The Gantean (Tales of Blood & Light Book 1) by Emily June Street Page A

and not for the first time, I wished for the darker, thicker skin of a typical Gantean.
    “I didn’t know what else to do. I don’t have my own knife.”
    “No? Why not? Have you no brothers? No lovers?”
    I shook my head. “I knew I needed to signal you, so I found a blade that would serve.”
    Costas plucked up the cheese knife and flipped it once, twice, before catching it again by the hilt. He laughed. “You’re resourceful. I like that.”
    He flicked the cheese knife through his fingers in a complicated maneuver before slipping it up his own sleeve. “You won’t be needing this anymore,” he said without further explanation. He had moved closer to me, closing the space between us until his breath moved tendrils of my hair. Heat emanated from his body, a heat that drew me like a fire in Gantean winter.
    He traced his thumb down the side of my cheek and over my jaw. “Gods,” he whispered. “When I first saw you, I thought I’d been struck by the aetherlumo di fieri.”
    “The what?” I echoed in a similar whisper.
    “Aetherlumo di fieri. It’s an old Amarian expression.”
    “But what is it? What does it mean?”
    He laughed, but would not meet my gaze. “You do not know?”
    I shook my head.
    “How can you not know?”
    “Ghilene would hate that I admit it, but I know very little about—about this court life.”
    “You’re not jesting. You’ve really never heard of it.”
    I flushed. “I’m sorry. I’m—”
    He put a finger over my lips. “Hush. Don’t apologize. It’s only that to explain embarrasses me, a little. Your innocence, it flummoxes me. To be struck by the aetherlumo di fieri is another way to say you have been hit by passionate feeling, love at first sight. When I first saw you, I felt as though I knew you. As though we were attached to one another already, here.” Still trailing his finger across my cheek, he placed his other hand in the center of my chest, and that firm touch struck me more forcibly than the softer caress: I had not known an emptiness lived on my chest until his palm filled it.
    I exhaled. “I—I felt it, too.”
    He slid his top hand to cup the back of my skull and brought his mouth over mine, pinning me against him. The heat that had kept me close to him washed over me, and my body, with a will of its own, melted against his, filling in his angles and gaps. Though startled—completely startled—I did not flinch or shy from his advance. The moment was too thrilling, too sudden and complete, to resist.
    When Costas drew away, he kept one hand tangled in my hair, pulling a strand and winding it around his finger.
    “Good,” he said—though I could not determine to what he referred.
    He loosed my hair and pressed his thumb onto my bottom lip. I remained frozen, for along with his heat, he had some further power over me. His gaze buttoned me to him; I could not move, not when he focused his attention on me so exclusively.
    “Aetherlumo di fieri,” he murmured. “The term came from the mages, you know. It means the fire of the aetherlights. I never thought I would feel such a thing. I have no magic. But there is no mistaking it, not even for such a hopelessly mundane creature as I am. Your aetherlight calls to mine.” He wrapped his palm around the anbuaq on my neck. “But this must be our secret. Tell no one, not yet.”
    “Secret?”’ I echoed, wincing internally. He would think me a halfwit if I could do nothing more than reflect his own words back to him. I was terribly unprepared for any of this.
    “Secrets are my truest luxury. They give me the illusion of privacy in an otherwise public life. You—you will be my precious secret.”
    “All right.” I could understand secrets, and I could understand why he might wish to have them.
    “It isn’t easy for me to snatch private moments like this, you understand.” He took me by the arm and guided me towards the garden’s heavy door. “Tonight I must meet with my father. Tomorrow.