Chapter 223: Story of the past
Music Recommendation: A Kind Waltz - James Quinn
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Emily stared at Raylen’s hand, which carefully placed the sharp glass shard on the table. Her eyes then shifted from his hand to his face, watching him as he licked his lips. When his blue eyes shifted to meet hers, she quickly looked away, pretending to be busy looking at the flickering flame of the nearest candle.
"You know, Princess," Raylen drawled. "We still need to bandage your wound."
Emily squeezed her eyes shut for a moment and then raised her foot to place it back on the surface of the couch between them. She asked him, "Are your windows broken too, like mine?"
"No, they are in perfect condition," Raylen responded, leaning forward and opening the first-aid box. "It seems that hailstorms just know how to find the right people to wake up." He picked up the bandage roll and turned back to her. "You see, I wasn’t sleeping."
"Do you ever sleep?" Emily inquired with slight interest. She had known that Dante didn’t sleep very well, and he was often found wandering the palace corridors in the middle of the night as if troubled by something. She wondered if it was an archdemon thing.
"Sometimes, when I have a woman next to me. Their warm blood is like milk, lulling me to sleep at night," Raylen grinned, and Emily wrinkled her nose in response.
"What about other times?" Emily asked, her voice a gentle murmur amidst the sound of the pelting rain.
Raylen’s eyes sparkled with something Emily couldn’t read. It wasn’t very often that the princess showed an interest in his life—in what he did and didn’t do—and it appeared as though the walls she had erected around herself were slowly but steadily lowering, one brick at a time.
"You know, Princess," Raylen began. "When a woman and a man spend a quiet night together like this one, bathed in the soft glow of the candlelight, and everything else is drowned out, one is bound to fall for the other." The underlying meaning of his words didn’t escape Emily.