Chapter 23: Mommy Save Me! Awkward Puppy Love Gets Real (I’m Excited)

I wasn’t sleeping well. That was unusual for me. Normally, slipping into dreams was effortless—too effortless, some might say—but tonight my body betrayed me. I had woken three, four times already, restless, feverish. My head pounded, my ears rang faintly, my whole body felt weak, hot, as though some quiet fire smoldered beneath my skin.

“Bah,” I muttered inwardly, rolling onto my back. “To hell with it. If I can’t sleep, I might as well pay a little visit to my favorite tavern. A drink never failed me before.”

The thought alone tugged a grin to my lips, though I kept my eyes closed, savoring the delicious, guilty idea of escaping.

Of course, it meant sneaking out. If Serine woke and caught me, I’d get one of her little sermons about responsibility, health, and the dangers of drinking myself blind. Tonight, I was in no mood. My head was pounding enough without her scolding voice rattling inside it.

Carefully, I slid one leg from beneath the blankets, easing my bare foot onto the wooden floorboards. Cold. I winced but forced myself to breathe quietly. One eye cracked open, darting to Serine’s bed—

Empty.

“Well, marvelous,” I thought sourly. “Where in all the hells has she gone?” Perhaps to the privy. Perfect timing. All the better for me. By the time she returned, I’d already be halfway through my first cup of the strongest rotgut this side of Thalosir.

Arkanthos sat on the nightstand, his hollow eyes fixed on me. He didn’t speak, didn’t send a thought, but the silent judgment radiating from that skull was louder than any words.

“Not a word, old friend,” I whispered under my breath. “I need this.”

I didn’t bother with my usual cloak. Tonight I wore only a black short shirt—too short to be fair, it was only shouting indecent girl spotted—anyway, I decided that would do. A little cleavage never hurt anyone, least of all me. If the gods gave me these pair, why not show them every now and then? I thought, without giving importance to the matter that I looked more like a street scort than anything else.

The upper hall of the inn was black as pitch, but I knew every step of it. How many times had I slipped from this room like a thief? More than I could count. To the right was a window, easy to unlatch, and just beyond that, the roof of the neighboring house—low enough to hop down from. My perfect escape route, tried and tested.

I was halfway there when I froze.

Voices.

Low, hushed, threading through the dark like a secret not meant for me. My pulse quickened instantly. Midnight whispers in a boarding house corridor? All my alarms blared at once.

But then—oh, then my other side stirred. The nosy, gossip-hungry devil who loved nothing more than scandal. Romance, trysts, betrayals, whispers in the dark—I lived for them, even if I rarely admitted it. And if I could leverage what I learned later? Well, who was I to waste an opportunity for mischief and profit?

Suppressing a laugh, I crept to the corner, pressing my back against the wall. Carefully, I leaned just enough to see.

Two figures.

One small, candle in hand, its light gilding her features in soft glow. The other taller, broad-shouldered, looming in shadow. They stood close enough that the air between them quivered with something unspoken.

I crept closer, every step measured like a cat on a rooftop. The candle between them painted their faces in quicksilver—soft warm light for her, hard shadow for him. My head still throbbed from whatever fever had decided to sit on me that night, but every nerve in my body woke up at once watching them. I could have turned away. I could have jumped out the window and dashed to the tavern, but that would’ve been boring. Instead I pressed myself to the wall and listened to two stupid, brave people teach me how to love without meaning to.

She started—quiet, bright, the sort of voice that made you want to fold it into your pocket and keep it safe.

“I watched you today,” she said, the words small like careful pebbles. “With Thalen and Maris. And little Elya—she kept asking for you to show her the right way to hold the blade.” Her fingers tightened reflexively around the candle. “You… you knelt for her. You showed her how to stand. You didn’t laugh when she trembled.”

He shifted, a sound of denial that was also a breath. For a moment he tried to be bigger than modesty, tried to hide the softness behind the usual stone. “You must be mistaken. I wasn’t— I wasn’t doing anything anyone should watch.”

She laughed—half embarrassed, half delighted. I felt my smile twitch at the corner like I was about to eat something delicious. “Stop pretending. You were perfect. You made them brave. You—” She swallowed, and then the words came out a little bolder, “—you looked like a big brother. It was… adorable.”

