“That does sound fun,” she hedged, struggling to imagine the sheltered, happy-go-lucky Linnea running wild in, say, the New Zone, “but I don’t think I’m going to be able to join you.”
“Why not?” Linnea leaned over to gently but firmly discourage one of the toddlers from testing her fangs on another’s arm.
“Well, I’m…” Camille trailed off.
Gods, she really didn’t have a succinct way of describing the mess that was her life lately, did she?
Linnea sat back on her hands to stare wide-eyed at her friend. “Wait… the rumor isn’t true, right? You’re not contracted to Epifanio Luz are you? You are legally obligated to tell me if you are!”
Camille reared back with surprise. “What? No! Where did you even hear that?”
“It’s all the buzz around the Tower,” Linnea answered, unblinking, as if she feared she would miss some vital clue in Camille’s expression if she dared close her eyes for even a moment. “I heard from Darren, one of the receptionists, who heard it from Julia, the fey who works on the Luz PR team, who heard it from— oh, nevermind, you get it. Anyway, I didn’t believe it, of course. He’s way too old for you. But if you’re too busy to travel the UTA with me, then…”
Camille stroked the silky curls of the toddler in her lap in an effort to soothe her irritation. Clearly, Elio Luz had been running his mouth. Considering she had already decided against his son even before the complications with Viktor, she knew she’d have to deal with that sooner rather than later. No matter what happened with her consort, she wanted nothing to do with the Luz family.
“I am not going to be Epifanio Luz’s spouse,” she firmly announced.
“So you can travel the UTA with me.”
“I didn’t say that.” Camille shook her head, wondering if Linnea really grasped how caged she was. Would her parents even let her go? Would the nursery? She doubted the social pressure to stay would be light.
“Then what? Are you taking a class or something?”
“No, I’m… I am negotiating a union.” Her lapmate began to squirm, so Camille gently let him go. Chunky legs took him all of a few feet before he settled down amongst his fellows and began to chatter away to himself, claws reaching for the foam blocks with more determination than skill.
“Oh.” Linnea gave her a studiously blank look. “What about Vikt—”
Camille felt her cheeks heat with a dark blush. “What about him?”
“I just mean that you had a thing with him when you were teenagers, right? I always got the feeling that you and him had more than you let on. I guess I just figured that with this whole thing with the Sovereign and his healer, you’d…” She made a vague gesture with her hand. “Live a little, maybe?”
Live a little, indeed. She’d done more than a little living last night, and the day of the Summit, too.
Before she could come up with some noncommittal response, Linnea drew a toddler that had begun to fuss into her lap to rain kisses down on her soft cheeks.
Baby fangs peeked out in a wide grin and a rattling, high-pitched purr bubbled out between squeals of laughter. Playfully popping her out of her lap and back onto the grass, Linnea wistfully continued, “I always thought shifters were dreamy. They do courtship so much better than we do. An elf is all grabby and let’s just do it before I flip out. When shifters meet their mates, I hear they write love letters. Can you imagine?”
Camille stilled. “Yeah… I can imagine.”
Chapter Twenty
She didn't text him as soon as she got home. Instead, Camille rushed into the office attached to her suite and frantically dug for the letter she’d angrily discarded amongst the paper copies of all the official, death-related paperwork she had to file in the family vault at some point in the future.
It took her several agonizing minutes to recall where she'd stuffed it. In a fit of ire, strung out on grief, she took the letter Viktor left her and shoved it into a plastic bag before, apparently, dropping it behind several boxes of replacement staples and ballpoint pens in a drawer of the desk.
Sweating a little, Camille sank onto the Persian rug. Her legs splayed in front of her as she eyed the sealed letter in her hands.
Her name stared up at her in slanted, angular handwriting she would recognize anywhere.
She found it partially stuck under the front door the week after her mother died. At the time, she’d been nearly inconsolable and exhausted and furious at the world. The sight of Viktor’s handwriting had nearly compelled her to shred the damn thing as soon as she saw it, but Camille couldn’t quite bring herself to do it.
Instead, she stashed it away, unable to face the reasons why she couldn’t bear to be rid of it.
I hear they write love letters.
But was it a love letter? How did she know it wasn’t just another condolence card, or something equally disappointing? Why did it matter, anyway? What would she do if it was? What would she do if it wasn’t?
Camille gnawed on her lip as she considered the ramifications of opening the bag. She didn’t think his pheromones would stick around on the paper long enough to be a problem, and if they had, they would be in such negligible quantities as to not make much of a difference to her, all things considered.
Besides, an insidious, yearning voice whispered, you aren’t even really trying to avoid him anymore, are you? You didn’t even take an ice bath this morning.
Camille swallowed hard. This wasn’t making a choice. This was just… knowing all the facts before she made a choice.
Sliding the tip of a claw into the seam of the plastic bag, she parted it with a quiet suuuuuhp sound. Immediately, the air in front of her was ever-so-faintly perfumed with his musky scent.
Heedless of the consequences, she sucked in a deep breath. Camille’s slitted pupils expanded to swallow nearly her entire iris before they contracted again.
Gods, he smells so good.
Luckily for her self-control, the thrill was as short-lived as his scent.
Shaking off the brief wave of goosebumps that broke out across her skin, she delicately extracted the letter with the tips of her claws. It seemed very Viktor to use a regular paper envelope instead of, say, a text or an email, and even moreso that he wouldn’t bother properly closing it. He simply tucked the flap inside the envelope rather than peel the paper off of the complimentary adhesive strips inside.
Suppressing a reluctant smile, she gently pulled out the slip of lined paper from inside. It looked like he’d torn it out of a notepad, though this time he took the care to tear off the jagged edge on the perforated line.
It was a single page, folded in half, and inscribed with blue ink in his usual slanted hand. Holding her breath, Camille scanned the writing quickly once, to determine whether it was what she dared hoped it was, before she blanched and read it a second time.
Cam—
I’m not very good with words, but I need to try harder because you deserve all of the best ones.
I know that right now you think the world is ugly and dark. I know that you’re grieving, and that grief doesn’t ever really end. I know that you are hurting by yourself.
I’m here, Cam. I’ll always be here. I’ll be here when you need me and when you don’t. It was the biggest mistake of my life letting you face this world by yourself.