One Dark Window (The Shepherd King, #1)

by Rachel Gillig

My magic moves, he said. My magic bites. My magic soothes. My magic frights. You are young and not so bold. I am unflinching—five hundred years old.

His hands, broad and firm, met me at the dip of my waist, resting a moment on my hips. They were warm, his hands. And I caught myself wondering what the calluses along his palms would feel like against my bare skin.

When our hands touched, heat moved into my cheeks.

KICKING MY FEET

“It’s just that, sometimes when I look at you, I feel like I know you—understand you. And other times…” His brow furrowed. “Your eyes flash a strange yellow color. I feel a stillness about you I do not recognize. A darkness.”

“Of all the things I pretend at,” he said, his thumb drawing small, gentle circles along my waist, “courting you has proven the easiest.”

It had taken Ravyn Yew, Captain of the Destriers, my supposed natural enemy, to make me realize what I truly, deeply wanted. To stop pretending.

You’re running out of time, dear one, he said, slithering past my ears. Tell him how you feel. If you don’t say it aloud, can it ever be real?

“I resisted, Elspeth, because I was already imagining how I might press my finger against your wet lips again, like I had in my room.” He took in a breath, his mouth dropping to my ear. “And that was nothing to the wicked things I was imagining after we argued in the garden.”