Big brother. Adorable. The two of them could have been a painting—one of those moving little scenes in inns meant to make patrons feel sentimental. I almost snorted. Almost. But I kept my mouth shut and my ears hungry.

He answered with the worst kind of humility: the kind that isn’t false because it isn’t loud. “I’m not a brother to them. I’m not… good at that. I… I don’t know what I’m doing half the time. I was just trying not to make them afraid.”

She refused to let him get away with that. “That’s exactly why it matters,” she breathed. “Because you didn’t make them afraid. You taught them how to stand with the sword and then how to laugh when they dropped it. That’s rare. You made them feel safe.”

He was quiet for a long beat. I watched his jaw work as if there were words grinding inside that didn’t want to come out. Then he said, almost before he knew it, “You watched? You… watched me?”

“Yes.” Her voice was a whisper, like a confession. “I like watching you. You look… warm. Like a hearth. And when you’re training later, you look… manly. Fearless. It’s weird. I… it’s—” She swallowed hard and then laughed, a soft little thing. “It’s ridiculous to feel like this about someone who barely speaks, but I do.”

Ridiculous. I wanted to clap. The air between them thickened; you could have cut it with one of Cassian’s knives. He made a sound—half embarrassed, half pleased. “Manly?” he repeated, and there was the tiniest lift at the corner of his mouth. “That’s not a word I expected to be applied to me, I’m practically a shame.”

She ducked her head, a blush brightening her cheeks. “I don’t know. It’s the way you hold the sword. It looks… right. Like you were born with it.” Her candle trembled in her hand as she said that, wax running hot, but she didn’t look away.

He swallowed. “I… I hate that I like that you tell me you watched me,” he admitted. “It feels… vulnerable.” A sound I could have sworn was a smile cracked something open inside him. “But I like it. I like that you see a different side.”

She lifted her eyes, those big honest things, and smiled so small it was dangerous. “I see you, Cassian. All of you. The part you try to hide—the stern, the wounded—and the part you don’t even know is there, helping children take their first clumsy steps with a blade. I think both of those things are… beautiful.”

He inhaled sharply at that. You could hear the surprise in him like a person catching a falling cup. “Beautiful?” he echoed, bewildered as if she’d used a word from a foreign language.

“Yes.” She moved a hair’s breadth closer, candlelight making the small gold flecks in her eyes glitter. “You’re… adorable when you teach. And then later, when you train alone, you’re… you’re very manly. It’s a strange mixture.”

Manly. Adorable. I felt something like a sweet ache twist in my chest. The tall man’s shoulders dropped a fraction. The candle’s flame licked the air; wax hissed where it met the heat of two people inching closer. I wanted to shout at them both to stop being so earnest and ruin the moment with a stupid joke, but even I, veteran of every drunk flatter and prison witticism, felt the want to keep watching.

He managed a laugh that was half a cough, the sound of someone unused to being praised. “I’m not good with… with being seen. With gentleness. I was taught other things.” He forced the word into the open and it didn’t crack. “But I like that you saw me. I didn’t think anyone would.”

She breathed like someone stepping into warm water. “I’ll watch as much as you let me,” she answered. The sentence was small and fierce. “I like seeing you be kind.”

Slowly, as if testing the gravity, he stepped forward. Candlelight pooled across his face and made him look less like a soldier and more like the kid who’d once learned how to knot nets. I felt the air between them shrink until I could have tied a bow with it.

“Don’t… don’t make me stupid,” he murmured, and if he was trying to be stern it failed. The truth in his voice was a naked thing, and I wanted, for one selfish second, to reach out and protect him from ever being hurt again.

“You’re not stupid,” she said, so quietly that the boards themselves might have cupped the sound. “You’re—you’re brave. You protect. You make people feel safer.” She took another step and her fingers brushed the hollow of his wrist. Her hand was small and steady; he looked as if every coin of strength inside him landed with the contact.

He swallowed. “Serine—”

She laughed, breathless and soft. “Weird thing,” she said. “I’ve never… never expected to be watching someone like this. It makes me feel… giddy.” She looked down only for a second and smiled up again, that shy, whole smile that could disarm an army. “You’re so… handsome when you train. Like a storybook knight who forgot the page on how to be arrogant.”

