Chapter 89: Body On Display

Elara:

I couldn’t help the sigh that escaped me as I stared at the pile of books still spread across the library table in front of me.

Four hours.

I had been sitting there for over four hours in the dead-silent library, working through assignments, notes, textbooks, and more handwritten essays than I ever wanted to see again, yet I had barely managed to finish one-third of the pending work that had accumulated while I was lying unconscious in the infirmary.

It almost felt as if every single professor in Moonveil Academy had held a secret meeting and decided that the exact moment I missed classes would be the perfect opportunity to drop mountains of homework on their students.

I hadn’t even been discharged until Wednesday morning, and Thursday and Friday had passed in a blur of classes and desperate attempts to catch up on everything I had missed during the weekend and the three days I spent unconscious. It was nearly ten on Friday night now, and last week’s pending work still wasn’t even finished.

Learning magic on paper was somehow more exhausting than learning it practically. With practical magic, at least something exploded, glowed, responded, or occasionally tried to kill me. But theory? Theory was just pages upon pages explaining why something could explode, glow, respond, or kill me.

And then there were subjects like history, politics, and Runes & Magic Theory, all demanding their own reading and assignments as if my brain wasn’t already threatening to resign from its position.

I leaned back in my chair and rubbed my eyes, seriously contemplating whether I should continue working or simply admit defeat and return to my dorm. My body had recovered, but five nights in the infirmary followed by two days of classes clearly hadn’t done much for my energy.

Just as I was beginning to think that going to bed was the better decision, a chair dragged against the floor beside me. I turned my head... and immediately wished I hadn’t.

Kairo Greymark stood beside the empty chair, looking as ridiculously handsome as always and dressed in what I could only describe as a personal attack against my already exhausted brain.

He wore a silk blue shirt tucked neatly into his trousers, but apparently, he had forgotten that shirts came with buttons for a reason. The damn thing hung open all the way down his abs, revealing far more than anyone needed to see while wandering around a library late at night.

My eyes betrayed me instantly. They dropped. Shamelessly. One second, I was looking at his face, and the next, my exhausted brain had apparently decided that studying his well-defined muscles was far more productive than studying Runes.

It was freezing at this hour. Freezing. Yet there he was, walking around dressed like it was the middle of summer. I found myself wondering whether supernatural men were simply immune to cold before another thought followed.

Maybe if I had a body like that, I would walk around displaying it too. Then again, absolutely not. I liked warm clothes. I liked not freezing to death. And - wait. Why was I even thinking about his body?

My reckless train of thought came to an abrupt stop when Kairo’s fingers slipped beneath my chin and gently tilted my face upward. My eyes snapped back to his just in time to find that familiar teasing smile waiting for me.

"Eyes up here, Princess," he reminded me, the amusement in his tone so obvious that my expression instantly darkened.

Any normal person would have been embarrassed after getting caught staring. But I wasn’t a normal person. Or maybe I was simply too tired to be embarrassed. I narrowed my eyes at him and asked, "Do you have bad taste in fashion?"

His smile didn’t disappear. If anything, it widened. He leaned down until he was close enough to invade my personal space, his scent reaching me before his voice did, and then he murmured, "You know very well that I have excellent taste when it comes to fashion."

The words were spoken with such confidence that for one horrifying second, my mind betrayed me again by throwing the memory of the black dress from our first meeting directly into my face. The one he had chosen. The one that had actually looked annoyingly perfect on me. The one that he designed.

My cheeks warmed, and I immediately brushed his hand away from my chin before turning toward my books as if I had suddenly developed an urgent interest in the paragraph I had been reading.

"What are you doing here?" I asked, trying to sound as uninterested as possible.

"As usual," he replied while dragging the empty chair closer to mine, "checking on my favorite student." He settled down beside me with far too much comfort, and for some reason, his words made my hand pause over the page.

Favorite student. It was a stupid thing to say. Kairo wasn’t even technically my teacher. He had simply started helping me with magic, though I still couldn’t decide whether he did it because he genuinely wanted to teach me or because he enjoyed having another excuse to bother me. Either way, I refused to give his words the satisfaction of a reaction.

"I’m still alive," I informed him, flipping through the pages of my Runes book until I found the Chapter I needed for the assignment due next week. "Congratulations. You can stop checking now." I expected him to make another sarcastic comment. Instead, his hand suddenly came down on top of my head.

I froze.

Kairo’s fingers moved through my hair in a brief, soft ruffle before his palm settled there for a moment. The teasing expression I had expected was gone when I looked at him. His gaze had softened in a way that made my chest tighten unexpectedly as he said, "You did well, Princess."

For a second, I didn’t understand what he meant.

Then I did.

My eyes dropped back toward the open book, but suddenly, I couldn’t read a single word. He wasn’t talking about my homework. He was talking about getting back to my feet. About surviving the attack. About waking up after everything that had happened.

Something warm moved through my chest, strange and unfamiliar, because no one had ever praised me for something like that before. Wasn’t surviving something I should do. And yet Kairo looked at me as if I had accomplished something important just by opening my eyes and continuing forward.

"Getting attacked and ending up unconscious for three days isn’t exactly an achievement," I muttered, trying to sound unimpressed even though I couldn’t stop my fingers from curling slightly around the edge of the book.

His hand finally left my head, but he didn’t move away. "Getting back up is."

I hated how much those words affected me.