Daughter of Smoke and Bone by Laini Taylor

Author:Laini Taylor
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Published: 2011-09-27T04:00:00+00:00

31

RIGHT

Karou sat up with a suddenness that sent sketchbooks skidding off the bed. Her pencil was still in her hand, and the thought struck her: always with the ridiculous weapon, where this angel was concerned. But even as she adjusted her grip on it, ready to stab, Akiva was backing away, lowering the knives.

He set them where he had found them, where she had left them, in their case, atop the nesting tables. They would have been practically under his nose when he woke.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to frighten you.”

Just then, lit only by the flicker of his wings, the sight of him was so… right, somehow. He was right. It made no sense at all, but the feeling flooded through Karou, and whatever it was, it was as sweet as a patch of sun on a glossy floor and, like a cat, she just wanted to curl up in it.

She tried to pretend she hadn’t been about to stab him with a pencil. “Well,” she said, stretching and letting it drop casually out of her hand. “I don’t know your customs, but here, if you don’t want to frighten someone, you don’t go looming over their sleeping body with knives.”

Was that a smile? No. A twitch at the corners of his stern mouth; it didn’t qualify.

She caught sight of the sketchbook open before her, the evidence of her late-night portrait session right there for him to see. She flipped it quickly shut, though he’d of course have seen it while she was still sleeping.

How could she have fallen asleep with this stranger in her flat? How could she have brought this stranger to her flat?

He didn’t feel like a stranger.

“They’re unusual,” Akiva said, gesturing to the knife case.

“I just got them. Beautiful, aren’t they?”

“Beautiful,” he agreed, and he might have been talking about the knives, but he was looking straight at her.

She flushed, suddenly conscious of her appearance—mussed hair, sleep drool?—then got angry. What did it matter what she looked like? What exactly was going on here? She shook herself and climbed off the bed, trying to find a space in the tiny room outside his radiant aura. It was impossible.

“I’ll be right back,” she said, and stepped into the hall and then the tiny bathroom. Separated from him, she experienced a sharp fear that she would return to find him gone. She relieved herself, wondering if seraphim were above such mundane needs—though judging from the duskiness of his jaw, Akiva was not above the need for a razor—then splashed water on her face and brushed her teeth. She ran a brush through her hair, and every moment she lingered, her anxiety grew that when she returned she would find just an empty room, balcony door standing open and the whole universe of sky above, giving no hint which way he’d gone.

But he was still there. His wings were glamoured gone again, his swords strapped in place at his back, innocuous in their decorative leather sheaths.

“Um,”

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