. I nearly jump out of my skin as the words echo through the throne room.
“For what?” My mind is still on last night.
Eldas holds up Alice’s journal. “Telling me this existed. I went to retrieve it from the laboratory last night.” He stands and stretches out his arm. “Here. If you don’t mind returning it to the laboratory for me?”
“Did you…finish it?” I ask, crossing over and taking the journal from him. He’s acting normal. But also not. There’s a kindness here, a warmth that wasn’t there before.
Does he want to kiss me again? I can’t tell and I hate that. I want to know him so well that I know every time he wants to kiss me and every time he’d let me kiss him. Do I want to kiss him again? I can’t seem to get my thoughts in order.
“I did.”
“That must’ve taken you—”
“All night.” Yet he doesn’t look any different than normal. His skin is the same shade and no dark circles line his eyes. If looking refreshed after spending all night reading is some elf ability, I am going to feel extremely shortchanged as a human. “It completely enraptured me.”
“Really? I mean, I’m glad.” I try not to let my surprise give him the wrong impression and force a smile. Everything is awkward.
Eldas regards me with a guarded expression. “I would care for the next one you recommend.”
“Pardon?”
“You had others, correct?”
“Yes, but—” Eldas is already crossing the room. “Wait, where are you going?”
“To your apartments,” he says, as if the fact is obvious.
“Excuse me?”
“The other journals are there, yes? I would like to start the next one you recommend. I admit I glossed over some of the more detailed notes on plants, however. So please give me one with more margin notes and personal anecdotes alongside the herbology.”
“All right,” I say, as if this conversation is totally normal. “Actually, come this way.” I start for the door in the back of the throne room.
“But—”
“There are two specific ones I want to recommend to you. Well, three, but I’m not finished with the third yet. The last one I have in my apartments, but the others I’ve already returned to the laboratory.”
“Very well, lead on.”
If he’s trying to be normal then I will also. If he doesn’t want to address last night, then I don’t need to either. Ignoring it is the best, healthiest, most mature response, right? Right.
Hook pushes past me as I open the door. The wolf scampers halfway up the stairs, stopping to look back at me, as if frustrated I’m not going fast enough. He clearly already knows where we’re headed.
“Go on ahead,” I encourage. “We’ll be right behind.”
Hook lets out a small bark and bounds away.
“I started doing some other research last night,” Eldas says.
“Other research?” I laugh. “You had time to research something else and finish that whole journal?”
“I already told you I skipped the sections of herbology,” he says somewhat remorsefully, as if the very idea of not reading every word in a book is embarrassing for him.
“Fair. What is it that you researched?” I assume he wants me to ask. Otherwise, why bring it up?
“If there have been any other instances of Fade beasts wandering into Midscape.”
“And?”
“It’s not entirely unprecedented. But, usually, they do not linger this long. Fade beasts are the animals that were caught between when the worlds pulled apart. They might look and feel mortal…but they are part of the Fade itself.”
“Part of the Fade itself,” I repeat. “So every animal, tree, creature, was trapped in place when Midscape split from the natural world?”
Eldas nods.
“The Fade is almost like a creature unto itself, then. Isn’t it?”