Reign of Shadows (Reign of Shadows, #1)(11)

And apparently I couldn’t identify when a boy stood before me naked either. Strangely enough, this was both a relief and a disappointment.

I bit my lip, my teeth sinking in and clinging deep to the sensitive flesh until I tasted the copper tang of blood. Fowler was naked in front of me. I released my lip and inhaled a raw breath that expanded my lungs.

I lifted my chin as though I wasn’t completely unnerved. My lack of vision had never felt like a handicap before. Not as it did in this moment.

He was naked.

I inhaled his scent and it was stronger, proof that not a stitch of clothing covered his body. The salt and musk of his skin hit me sharper than before—and something else. Another scent that was indecipherable to me. I felt it as much as I smelled it. It was raw and deep and visceral. My skin almost ached from the presence of it, pulling tight and breaking out into gooseflesh. My stomach knotted like a thousand butterflies were rioting inside me.

“What d-did you say?” I demanded as though I hadn’t heard. As though “you can’t see” wasn’t running over and over in my mind.

“You heard me,” he replied evenly, his voice without inflection.

“Of course I can see.” I channeled all my feelings, outrage, shock, fear—other unidentifiable things—into a reaction that I hoped translated into bemusement. Not panic. “Of course I can see.”

He took his time responding. “You’re lying.”

I shook my head.

He continued, “Your face burns red right now, but not before. Not when you first walked in here.”

“You’re wrong,” I insisted.

“No. Not about this I’m not.”

I turned then, managing a shrug.

“Why don’t you admit it? You think I’ll see it as a weakness? Is that it?”

That was exactly what Perla and Sivo thought, but everything in me rebelled at this.

“I’m not weak.” My voice shook out of me, a tremor on the air that seemed to belie my words.

He stepped closer. The air grew thicker and I felt the subtle ripple in its flow as he shook his head. “I know you’re not weak.”

I inhaled. My chest felt too tight. He was close enough for me to touch and the memory of his skin, smooth and hard under my fingers, roped with sinew like one of the rangy wolves that hunted the woods, plagued me. Touching, feeling another human, someone who wasn’t Sivo and Perla, who wasn’t family, was as strange to me as the idea of sunlight that lasted half the day every day.

His voice hit me like sparks popping and flying from a fire. “I won’t hurt you,” he murmured, like he was coaxing a wild animal closer—in this case, me. He was the stranger here. The interloper. It was he who should tiptoe around me.

“I’ll leave tomorrow, and what you are . . . blind or not.” He uttered “not” with heavy skepticism. “It won’t matter.”

“Then why do you care what I am?” I demanded, trying not to reveal how much he had just shaken me. He was leaving tomorrow.

Leaving us to care for the boy and girl, I presumed. Dusting his hands clean and abandoning them both to us. I wasn’t sure if I was bothered more for Madoc and Dagne or simply because he was removing himself from my sphere. He’d filled what had been empty only to remove his presence just as suddenly.

Except I would remember he had been here. In the tomb of my tower, in dark silence, I would remember his voice, his smell, and the way he handled himself on the Outside. His vital energy. His animal intensity. He was what it meant to be alive.

He made the urge to experience life outside these walls pound deeper inside me—stronger than before. I pressed my fingers to my pulse thrumming wildly at my neck.

“Call it curiosity,” he replied.

“You’ll just leave Madoc and Dagne? Abandon them—”

“They’re not my responsibility.”

“They were with you. You were together. How can you be that . . . selfish?”

The air stretched thin, and I felt his stare on my face, harder than before. “This world demands it. Only the selfish survive.”

“I don’t believe that—”

“What do you know of the world? How often do you even step outside these walls? The way Sivo reacted when you returned with me, I don’t imagine very often. You’re blind. You can’t know.”

I hissed a stinging breath. Not only was he selfish, but he was cruel and narrow-minded and he saw too much of the truth. “I left these walls long enough to save your life. Fortunate for you, I was not struck with a surge of selfishness then.”

“I didn’t ask it of you.”

“No, but you took my help, didn’t you?” I swung back around. “My mistake. I wish I hadn’t bothered.” I paused with my hand on the latch. Swallowing, my voice came out thankfully stronger. “Next time I won’t.”

A lie on both counts.

If the same circumstances presented themselves, I would react the same way. I knew that much about me.

“Don’t worry. There won’t be a next time.”

Turning, I stepped from the room, closing the door with a dull thud behind me.

It was a long day.

Perla emerged a few times from my bedchamber for fresh linens and water. I lifted my head in her direction at the first sound of her tread, as though she might reveal something in manner or speech about Fowler. Had he mentioned to her that he knew I was sightless? Had he said anything about me at all?