This is an ongoing companion piece to be read after completing the Snakesblood Saga. Because it takes place during the final chapter of the last book, it will be very full of spoilers. It’s also unedited first draft fluff… just for fun! Read at your own risk, and expect installments no closer together than once a month.
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Too much.
Too fast, and too soon.
Rune was not surprised to see his room empty when he emerged, but the disappointment was still there. He ran his fingers through his hair and stared at the simple tunic and trousers that waited at the foot of his bed, folded far more neatly than anything he ever did for himself.
He dressed in silence before he found a comb to drag through his hair. It had gotten long again, but he liked it that way and always had—first because it had irritated those who expected things from him, and later because it felt like freedom after years spent as part of the Triad’s army. They’d insisted he keep it short, lest an enemy catch hold of it on the battlefield, and while he could not say the fact he never felt like himself in those years had anything to do with appearances, it did not strike him as far-fetched.
Now, again, he found himself facing that same quandary.
His hands felt wrong when he took a stack of papers from his usual place at the window. The paper was too rough and his fingertips too sensitive.
There was discomfort, too. His claws and scales had been protection of a sort; without them, he had blisters on palms and the fleshy parts of fingers. He rubbed one with a thumb and wondered how much longer it would be before a decent callus formed.
But the blisters and tenderness did not affect his ability to write, and when he settled on the window seat with a thin board against his legs to support his notes, he grasped his pen the same way he always had. It settled between the terminal joints on his forefinger and middle finger, and while much had changed, his handwriting stayed the same—still loose and swirling, relaxed and smooth.
He’d etched notes into the margins of half the first page before the door creaked open and made him pause.
He had not expected Firal to return.
She lifted a tray in her hands, then ducked her eyes. “I thought you might want to eat something before you slept.”
“I should.” It was easy to forget, when he was invested in a project.
“And then you should sleep,” she added, almost scolding. “In your bed. Not at your desk.”
“I wasn’t planning to go back downstairs.” He had a desk in his private quarters, but it was so piled with notes and books that it wouldn’t have been usable, anyway. Sooner or later, he needed to make time to sort things out. It hadn’t bothered him when the house was his own and the only person there was Rhyllyn. Now, all of a sudden, someone else was in his private space and he found himself self-conscious about the mess.
Firal carried the tray to his bed. “No hunching over notes at the window, either. Come. Sit. Eat.”
He slid from his perch and carried his papers and pen with him. There would be no need to stay at the window if he could take his worth with him. His eyes flicked to his table. That, too, had somehow gotten covered in papers. Hadn’t it been clean yesterday?
The moment he sat, Firal settled next to him and filled his cup with water from the pitcher on the tray. “Your work can wait, you know.”
“I want to present this before Vicamros as soon as I can.” He ate something off his plate without looking to see what it was. His board balanced on his thigh well enough, and he kept writing.
She stared at his hand. “What is that?”
It took far too long for him to realize she meant the pen. He tilted it, letting the fine steel nib glint in the streaming moonlight. “Oh. It’s a capillary pen. The ink draws down from inside.”
Firal shook her head. “Being here is an experience, that’s for certain. Some advancements came to Elenhiise through trade, but it seems we missed a great deal of what the mainland has to offer.”
“One of the benefits of working with a lot of scholars is being first in line to test new inventions.” He cracked a smile and offered her the pen. “It’s far more convenient than ink wells.”
Her fingertips brushed his hand, the brush light as a feather and soft as down, yet it was enough to make his pulse quicken.
How desperately he wanted that—simple proximity and a tender touch. He swallowed against a thickness in his throat and stared at her hand as she drew an experimental squiggle across the top of his page. It folded itself into a star, and its looping tail twisted into a heart.
His chest tightened until he thought he might burst.
“It writes so smoothly. No one will want to use quills at all once these are in common production.” She offered it back.
Rune couldn’t make himself take it. “They’ll be in markets all over the Triad within a few months, most likely. More than a few innovators have come up with something like it, and they’ll be eager to be the first one to have something for sale.”
She smiled, a genuine spark of interest in her eyes. Those sort of smiles had been so rare since her arrival, he dared not look away. “Do you make things like this?”
Somehow, the question caught him off guard. He stared a moment, then shook his head as he finished a mouthful of food. “No. I don’t—I’m more…it’s…civil engineering, I suppose. Bridges. Water supply systems.” He spread a hand toward the papers on his lap and the faint etching of a scar on his palm made him pause.
Odd, how he’d never noticed the mark was on both sides of his hand until after the scales were gone. He’d spared it little thought. Its presence made sense, knowing how he’d gotten it. But in the feeble moonlight, the silvery lines struck him as more stark, and he ran the thumb of his other hand across them.
Firal touched his wrist and he grew still.
Her hand was soft, warm, and he found himself longing to feel it anywhere else. His arm, his shoulder, his back, his face—anything, just to have more contact.
“It’s a worthy purpose,” she said gently. “Peaceful service.”
And that was a harsh criticism, when his hands had only ever known cutting claws and the hard hilt of a blade.
He slid the tray aside, whatever appetite he’d remembered now gone. “Thank you. For the food.”
She withdrew and took the tray from the bed, only to move it to the top of the chest of drawers—one of few places where his books and scrolls and loose notes had note yet taken over. “I’ll leave it here, in case you want more. Don’t stay up too late.”
“You’re leaving?” In spite of how the words hurt, his voice stayed steady. Calm. All but disinterested.
She lingered. “Should I stay?”
Rune dared not move, lest she bound away like a deer frightened in the woods. Again, his hands drew together and he found himself rubbing the scar.
“Yes,” he said, and the single word made his mouth go dry.