Total pages in book: 131
Estimated words: 121389 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 607(@200wpm)___ 486(@250wpm)___ 405(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 121389 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 607(@200wpm)___ 486(@250wpm)___ 405(@300wpm)
Arwen’s eyes got progressively wider. “Really?” It was a whisper. “Who?”
Ivan ignored the question, not yet ready to share Lei in any shape or form. “I’ve never had a reaction like this to anyone.” A near compulsion to be with her, to look at her, to hear her voice, to … make her smile. “I missed training on the small chance I’d see her.”
“Okay, I need to sit down.” Arwen gave the ratty old armchair a jaundiced look but took it, then blew out a breath. “It sounds like the beginning of something important.” He looked up, a gentle smile on his lips. “Your shields are sky-high, cousin. You barely even let family in. She must be special to get through your defenses.”
Ivan pushed aside the nagging voice that told him he couldn’t afford to allow anyone beyond his defenses. He was stable, had been stable for nearly two decades. Assuming she accepted him once she knew the truth of him, he was in a position to take this risk, embrace the laughter and the warmth that had stepped unexpectedly into his life. He’d never looked for it, never wanted it, but he couldn’t turn away now that it had found him.
Now that she’d found him.
“She is special,” he said simply. “I don’t know how to be in any kind of a romantic relationship. I’m not good at bonding.” The words were in his medical file, which he’d accessed as an adult. He agreed with them.
Arwen’s lips tugged up. “Ivan, I know that if I ever needed help, I could call on you and you’d turn up, ready to coolly, calmly, extract me from trouble.”
He held up a hand when Ivan would’ve spoken. “You don’t have to be warm and fluffy to bond with people—you just have to be there, loyal and present. It helps if you’re ready to do things that give them joy, but I don’t have to tell you that. It wasn’t Grandmother who got me that introduction to the best tailor in Moscow.”
“Family is different.” He’d grown up with Arwen, had known that he’d appreciate the introduction to the master craftsman. “I don’t know anything about her. I don’t know how to make her happy.”
Arwen’s smile deepened. “That’s the best start. The fact that you want to make her happy. Now just listen to her, and you’ll learn what delights her, what brings her joy.”
Ivan thought of how she’d laughed and colored a little as she’d told him she liked “silly, pretty things,” considered his mental file of her colorful earrings and dresses, the way she’d had little threads of sparkle in her hair today.
He nodded slowly. Maybe he could do this, could actually have a chance at normality in a way he’d never before believed. Because he had a gift for noticing things. Most Mercants did; a side effect of growing up in a family of spies. “Thanks, Arwen.”
Arwen’s smile held none of the snooty elegance he could do so well; it was innocent in a way Ivan had never been. At least not as far as he recalled. Perhaps he’d been the same as Arwen as a very young infant, but it was unlikely. He’d already had the crystalline flower in his mind, had already walked its noxious petals.
“I’m so delighted for you.” Rising, Arwen walked over but stopped before making physical contact; he knew Ivan was even less comfortable with that than most Psy. “You deserve happiness.”
Ivan stared at his cousin with the glass of nutrients partway to his mouth. It was uncanny, how Arwen could say things out of the blue that cut right to the heart. Not until that moment had Ivan so clearly understood that he’d always believed he didn’t deserve any kind of a good life. Not given the ugliness of what lived in his mind.
But he’d reached thirty-two years of age without hurting anyone, and his shields were airtight. The faceted crystal spider was contained. Silence had fallen. He’d never felt any compulsion to take the drug that had stolen his mother. And … Lei existed.
There was no reason for him to walk away. Not yet. Not when there remained a chance that she might not reject him once he showed her the spider that slept inside him.
SHE brought one of her colorful little cat planters to the picnic. The blue and pink striped creature, formed as if it was about to pounce, fit easily on the palm of Ivan’s hand. There was a tiny chip on one paw that spoke of its unknown history, and the hole in the cat’s back was so small that he asked Lei what plant could possibly thrive within.
Laughter in her expression, she held up her hands, palms up. “I don’t know. It’ll be fun to find out. Tell me what you decide.”