He let out a low sound that might have been a laugh or a choke. Then he said, with a humility that made me want to barge in and hug him until he stopped being embarrassed, “You make me feel less… hard. Like I can be something softer and still be strong.”

“If being soft lets you teach children and laugh and not be afraid of hurting someone by accident,” she breathed, “then soft suits you.”

At this point they were so close that the candle’s heat brushed them both. I could see the small freckle at the corner of her eye and the tiny scar along his knuckle and how his breath fogged in the cool hall. They were both fumbling like two clumsy birds, unsure whether to fly or stay on the roof.

He reached out, slow as a confession, and tucked a stray curl behind her ear. His fingers trembled—he didn’t mean for them to, but they did. I felt something very sharp and very tender twist in my chest. Her skin warmed under his hand. She closed her eyes for half a heartbeat, leaning into the reach like he was anchoring her to the world.

“You smell like the sea,” she whispered. “And like… wood smoke. Like someone who’s been up all day doing the right things.”

“You’re ridiculous,” he said. Her eyelids fluttered open and she glared at him in that adorable way that said, I’m angry because you were going to make me cry. “And you’re cruel,” she added, softer, and then shook her head because she couldn’t stand how the words were coming out like silk slipping through her fingers.

He laughed—a broken, beautiful thing—and stepped the last inch. Their noses almost touched. The candle between them guttered, casting a halo. The corridor held its breath with us.

I could have dropped my jaw and walked out to the tavern, ruined them both, and made a show of my discovery. I could have shouted a toast, roused the whole inn, and watched them turn red and run. The old, mean part of me loved that idea. But the other part—annoyingly tender and recent—stayed my hand.

Their lips were a hair’s breadth apart. I watched Serine’s breath hitch. I watched Cassian swallow as if his mouth had been full of water and he had to find the dry place on the shore.

I could barely breathe, my heart hammering in my chest as their faces inched closer, closer still—hands brushing, lips hovering like they were caught between gravity and mercy.

Yesss! I screamed inside, biting down on my knuckle to stop from laughing out loud. This is it! This is the good stuff, the scene of the century, and I’m the only one who gets to see it!

And then—

SLAM.

A door burst open down the corridor, spilling a flood of golden lamplight straight over them like judgment from the gods.

Out waddled the fattest, sleepiest man I’d ever seen, shirt half open, belly swinging like a ship’s sail. He scratched his backside with all the dignity of a drunken troll and muttered, half-asleep, “Gods, I’m shittin’ myself—where’s the damn privy?”

The universe has a cruel sense of humor.

Serine and Cassian flew apart as if lightning had struck between them, both of them jerking so violently I thought their necks would snap. Their eyes snapped upward, glued to the ceiling beams, each pretending the other didn’t exist. Two red-faced statues caught mid-crime.

I slapped my palm against my forehead so hard it echoed, then let myself slide dramatically down the wall until I was sitting on the floor. I could feel my soul leave my body from sheer frustration.

You have got to be kidding me! I raged silently, fingers digging into my hair.

In my mind I was already designing the punishment for that fat waste of a person. The worst kind of fucking punishment. Not for Cassian, not for Serine—they were victims too, of course. But, no, this was personal. That walrus of a man had ruined my entertainment, my once-in-a-lifetime front row seat. And for that, he would suffer. Slowly. Artistically. Perhaps I’d start with his shoelaces, or maybe his food supply… something insidious. I’d think of something, oh yes.

I lay there a moment longer, stewing in my misery like a woman cheated of her favorite soap opera finale, until a wicked grin began to curl my lips. Because, really—if fate was going to rob me of the kiss, I still had what I needed. Material. Enough ammunition to tease Cassian and Serine both until the day they died.

I pushed myself up, dusted off my shirt, that worked as a sexy dress, and decided the gods owed me a drink. No—several drinks. And who was I to deny divine will?

So, without another glance at the awkward statues still pretending not to know each other in the hallway, I vaulted through the nearest window, landing on the cobbles below like a shadow with a hangover to plan. Swift, feline, absolutely satisfied.

Tomorrow was going to be fun. Very fun.