Chapter 27: Love Potion
WINTER TERM - January 5th
It's a Sunday. Which, at the Midnight Court, can mean a lot of things. Like, there will be waffles in the dining hall, or that the clutch of Drakari will go for an afternoon flight if the weather is clear. For me, it's meant staring into the scrying glass to see flashes of home - or at least, it did last term.
Getting disinherited had really put a damper on all that. This morning I'd set the scrying glass on top of my bed and hovered around it. I only needed to focus my attention on who I'd hoped to see and they'd appear, but each thought of home brought with it a wave of hard feelings that made me turn from the glass before I saw anything at all. Maybe it was better not to know.
What happened next was an accident. I'd picked up the scrying glass. I meant to return it to its place atop my dresser and out of the way. I say I meant to, because I'd happened to be holding it on my bed, looking but not really looking...
Was Aries up yet? I wasn't intentionally asking the scrying glass. But already the image of him was forming on the glass.
I know I shouldn't have looked. It didn't even really occur to me that this was an invasion of privacy. It was just Aries suddenly there. He was lying on his side, still in bed, eyelids heavy, half asleep. His room, on the opposite side of the hall, was bathed in sunlight. The light hit his hair, head set against a pillow, turning it to spun gold.
He rolled beneath the sheets, yawned, and stretched his arms up over his head. It was only then I realized he wasn't wearing a shirt.
He had a smattering of downy hair arcing up his chest. This shouldn't have felt like anything significant but I couldn't tear my eyes away. Had I ever really seen him?
He was strong. I knew that already. Broad shoulders, some noticeable muscle, but more than that, I saw the little scars and scratches too. Some were new, or new-ish, the kind that had a twin somewhere on my skin, but then, there were the others - the marks from wrestling werewolves- little scars that never healed right. It ran so counter to the rest of him- the prince, the boy who never second guessed a meal in his life. He was strong, sure, but also soft, lower belly rounded out. His waist was padded out with a layer of fat.
I'd always found him attractive- or at least I did now. When had that started exactly? It doesn't matter. Like his patchy stubble, or the way he made his coffee, I wanted to know every piece of him.
I was leering. I shouldn't have been but I was. Part of me wanted him to kick off his bedsheets to see the rest of him. Can you blame me?