Harem System novel · Chapter 12 of 24

Chapter 12: Why She Never Touched Him

The Ward was dark when Nils came back from Mourne Hall.

Ruenna and Liriel had gone ahead to the back room.

He did not go with them.

He went to bed three, and sat down on the stool beside it.

Veyra was awake.

She lay on her side with the blanket up to her chin, watching him in the lamplight.

Her eyes were clear for the first time in days.

"You went to the banquet," she said.

"I did."

"Did she touch you?"

"She touched my sleeve."

Veyra closed her eyes for a moment.

"Good," she said. "That's all right. A sleeve is all right."

"Ardith told me to ask you something."

"I know."

"You know?"

"She always says the same thing before she gives up on a person." Veyra opened her eyes. "Ask me."

He looked at her.

Her hands were folded on the blanket, and her knuckles were pale.

"Why did you never touch me?" Nils said.

For a long while she did not answer.

The lamp hissed.

"Because it would have killed you," she said.

The words fell into the room very quietly.

He did not move.

"One night," she said. "That is all a man like you would have had."

"A man like me."

"One who has never cultivated. There was a sheet, and I read it the day we paired."

"Nobody told me."

"No. I did not."

"You read that, and you still took my file off Ardith's desk."

"Yes."

She did not explain it, and he did not ask her to yet.

He sat there.

His hands lay on his knees, and he looked at them.

Three months of nights on the floor outside her door came back to him all at once.

He remembered every scrape of the wall against his back and every curse she had shouted through the wood.

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