Beguiled by Cyla Panin

Author:Cyla Panin
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Abrams
Published: 2022-05-27T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twenty-Five

We sat with our knees touching. I’d pulled one chair out from the dining table and Callum had taken another. When I’d left a reasonable space between us, he pushed his chair closer to mine. His trousers pulled at the thin wool of my dress every time he shifted his knees, and little zips of excitement flashed through me. His foot jiggled, and butterflies flapped their wings in my belly to the same beat.

“Am I making you nervous?” I asked. “You’re fidgeting.”

He’d never seemed nervous around me before. Angry, curious, totally wrapped up in a tangle of emotion—yes. Nervous—no. Did he think I wanted more from this, something … something intimate? He knew so much more than I did about being someone people want to be near. That’s all I needed, though—a bit of his knowledge.

“I want to do a good job,” he said with a slow smile. “Showing you.”

My breath caught in my throat. It was always me who was trying to prove myself to Callum. I was the one who came from a used up flat with barely more than an old loom to my name. He didn’t need to prove anything.

“I just want to know what you’ve known all your life,” I said. “Tell me how to bow so I drag the Chieftain’s eyes down with me. Teach me to laugh so he hears only my voice.”

“Your dress will help you with that.”

“The beguiling fabric.”

Callum nodded. “Exactly. That’s what happens when someone’s wearing it and they dance with another, beguilement. It’s Nemain you pray to, isn’t it? She’s the one who’s made the fabric special.”

My mouth went dry. “Nemain, of course. Our city’s patron.”

“She must be very powerful with the whole city’s devotions, don’t you think? Immortal by now.”

“I suppose.”

She was always powerful though. Immortal or not, she was still much more powerful than either of us could ever hope to be. It didn’t matter whether she’d reached that echelon—she wouldn’t have needed to be immortal to gift my loom with magic.

Callum turned his head left and right like he was trying to shed a thought. “So yes, ‘beguiles’ is a good word for what your fabric does.”

“Well, I need to know how to get to that point … how to be enticing to begin with.” My cheeks burned now. I didn’t mean “enticing” to him, necessarily. Just in general. Oh gods. Our eyes met and I shifted my legs away from him, the blush spreading into my chest.

“Knowing how to be enticing and being enticing are not the same thing,” Callum said.

My breath stumbled in my lungs.

“Just like going to a Player’s party doesn’t make me a Player?”

The corner of Callum’s lips quirked into a smile and he slid his eyes away from me, studying the flames in the hearth. “Right,” he said quietly. “But Ella, you already have that pull.”

The mass of butterflies woke up, flapping their wings in my belly again. I swallowed, trying to make my mouth work. He couldn’t possibly mean that I was enticing to him.

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