Stranger:. Zoe Archer

She moved lightly, but the timbers were old and creaked with little provocation. Both Catullus and Gemma held themselves still, listening, as Astrid opened the door to her room. The cry she made—a girl’s shriek of unmitigated happiness—caused Gemma’s heart to contract with bittersweet satisfaction. Lesperance gave a low laugh, said something, though his voice was too deep to distinguish words through the walls, and the door to Astrid’s room shut quickly. Then came the unmistakable sounds of two people throwing themselves onto a bed, the headboard knocking into the wall.

      The next few hours were going to be rather noisy.

      Catullus turned from her to stalk the length of the room, but the chamber’s small dimensions made him ricochet from side to side like a bullet in a cave. “I don’t want you to go to Glastonbury.”

      She hadn’t anticipated this abrupt turn in the conversation and struggled to gain equilibrium. “You’ve got no choice. But I can help, and I can fight—not as well as you and Astrid and Lesperance, but good enough.”

      He pulled off his spectacles and rubbed aggressively at the space between his eyebrows, as if trying to push her out of his vision and thoughts. “If anything were to happen to you …” His teeth clenched. “Blades do their damnedest to prevent any civilian casualties.”

      This stung. She had seen herself as more than a naive bystander blundering into the path of danger, a foolish woman who needed constant protection. “I see. I’m just a civilian whose blood you don’t want on your conscience. A liability.” Maybe this was an unfair accusation, but she wasn’t feeling entirely impartial at the moment.

      His breathing changed, hitched. She thought, at first, that he had no response to her accusation. Deliberately, he set his spectacles on the nightstand. Gave them a little push with one finger so they aligned precisely with the table’s edge.

      “You’re more than that to me,” he said lowly. “Much more.”

      His words sent a deep, resonant thrill through her. Yet he did not move, ruthlessly holding himself back.

      She drew a breath. She felt herself hovering in an elemental moment, the suspension between two worlds, with possibility on every side. A single movement from her would cause everything to shatter into shards and dust.

      For almost a lifetime, he gazed at her. And then, something snapped, broke within him. He stalked toward her, halting not a foot away, so that she felt the warmth of him radiating out, filling her senses to repletion. Even without the splendor of his elegant clothing, his presence was a palpable thing, the depths of his intelligence and dynamic force of his body.

      He stared at Gemma, and without the protective shield of his spectacles, his dark eyes were piercing, sharply aware. His gaze delved into her, probing, as though she were a paradox to be solved, and he had but to stare long enough, pick her apart with the precise machine of his mind and a definitive answer would arise.

      Yet she was no equation. No contraption of metal and wood and canvas. She had no single answer—or, at least, she hoped she was more complex than that.

      “I want to know more about you,” he said lowly, his voice a rumble of silk.

      “It’s the same for me,” she answered. “You’re a wonderful enigma I need to understand. Although I believe, in a way, we do know each other.”

      “But—”

      “You think too much,” she said, then stepped around him and doused the candle.