Total pages in book: 142
Estimated words: 134898 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 674(@200wpm)___ 540(@250wpm)___ 450(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 134898 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 674(@200wpm)___ 540(@250wpm)___ 450(@300wpm)
“No. I already had my period.” She wrinkles her nose, glancing up at me even as she pushes my hands away and fastens her pants once more. “But I did want to ask. Sparrow says that Taurians only have a knot during the Conquest Moon. Or is she wrong?”
“Tell me why you fucked me that day and I’ll tell you all about my knot,” I drawl, watching her with a possessive gaze as she straightens her clothing. The more she moves, the more confident I am that she is indeed Sarya. There’s a brattiness to her that shields her vulnerability, and it’s that same thing that attracted me to the mysterious woman I’d touched in the hospital bed.
Her expression grows shuttered, and she hops down off the counter. “That’s my business and not yours.”
“Don’t tell me I’m going to have to finger all your secrets out of you,” I tease, and lick those selfsame fingers as she watches me. Her taste is magnificent.
“Fuck right off.”
She flounces out of the room, and I watch her go with a grin. Oh, this is going to be fun.
Twenty-Five
Gwenna
Dere Ma,
Sorry I haven’t ritten. Training isn’t great. Our teechur is very fond of drills and I am not fond of them at all. I haven’t bene sleeping well. I’m just stressed because it’s important to me that I pass this year. Please don’t worry about me. I will send more money when I can.
Love, Gwenna
There’s a jittery feeling in my stomach all weekend as I keep busy and avoid Raptor. We were supposed to work together, but the tunnel job is completed and I latch on to Marta instead, offering to help her cook up some of the meals she was supposed to make yesterday.
Raptor sits in the kitchen, sharpening his weapons, and never leaves me alone for a moment. He’s the source of my stomach flutters for sure. He watches me closely, and whenever our eyes meet, he gives me a lazy smile, as if he knows all my secrets. Well, he knows one for sure. He knows that I’m the one who had sex with him that day…he just doesn’t know why.
I can’t stop thinking about yesterday, either. When he hoisted me onto the counter and then proceeded to work my pussy with his hand until I came. In that moment, I’d have blurted all my secrets, and the thought of losing my mind simply because he touched me is terrifying. If he finds out that I’m a mancer, is he going to go straight to the guild to demand a bounty of some kind? I don’t know if I can trust him, so I can’t say anything.
Only Sparrow knows my true secret.
I’d been doing a good job of hiding things while in the cavern, or so I’d thought. But then they’d opened up that new room, and a flood of fresh sensations washed over me. There were dead up there. A lot of them, all very long deceased but still echoing in my head and crawling under my skin as if they wanted something from me.
I can’t stop thinking about that, either. How am I supposed to be an artificer if I can’t even go in the blasted tunnels?
After our round in the kitchen, I avoided Raptor for the rest of the night and went to bed early. Today I’m chopping vegetables and making overly chatty conversation with a bewildered Marta, despite doing my best to avoid her for the last several weeks. “I can help out as long as the others aren’t around,” I explain to her, dicing onions with my good hand. “But the moment they return, I have to go back to ignoring you.”
“I understand,” she says in a soft, gentle voice. “You have to be seen as one of them.”
Her words make me want to weep with the acceptance in them. “When we’re done here, though,” I continue, my voice low, “I’m going to tell everyone, especially Mistress Umala, what an amazing job you did. How comfortable you kept the nest. If I pass, I’ll be an artificer, and an artificer that suggests you get a pay raise holds a lot of weight around here.”
“I’ll do the same,” Raptor adds in behind us, reminding me that he’s listening to everything we discuss.
I shoot him a dirty look. “Don’t you have something better to do?”
“I do not,” he says, and runs his blade over the whetstone on the table again.
* * *
Kipp returns early in the afternoon, setting his pack and his shell atop his bed. Marta is cleaning Master Jay’s rooms, so I sit on the end of Kipp’s bed and turn all my efforts to one-sidedly chatting with Kipp while he gives me the slitherskin equivalent of a bewildered stare. Through a few gestures and lots of questions from me, he tells me that he spent all weekend delivering letters. I’ve seen slitherskins moving about the city as couriers, so this doesn’t surprise me. I’ve never known Kipp to do it, though. “Are you saving up for something?”