You Are Special to Me
One toast after another, a cup pressed into her hand by everyone who wanted to congratulate her, and somewhere in the middle of it Nina lost track of herself entirely.
Huh?
When she came to, she was in a bedroom. A bedroom she had never seen.
Wondering which part of the castle it could possibly belong to, Nina pushed herself upright.
Oh. Nightclothes.
When had someone changed her?
No—more to the point, I slept through being changed? Am I that weak to drink? Or was I just that tired?
Nina looked around the room.
Black Shield Castle was a fortress built for defense, and so it had none of the splendor or beauty of Silver Lake Castle. Solid stone had been raised, course upon course, against the day a battle came. The windows were small, and shutters hung over them besides, so the room lay in a general gloom. There was almost no ornament to speak of. There was, however, a balcony, and Nina opened the shutter that led out onto it.
"Could you find where Adrian is?"
At the request, a wind came whistling in. Following where the North Wind led, she leapt across several balconies and arrived at Adrian's bedroom.
She knocked, politely, on the balcony door. No answer. She knocked again, and a moment later the door opened.
Adrian stood there in a robe, a sword in one hand. He looked at her perched on the balcony rail and sighed.
"Couldn't you have come through the door?"
"Coming by the balcony is more romantic, isn't it?"
Nina laughed, bright and shameless, and rose from the rail.
"Come in."
He stepped aside as he said it, and Nina hurried inside.
His bedroom was no more decorated than the one she had left. The furniture was large and plain, and nothing more. The bed, it seemed, lay past yet another door hung with a curtain.
Adrian slid the sword back into its scabbard.
"Can't sleep?"
His manner was far less reserved than when other people were around.
Nina smiled, just a little.
"No. I woke up. I wanted to see you, Young Master."
Adrian let out a short breath of a laugh and turned away. He sat on the sofa and patted the cushion beside him.
"Come here."
Nina did not sit beside him. She settled on the floor instead and laid her arms, and then her head, across his thigh.
"Doing this again."
Adrian squinted down at her. Nina paid him no mind.
"This is secretly nice, you know. Acting spoiled. You should try it next time, Young Master."
"But like this, all I can see is your hair. I want to see your face, Nina."
At that, Nina lifted her head, giggled, and quickly took the seat beside him.
Her hair was so long and so smooth that even through all of that it never tangled. It simply slipped free and fell back into place.
"Who changed my clothes?"
Nina looked down at the nightclothes as she asked, and Adrian answered.
"Kirill."
Nina's face grew rather grave.
"Is it that bad? There's no maid you can trust to do it?"
"Yes."
Nina turned that yes over in her mind.
"Then we just fill the place with decent ones, don't we?"
"How?"
Nina grinned.
"Leave it to me. Just trust me."
She said it smiling, bright as anything, and somehow the tension went out of Adrian's shoulders.
"There are candidates."
He had not spent these two years idle.
"And I've set money aside."
The austerity at the castle had not been for nothing.
"I'll give you discretion over both."
For a moment Nina had no answer. Then she whispered, teasing.
"Don't you trust me a little too much?"
"You are someone special to me, Nina."
"I know."
She answered as if to ask why he was troubling to say something so obvious only now.
Of course they were special to each other. For so long, each of them had had no one but the other. But now there was Jin, and there was Sir Louis. If the world grew wider from here, wouldn't their side grow with it?
She did not want his world to end as a world of only two.
Even so, she knew what those quiet, pale-pink eyes were asking of her, and so she spoke.
"You are very special to me, too."
"I know. You've always told me so. But I never said it."
He had only understood after she was gone.
"So I want to say it now. And I want you to know."
Nina stared at him. In the dark, those pink eyes looked a deep crimson. Eyes the color of rose quartz looked straight back at her.
Even in shadow, the delicate beauty of his face held a clear line, like a statue carved and set there. All over again, Nina marveled at him. A body that seemed lean was in fact firm, the frame broad in a man's way, the proportions perfect. Dressed, he was flawless. Undressed, he would only be more so.
A late thought, but he really had grown up well.
She was looking at him with a strange swell of pride when he reached out. His hand traced her cheek, brushed the corner of her eye, pressed lightly once against her pink lips, and fell away.
He smiled, slow and warm.
Nina took the weight of those words in slowly.
The Adrian she had known in the original story trusted no one. He smiled brightly and kept the same careful distance from everyone. In the novel, the phrase that followed him was the most aristocratic Duke of Rubuaene—polite, elegant, and impossible to be sure would not put a sword through your back. Enemies stood on every side of him, and there was not one person he could believe.
But we had come this far.
The stage of trust.
Nina smiled, reached out, and pulled him hard into her arms.
"I trust you, too."
"Good."
Adrian laughed and patted her back. When Nina drew away, he said, "Wait a moment," went farther into the room, and came back carrying a small box, which he held out to her.
Nina opened it without hesitation, and her eyes went wide.
"Wait—this? How do you have it?"
Inside lay an old hair ribbon. The ribbon the Duchess had taken when she cropped Nina's hair. The one her sister had made for her—the only thing of her family she had ever owned.
"I'm sorry."
At that, Nina looked up. Grown as he was now, Adrian wore the same stricken face as he had then.
"Why are you sorry? It was the Duchess who was awful."
She did not need to have seen it to know how hard he must have searched for this ribbon.
"Thank you, Adrian."
Nina set the box on the table and yanked him toward her. Caught off guard, Adrian ended up with his head in her lap.
"There. You did something good, so I'll praise you."
Nina stroked his hair. It was fine black hair, so good that it was almost a shame it was short.
He had looked faintly dazed. He sighed and settled himself properly, and his long legs stuck out past the end of the sofa.
"Who's been bullying our Young Master? Tell me. I'll scold them for you."
Adrian laughed, low.
"Right. And who am I supposed to ask you to scold?"
As her hand grew slow and steady, Adrian drifted off to sleep.
Looking down at the sleeping Young Master, Nina marveled.
His eyelashes are ridiculous.
Not only the lashes. His brows grew in a shape as neat as if someone had groomed them, his forehead was clean, his nose straight. There was not a feature one could fault. With his eyes closed he was simply a handsome face, but when they opened, that particular shadow and delicacy came into them, and he gave off an entirely different charm. Lay over that the smile he always wore, and what was one even supposed to call it?
Whoever marries our Young Master someday is going to have hit the jackpot.
She giggled at the thought, then lifted her head and set her mind to turning.
If her garden plot was still intact, they were not starting from nothing. And judging by that smile of Kirill's, there had to be something there, didn't there?
Right—I told them about the plants, but I never mentioned this.