“I think your dreki enjoy living here; they were just gushing about their rooms.”
“But if I lived somewhere else when I was here,” he explained, “like my summer place at the beach, they would prefer that.”
“It’s lovely there,” Brenna said with a deep sigh. “You will love the private beach and the flowers and the ocean.”
Oz nodded his agreement.
“I can’t wait to see that,” I said to Varic, taking hold of his hand.
“And I can’t wait to take you, but I have business in Rome, so I’m glad that you’ll spend some time here seeing the sights.”
Had he just said that to me? Like I had come here to be a tourist? “You’re leaving?”
“Not for a couple of days,” he said quickly, as though it was of no importance.
“I could go to Rome with you,” I suggested, hoping that was an option we could discuss. Why on earth he would think that I wanted to come all this way just to have him go off and do something else without me was insane. And if he’d told me this before we left New Orleans, that he had business in Rome, I would have offered to come later, once it was concluded. The draw was not Malta. The draw was Malta with him, to meet his parents and see where he grew up.
“I’ll be busy,” he said, returning my mind to the discussion at hand. “I won’t be able to spend even a moment with you, and when I take you to Rome, I want to show you Rome.”
Just like he was supposed to be showing me Malta.
“I probably should have waited, then,” I said flatly as the others peeled off, leaving us to go to their rooms as we passed them.
“I’m sorry?” he said after a moment, as he began up the stairs with me following behind him.
I looked up at him, at his face as he stared down at me, and then away, trying to figure out what I should do at that point. If I was going to be alone, I’d rather be at home in a place where I had a business to run and friends to spend time with. It made no sense to stay. I could meet his folks and then fly back.
“What do you mean you should have waited?” He wasn’t angry, but the tone in his voice was sharp, as though he were irritated.
There was a small open area with the same windows to the right, and to the left, what looked like a giant sliding steel warehouse door that was open.
“I wish you would have told me you had business in Rome,” I said, stopping, not following after him into the space, not crossing the threshold. “I could have flown out by myself and met you once you were done working. That would’ve made more sense.”
He reached a large oval table with eight chairs pushed in around it, dropped his messenger bag, and then turned to speak to me. It took him a second to realize I wasn’t where he had expected me to be.
“What are you doing?”
I took a step forward to follow, and an overwhelming feeling of dread, of unease, of wrongness, hit me right in the chest. I’d played football in high school, and it was like that, like being tackled, except I wasn’t knocked down.
“Okay,” I murmured, taking several steps back. Not doing that.
“Jason?”
I walked backwards, realizing how tight my chest was, and then turned and went to the window. First, I looked down at a courtyard, and then beyond the palace walls, farther, to other rooftops. The feeling of dread eased in slow increments, the flutter of trepidation and warning. Just the simple movement of not being in the doorway allowed me to breathe.
“What’s going on?” Varic snapped, suddenly beside me.
I crossed my arms, thinking, wondering what I could say that would make sense and not sound like I was attacking. “Since you’re gonna be busy, I think we need to make a new plan,” I said gently, taking another breath.
“Look at me.”
It took a moment for me to be able to, and when I did, I turned my head only a fraction, like I didn’t want to face him, but instead be in a position to run.
His brows pinched as he stared at me. “What in the world is wrong with you?”
I cleared my throat. “When you go to Rome, I’m gonna go ahead and go home.”
“What?” he snapped, reaching for me, and when he did, I took several steps toward the staircase.
“Stop moving,” he ordered, his voice sending a chill down my spine, the hair on the back of my neck standing up.
“Then stay there,” I countered sharply, my back to the window, the adrenaline shot of flight receding so I could think again and try and figure out what was wrong besides him going to Rome.
“I can’t get any closer?”
“Just wait,” I said, looking right to the far wall, then left back toward the stairs, above me where there was a large chandelier I hadn’t noticed until then, and back to the entrance of his space. “Something’s wrong.”
“What do you mean something’s wrong?” he growled at me.
I had to dig down and try and figure out what was out of place.
“What are you—”
“Okay,” I rushed out, turning a bit, angling myself toward him. “Two things are going on right now. The first is that I didn’t come all the way to Malta only for business to take you away. Since that was your plan all along, you should have told me and then let me decide when to come. Because I’m not some courtier of yours who you just leave wherever, and who hangs out and does the tourist thing. I’d rather be home.”
He looked like he was going to say something and then thought better of it, and walked to the window instead. I turned again, shoulder wedged against the glass, leaning as he crossed his arms and stared out at the same scene I had taken in moments before.
“It’s not a big deal,” I said after several minutes of us standing there in silence. “We’ll still do exactly what we came here for. I’ll meet your parents and you can introduce me at court. I don’t know that we’ll have enough time to have that ceremony that you talked about, but––”
“I’m an idiot,” he announced, and the rasp of his voice was a surprise, like he was hurting.
“Varic, I—”
“You’re right,” he said, backing up and then starting to pace. “What the hell was I thinking? I bring you halfway around the world to what, leave you here alone? That’s insane. What’s the point of that?”
I watched him go back and forth, again and again, and somehow the repetition, the normalcy, watching him work things out in his head, was endearing.
“Here’s what happens,” he said, stopping suddenly, talking with his hands, which I really liked. “Sometimes I think too far into the future when I should be focused on the here and now,” he explained, hands in his hair, tugging hard and then hooking one behind the back of his neck as his gaze met mine. “I don’t think about the present a lot, because I don’t think about time being so important. Do you understand?”
It made sense. “I think so. I mean, to you a moment could be a year, because as far as you know, there’s time to do everything. Time is infinite.”
“Yes.”
“And to me, time is the exact opposite.” Something occurred to me then. “May I ask a question?”
“Of course.”